Whether you’re looking for royalty free images to add to your website or use for your business or hobby, you’ll find a number of free stock photo sites to choose from. But how do you know which sites are the best?
photeeq
Using free stock images is a great way to avoid paying royalty fees. Many businesses and amateur photographers need an extensive collection of images. This website is a great place to get them.
Photeeq also has a blog with marketing and design tips. The site has a search bar for easy navigation. The site has a FAQ section as well. The home page features a featured photo of a photographer.
The site is free to use and a small donation can help support the photographer. The site also features videos and sounds. The pictures are organized into nine categories.
The site also has a search function for finding free images. The site is owned by a photographer/entrepreneur.
It has a small collection of free images. The images are emailed to users in a zip file. The images can be used for personal projects and commercial projects.
Pixabay
Whether you are looking for high quality stock images or videos for your website or blog, Pixabay is one of the best websites to download free images. Founded in 2010 by two Germans, Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinberger, Pixabay has grown into a massive library of free commercial use photos and illustrations.
Pixabay is ideal for creatives, professionals, and teachers. The site offers thousands of royalty-free illustrations, videos, and photographs. There are over 780,000 images in the library, and the site is easy to navigate. Pixabay also features an Editor’s Choice curation section that highlights the best images selected by the Pixabay team.
To get started, you can create a free account. After signing up, you can browse through Pixabay’s vast library. Once you find images that you like, you can download them in various sizes and formats. Pixabay will then add them to your media library. You can track which images you download and view your download history.
Shutterstock
Founded by Jon Oringer in 2003, Shutterstock is one of the largest stock image providers in the world. It offers royalty-free stock photos and vectors. It has over 230 million photos, videos, and other creative assets.
Shutterstock offers a variety of subscription plans. The cheapest plan is an annual prepaid subscription. This allows you to download 750 images a month for $0.22 per image. This is a very reasonable rate for regular use. You can also opt for an a la carte plan, which allows you to download a certain number of images per month.
Shutterstock has a free trial that allows you to download 10 royalty-free images. You will be charged a monthly fee after your free trial. You will also have to enter your credit card information. If you cancel your subscription before the trial period ends, you will not be charged.
Getty Images
Founded in 1995, Getty Images is one of the world’s most prominent stock photo companies. Its collection of images covers a wide range of topics and genres, including fashion, sports, and editorial images. It also has a number of distribution agreements that allow its content to be licensed for use in a wide variety of applications.
Getty Images is known for its high quality pictures. However, it has also taken steps to cater for smaller budgets and markets. Getty is not as restrictive on the use of its images as it once was.
Getty Images offers three types of licenses. These are Rights-Managed, Royalty-Free, and Extended. The Rights-Managed images are licensed for specific uses, whereas the Royalty-Free images are licensed for perpetual use.
Getty’s Embed feature allows you to embed more than 70 million Getty Images photos on non-commercial websites. However, Getty reserves the right to track and monitor user behaviour, and it may also load ads on the embedded images.
iStock
iStock is one of the oldest stock photo websites. It has a large database of high-quality images for any use. You can search through its library by keyword, orientation, or license.
The database is organized well and has filters for image size and color. The search bar autofills suggestions as you type.
In addition to free stock images, iStock also offers vectors, videos, and illustrations. If you want to purchase these services, you can subscribe to an iStock account. The site also offers a free one month trial.
Other free stock photo websites include Morguefile and Kaboompics. The latter features a color palette search engine and informative blog entries. The site has over 20,000 free images. The photos are compiled by creatives and include everyday objects.