Free Stock Photo Sites

There are tens of thousands of free stock photos available online, the trick is finding something you want!

On this page we have compiled a handy reference list of what we think are the best free stock photo sites; we've also highlighted some of the pitfalls of using free images... there is not always a catch, but there are plenty of things to be wary of!

Quality of free sites
In general quality of images made available for free is not usually a good as paid sites, but the quality of the image is often acceptable, especially for a small sized web use such as a blog image only a couple of hundred pixels across. Broadly speaking there are two types of free site, ones full of amateur images, and ones full of more professional looking images and outtakes (some are rejects from paid photo libraries); the latter has better quality images and often more choice but often with more strings attached; the more professional looking the images/site is the more 'up selling' i.e. nagging you to buy a paid image instead of downloading the free one.

What are the "Gotchas" of free sites?
Some things to look out when reviewing images on a free site: not all sites have these features; and to be fair the reason these sites are the way they are is that they have to support themselves through advertising - some of a little more transparent about it than others.

• Are they only free for non-commercial use?
• Did a 'royalty free' (a paid site) site get listed or appear in a search engine when you were looking for "free"?
  
• You are required to credit the photographer in a printed attribution, or link to the site
• Only low resolution images are free of charge
• Search results are 'seeded' with paid images, often quite clearly marked as such, bit 'easy' to click on thinking you are looking at a free image
• Limited choice - the range of images is nothing like as broad as paid sites
• No one-stop-shop:- means you'll be checking several different sites to see if you can find what you want
• You need to register and/and share your personal information with the site to download
• Special download software is required to access images (avoid sites like that at all costs) we don't list such services here
• Lower quality images are free, better quality images are not.
• Potential legal problems, make sure a site looks 'legitimate' some too good to the true sites are full of stolen images (again those are not listed here).
• Be conscious of the time you spend looking on free sites. If an image costs only a dollar or two on a microstock agency then it might be a false saving to spend a lot of time searching for something free - that's another catch some sites have, they make the search 'awkward' to tempt you with paid images.

17 Top Free Photo Sites:

	Yes	No	Yes	2700px	1000s(?)
Dreamstime : free collection commercial microstock library with free archive, link to the free images section on the homepage.

	Yes	No	No	400px	20,000+(?)
123rf : free collection click the "free stock images" link on the home page for access to thousands of free images

	No	Yes	No	2000px	15,000
StockVault Community of 1000's of photographers sharing their photos, images are for non-commercial use only

	Yes	No	No	3000px	10,000?
Morguefile Community of photographers sharing their photos, also features a large selection of free work available under an attribution license.

	Varies	Varies	Yes	1500px	690,000
freeimages.com free stock photo site from getty images, formerly sxc.hu

	Yes	Yes	No	3000px	12000 Incl. exclusive images
FreeImages.co.uk Easy browsing and instant download, some good qualiy images and some 'ordinary images', plus a photographer upload community.

	Yes	Yes	Yes	2400px	10,000
Freerangestock thousands of images uploaded by site users

	Yes	Varies	No	2400px	11,000
Freestockphotos large collection of categorised images, with additional collections of PD, Creative commons and other license types

	Yes	No	Yes	3000px	50,000
Rgbstock.com large collection of user contributed images, registration is needed to download

	Yes	No	No	640px	30,000
Photorack large collection, looks like it is no longer updated, very low resolution of most of the photos makes for limited use, no search

	Yes	Yes	Yes	3000px	?
Stockmedia good looking collection of free photos with a creative commons license, sadly no search option

	Yes	Yes	No	1600px	4500
Freepixels broad collection, good search and some quite good stock and conceptual images on offer, resolution varies

	Yes	No	Yes	2000px	1,200
Photogen small collection, good search and no link/attribuion needed but registration required.

	Yes	Yes	Yes	3000px	1,200
Stockarch free stock photo archive of creative commons stock images uploaded by photographers promoting their business

	Yes	No	No	1024px	?
Unprofound creative site full of artistic PD images organized and searchable by colour

	?	?	No	3000px	500
Adigitaldreamer/gallery high resolution and great looking images but limited range, no license details provided

	Yes	Yes	No	2500px	6,000
Creativity103 a resource of abstract and unusual stock photography, patterns and textures; all available free-of-charge under a creative commons license.

Of course this is not a definitive list of free sites, there are others, but none that offer a better collection / don't have dodgy terms / have some significant limitation to use. If you do know a better site then let us know and tell us why you think it's better than the ones we've listed

More Free Stock Photo Sites

Download our report on free stock photo sites. We have compiled a list of 97 sites and compared license terms, photo collection sizes and image resolutions for each in one convenient reference document.

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Photo Credit: cr103.com