The 5 best free stock photo sites to use without having to deal with pesky registrations.
It’s no doubt that an image can often times illustrate a situation better than words.
If you own a blog or a website, you want to put up high quality photos to captivate your audience without paying an arm and a leg for them.
Today I will show you the 5 best free stock photo sites that I use to find my photos.
Note: you don’t want to use Google images for fear of legal problems or copyright violations, don’t do this, just read ahead and you’ll get all the great photo sites you’ll ever need.
Including free Google images 🙂
As I was researching websites to write this article, I found more than 20 good websites that offer free quality photos.
However, if you’re like me, you want to find photos quickly without wasting time with registrations.
So this article reviews my top sites to pull free high quality stock photos where you DON”T have to register to use their photos for free.
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Best Free Stock Photo Sites: Update
After years of writing website content and using photos for visual references, I have got my system down to where I mostly use Google Advanced Image Search.
I have developed a simple system to find photos, and then I use Picresize.com to decrease the actual size or cop the photo.
To optimize all your photos by reducing their file size, use TinyPNG.com.
Both these can be used together to fully optimize your photos.
Photo Sizes for Blogs and Online Businesses:
Try to keep my photo file size as follows…
- Background Images – try to keep the file size around or below 10KB.
- Banners or Header images – try to keep the file size less than 60KB.
- High End Photographs – try to keep the file size to or below 100KB.
In general, I try to keep the photos under 40KB’s, the smaller the size the quicker your site will load.
Below I have added a video walkthrough on how I go about this process.
Please have a look so that you can see how efficient my system is for obtaining new photos for any website.
5 Best Free Stock Photo Sites:
Photopin.com
Photopin.com provides an easy platform to search for whatever type of photos you may be looking for.
You just have to put your topic in the search box, and they provide thousands of photos for you to view.
The first two rows of pictures are sponsored by Shutterstock photos.
But after that you have thousands of photos to look through to find the right photo for your website.
All the photos in this picture above are free photos for the subject of Coffee.
They have a nice preview feature that allows you to take a closer look at the photo. Once you find the photo you want, you hit get photo.
Most photos just require you to copy & paste the photo contributors link to the bottom of your webpage. You can save the photo as an image in your picture folder and done, too easy.
Unsplash.com
If you’re looking for incredible professional stock photos, check out Unsplash.com.
You just go to their website and scroll down to look through hundreds of super high quality photos.
Once you find the photo you like, just right click on it and press save the image as option.
They have a download button option, but my method is faster with the same results.
Save it to your Pictures folder, and then upload it to your website.
The only drawback with Unsplash.com is that they don’t have a search option.
You just have to scroll down to find a photo you like.
So that can slow your search process down, but for high-resolution photos, it’s worth the extra time.
Kavewall.com
Kavewall.com is another great site to find professional macro photography.
So if you’re looking for high-quality detailed photos, Kavewall is your source.
There are 18 categories to choose from, and the quality of the photos is superb.
The site is easy to browse.
You should definitely bookmark this site in your browser.
Stockvault.net
Stockvault.com offers close to 46,000 free photos and has a great platform that is easy to navigate and loaded with great photos.
The only drawback with Stockvault is that most of their photos are smaller in size.
So you don’t get the super high quality photos that can be enlarged to fit the entire web page.
This is fine for placing photos on the right side of an article. But if you want them to fit the entire page, look at Kavewall, Unsplash and Imagebase.
Imagebase.net
Imagebase.net offers absolutely free high-resolution photos. So if you’re looking for great quality professional stock photos, check them out as well.
Imagebase photos are mostly taken by David Niblack, a professional photographer. And his photos can be freely used for personal, commercial, non-profit, artistic, and creative purposes.
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Conclusion on Free Stock Photos:
There are around 25 sites to get free stock photos for your website or blog.
These 5 sites (plus the Advanced Google Search) are in my opinion the best way to get free stock photos for whatever photos you are looking for to express your creativity.
It’s no fun to spend hours of your time looking for the right photo.
There are thousands of free low quality photos out there, but if you want to streamline the process and get the winners right away, check out the above sites and the video, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Feel free to leave a comment below about which site is your favorite stock sites and I’ll get back to you right away.
And please share this article with anyone you know who might need help finding free quality photos for their own website, blogs, or social networks.
This article help me very much thanks for share this article.
Thanks so much for the information. I’m sure I will be using these sites in the future. Awesome photos.
Thanks for the great resources listed here to find stock photos, much appreciated.
Guy
You’re welcome Guy, happy to help.
Todd
Hi Todd,
What a great post! Thanks for that, a really useful resourse and the quality of stock photo sites listed here are great.
I know a couple of them already but the new one’s you have introduced to me today, (Imagebase & Kavewall) are Awesome!
Thanks For Sharing!
Mishyboo! X:-).
Thanks Mishyboo, glad you found the post helpful and thanks for your feedback.
Todd
Hi,
Nice informative Article, thanks.
You bet Bob, happy to help. To learn to start your own successful online business, click here.
Cheers,
Todd
HI Todd,
All I can say is WOW!! I have been trying to find sites that share quality photos for months. I think it’s so important on how interesting your website is and how photos contribute a lot to this.
Most free sites you go to, state that they’re free and when you get there, they have water marks on them, what a waist of time.
You truly paid it forward this time Todd, these are 5 of the best freebee photo sites I’ve ever come across. This is something needed for those that work online, and not have to worry about copy rights when we dress up our websites. Thanks Todd. Sharon
Your welcome Sharon and thanks for your feedback. This was my first pet peeve when I first started building sites and writing blogs. But I really think you can get nice professional photos without paying a dime using my system.
It works for me.
Thanks,
Todd
Just wanted to say thanks for this stock photos article, I found it very helpful and practical. Good video as well.
Thank you for sharing!
Troy
You bet Troy, happy to help out and that’s great that you can benefit from this post. Come back anytime.
Thanks,
Todd
This is a great post on the best stock photo sites, I really appreciate your video showing how to use Google advanced photo search.
Thanks for the awesome post and resource for us blogger that don’t want to pay for stock photos.
Daniel
You bet Daniel, happy to help.
Todd
Hi Todd,
I have been struggling for the last three days to find a picture for my home page. Either it had the watermark, the size was wrong or if I wanted to buy it gave me the option of subscribing at expensive prices.
I’m delighted about the information that you give in your website. I’m going to try them straight away.
Thank you!
Emilie
You’re quite welcome Emilie, thanks for leaving your feedback as well. To re-size, you can also try tinypng.com as well, it’s a free service where you can just drag your photo to shrink the size, but I also keep picresize.com handy if I can’t get the photo small enough.
Thanks again and come back anytime.
Cheers,
Todd
Cool website and excellent advice on how to find the best free stock photos, your site is loaded with excellent resources for online marketers, bloggers, and website developers. Thanks for all your help.
John
Happy to help John, if you need help with SEO and natural/organic traffic, check out my number one training platform, they’re loaded with helpful resources and continuing education.
Cheers,
Todd
Thank you so much Todd. Great article!!
I have been looking for images to use, without the worry or adding photographer credits or fear of violating copyright laws. Your post made it very easy to find professional stock photos. Just wanted to say thanks and let you know I really appreciate it.
You bet Jennifer, happy to help out. I’m sure there are other free stock photo sites out there, but these are the ones that work best for me.
Best,
Todd
Thanks for sharing this information. People are always looking for new photos and this is a great help! Wishing you the best.
Hi Donna,
Thanks for your feedback and that was my hope when I wrote the post. I recently improved on it with the video to streamline the process. But finding free stock photos was one of my first issues when I got started working online. Glad to hear it helps.
Take care and come back anytime for more information on SEO knowledge, website building, or making money online ideas.
Cheers,
Todd
Hi Todd thanks for the resources for photos. I also use pixabay and adding to the list is a good thing. Great video also. Thanks man. Randy
Hi Randy,
Thanks so much for the feedback on the video. Very cool. I’ll have to check out Pixabay. It’s always fun to find the right photo to express a point.
The Google advance search is probably the easiest and fastest way to get quality photos. But they don’t always have the largest selection. Just depends. Thanks for the recommendation and take care. Nice to meet you Randy.
Thanks,
Todd
Hey Todd,
Using Photopin does seem simple enough. I need to just calm down with this photo search thing. I’m making it much harder than it has to be. I do that from time to time 🙂 Thanks for the response,
Steve
No worries Steve. It’s frustrating after spending a few hours looking for the right photo. I hear ya man, take a break and come back to it later with a fresh point of view.
Todd
These are some great photo sites. The only thing that worries me is when I see the words “license” and “terms of use”.
I’m hoping I will find a free stock photo site where I can use ANY image I want with NO strings. I am probably asking too much but I’m stubborn enough to keep looking 🙂
Steve
Thanks Steve,
All these sights you can take free photos with. For example, with Upsplash, totally free, copy, paste, done. With Photopin, you just copy and paste the credits at the bottom of your article in the TEXT editor of WordPress. Nothing more.
Best of luck,
Todd
Hi Todd 🙂
When you say “free photos” do you mean they are not subject to copyright? We can use them for whatever we like?
Hi Claudine,
You read it correctly. If you follow the video, you’ll see my preferred method is Google’s Advanced Image Search. At the bottom of the search page there is a box you can check that says something to the effect of..Free to Use, Share, even Commercially.
Search photos using this search parameter and you’ll be fine. Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Todd
thanx for the insight, very nice.
You bet Lucas, hope it helps.
Cheers,
Todd
Hey Todd,
thank you for this great post! Having helped in website creation for the past year, I was always at a loss when clients would ask me to find a picture that fits their content…
But with those sites! Wow!
thanks again for the information and congratulation for your site. Looks great and clean 🙂
Annie
Hi Annie,
You bet, I hear you, it’s nice to have some good photo sites in this industry. Thanks for stopping by and checking out the site. Have a wonderful evening.
Todd
I love that you shared these awesome resources! Thanks a bunch. D
Thanks for this. Every traveller takes photos. Why not use those photos to make some money whilst doing it. Some great sites to check out!
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks for stopping by Tom and commenting on the post. Appreciate it.
Cheers,
Todd
Great article, I will definitely check out those sites for free photos! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Lorinda,
Thanks for you comments. I appreciate them, it was a fun article to research and I got a few new sites to pull free photos. Win win!
Take care,
Todd
Great value information, thank you.
Regards and good luck
Thanks John, very kind of you to stop by and check out the info.
Cheers,
Todd
Wow I had no idea there are so many options.
That was a nice educating read, thanks Todd.
– Or
Hi Or,
Thanks for checking out the article. I was surprised too. It’s nice to have 3 or 4 good sources for photos, so hopefully this is a helpful article for many.
Cheers,
Todd
Thank you for this information. I am needing it. I hope you don’t mind if I come back later to pick up some of the urls.
Rick
Hi Rick,
Thanks for your comment and yes, come back anytime.
Todd
Great article. My biggest challenge is getting suitable images for my blog that don’t cost money. I can’t wait to go and check your recommended sites. Thanks for this post.
Hi Ginger,
You bet, and thanks for checking out the article. These are some great sites with lots of awesome free photos out there.
Cheers,
Todd
Thanks for the tips Todd,
I do use one or two sources myself – and will be happy to look up the sites you recommend.
Well done – Cheers,
John.
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment. Hope you enjoy a few of the sites. There are some great free photos out there.
Cheers,
Todd
Great page I was intrigued, maybe because I’m a great photo fan so I will make use of these websites
Hi Nick,
Thanks for your comment and I’m glad you enjoyed the read. Photos are so much fun, I love them too.
Cheers,
Todd