Are you looking for the best websites to get free to use royalty stock images and copyright free photos? If you are a new blogger or veteran blogger after writing your blog post you will need images for your articles, social media posts or any other commercial use.
According to Search Engine Journal articles with images get 94 % more views than those without, besides that also social media posts with visuals deliver 180% greater engagement.
As the famous Chinese saying suggests, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Hence a picture conveys an idea more quickly and effectively than the written word thus increasing user engagement.
Furthermore, science says that the human brains are wired to love images and are easily absorbed into the mind of an individual.
With that said you really need free images to use in your blog or website without copyright. In this post we shall list 21 places where you can get free images with no copyright restrictions that you can use both for commercial purposes and non-commercial purposes.
Now before using free images or photos you will need to understand these key terms associated with the use of Creative Commons (CCO) images.
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a global non profit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge such as images, music, videos, movies and other content all for free with no additional cost.
Therefore you can use Creative Commons royalty free images for both personal and Commercial use without asking permission from the owner or giving attribution.
What are Royalty Free images?
Royalty free images does not necessarily mean that there is no cost at all. Royalty free generally means that you pay a One time fee for the right to use a photograph. Then you can use & reuse the image without paying additional royalties to the copyright holder.
Now after having known that let’s dive right into the 21 website to find free royalty images for your business or marketing.
21 Places To Find Free Royalty Images For Your Business or Marketing.
1. Pexels
Pexels is arguably the best website to download free to use stock images and videos without copyright or giving attribution to creators. It was started in 2014 with over 3.2 million free stock photos and videos. Anyone who is looking for great visuals can find high-quality stock photos, royalty free images and videos at Pexels and download them anytime you want. It has elegant features and great user interface, practical search bar as you can choose any photo from the diverse category and use them totally free.
2. Unsplash
Unsplash is another top website for royalty free to use images in the internet world. It has over 3.48 million photos of high quality resolution in its library.
The Unsplash license allows images to be used freely for both commercial and personal use or for projects. It has gained a reputation as one of the world’s leading photography websites by Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, CNET and many others. Unsplash is a website for free to use stock images for digital marketers and bloggers.
3. Pixabay
Pixabay has a very large database of over 2.5+ million free stock images that you can use anywhere with no attribution. Furthermore, it also offers over 26,000+ free videos and free vectors, graphics, music and illustrations that you can use in your business and marketing. You can also share your own pictures as public domain with people from all over the world. All photos are released under the Creative Commons (CCO).
4. Vecteezy
Vecteezy is among the best free to use image platforms that has millions of high quality stock photos, vector graphics and videos created by talented creators. It has a great practical search you can filter the images results by style, color, orientation, number of people and more. Moreover Vecteezy is a great website for designer resources that helps them make their best work.
5. Gratisography
Gratisography is a free stock photography website that offers the quirkiest collection of free to use high resolution images. It focuses majorly on sharing unique, individualistic and attention grabbing photography.
All Gratisography images are 100% free. You can use them in your social media posts, blog posts, background image or even as the landing page for your website.
With gratisography you can easily browse and explore through categories or collections of photos to find one that you can use. Gratisography is absolutely a home for free to use images without copyright.
6. Picjumbo
Picjumbo is one of the best royalty free stock image sites created in 2013 by designer Viktor Hanacek. You can search and download free stock photos and images in high resolution. Spice up your blog posts, web designs, social media posts, keynotes or use as your laptop wallpaper and so on.
7. Free Images
FreeImage has millions of high quality public domain images without copyright. You can easily search through millions of free royalty stock photos, vector images and art. Furthermore, you can download images freely without having to login. Every image is copyright free and you can use free images for both commercial and personal use.
8. Good Free Photos
Good Free photos is an Online gallery of thousands of unique free stock photos. Photos are well categorized depending on your needs and you can use photos for whatever reason you want. All photos are royalty free stock photos and copyright free images and users can also share their own photos.
9. Morguefile
Morguefile is an Online stock photo site for creatives. It is unique from the others in that it has a built-in social media function that allows users to follow and message other users. Morguefile’s free stock image collection displays its likes, views, downloads and comments hence it is possible to know how users are reacting to the content. This platform contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either commercial or non-commercial use.
10. Burst by Shopify
Burst is another great library for free to use stock images built by Shopify for internet entrepreneurs. It has great images that are both copyright & royalty free with high resolution for starting and scaling your online business for blog posts, Digital Marketing and social media posts. User accounts are free and can be set up in less than a minute.
11. Kaboompics
With Kaboompics new high quality photos are being added every single day. Just like other sites mentioned above Kaboompics images can be used for both commercial and non-commercial use. You can download this free to use images and use for your online business and marketing or design your website and make it more appealing without spending any dime.
12. Canva
Canva is an Online graphic design tool that also offers copyright free photos in its platform without attribution being required. You can easily edit pictures on Canva with its complex features to suit your needs. Moreover you can turn an image into a custom graphic to use as your blog banner, Pinterest pin, social media post and so on.
13. Flickr
Flickr is a popular photo hosting and sharing platform with powerful features that enable you to modify images for commercial and non-commercial use.
Photo licenses vary for each image therefore, before using an image you first have to check the license. You can also share and host your own photos on Flickr without paying any dime.
14. Stocksnap
Stocksnap is another best source for copyright free images and photos that you can use for free with no attribution required. You can search and download thousands of royalty free stock images by clicking your mouse. With new copyright free images added daily you can easily browse through photos and choose any that you want.
15. Life of Pix
Life of pix is another great photo library archive that offers high resolution photos without copyright restrictions. In this platform you can easily share and download images freely that you can use anywhere anytime you want. You can browse through pictures by color or format.
16. Crello
Similar to Canva, Crello is both a free and paid graphic design tool with thousands of free images to use. You can create custom design images for your personal use or commercial use.
17. iStock
iStock is an Online royalty free stock photos, illustrations and video provider. It has millions of photos and other files to choose from with many being added every week.
18. ShutterStock
With more than 350 million royalty free stock photos in its library archive, Shutterstock is arguably the largest image stock library in the world. Users can quickly customize photos by cropping, editing and adding filters by using Shutterstock’s editor tool. You can use royalty free photos, vectors and illustrations multiple times after just paying a single one time fee.
19. StockVault
Stockvault is among the best sources of royalty free stock photos. This platform is a well organized site for searching for free to use images by category and besides it has new daily additions of stock images, illustrations and graphics in its library.
20. Freepik
Freepik is an online search engine for images that helps users find high quality free photos, illustrations, vector icons and PSD files for your creative projects. You can browse for images by filtering the “Free” option in the site. You can legally use Freepik for free images and other resources for commercial and personal projects.
21. Use Google Images without Copyright
Using Google images has a high risk of copyright issues and in this little tutorial I will show you how to get copyright free images from Google without breaking a sweat.
For instance, if you are searching for Swimming Pool images on Google. You will click on images as usual as shown below.
To get Copyright free images you have to click on tools as shown in the image above.
After clicking on tools, then click on Usage Rights and choose Creative Commons license as shown below
Now you can easily download any image with Creative Commons license and use it anywhere you want without limitation.
What are the usage rights on royalty free stock photos?
Almost all images on these royalty free stock websites have Creative Commons (CCO) license. This means you can use, re-use, adapt or distribute the images for both personal and commercial purposes – without attribution being required.
You can read more about this on the Creative Commons website.