Whether it is for your personal website or blog or you’re just an aspiring photographer looking for inspiration or you need photos for your designing, whatever your profession is, you will need stock photos for your various needs.

If you are a content writer or a blogger then apart from the quality content it is also important that you must take care of the presentation of your article too.

To enhance any article presentation in the best way is to add a relevant image to the article.

“A picture is a thousand words”

But you cannot just take any image from google and use it for your needs.

With copyright issues becoming a pain, you will need to consider using a royalty-free image for the project you’re working on, partly for the budget and partly to keep your work free from infringement. It’s tough to escape copyright infringement in a digital age.

The biggest problem with this solution is that it’s not always easy to find a good quality stock photo that fits your needs.

That’s why I have compiled a list of websites from where you can download free stock photos and royalty free images for commercial use.

Some sites let you download any of the photos for free, others require that you attribute the site or credit the owner of the photographs

Also, there’s been a growing number of websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web. Best of all, they’re free!

Free Image Download Websites for Commercial Use & Royalty Free

1. FREEPIK:

Download free images, graphics and other resources from freepik.com

Freepik is the leading search engine of free vector designs.

Freepik offers users, high-quality graphic designs: exclusive illustrations and graphics resources carefully selected by their design team in order to provide you with great content that can be used in both personal and commercial projects.

It is one of my favorite too. I personally use Freepik for my design needs and I suggest it to you also.

Some companies that use Freepik are: Adobe, Google, Awwwards, Sitepoint, Smashing magazine, Speckyboy and much more.

Disclaimer: In order to use an image or a part of it, you must credit the author.

You can use resources from Freepik for both personal and commercial projects and to modify it or In a website or presentation template or application or as part of your design.

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2. GRATISOGRAPHY:

Download free images, graphics and other resources from gratisography

I started using Gratisography for stock photos last year and since then I’m in love with this website. From Gratisography you can download high-quality images and you can use them for your personal need or for any other purposes.

And the bonus point is that you can use photos from Gratisography without even giving any credits. All pictures on gratisography were photographed by Ryan McGuire and are free of copyright restrictions.

3. PIXABAY:

Download free images and other resources from pixabay

You should just bookmark Pixabay because they not only have high-quality photos but also videos. Pixabay has beautiful looking stock images, with more colors and emotions.

All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You can download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.

4. PEXELS:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free pexels

Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. All photos are nicely tagged, searchable and also easy to discover through our discover pages.

Currently, pexels have over 30,000 free stock photos. And every month at least 3,000 new high-resolution photos are added. All photos are handpicked by them. Try Pexels.

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5. STOCKSNAP.IO:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free stocksnap.io

StockSnap is the best place on the internet to find beautiful free stock photos.

Stocksnap.io has a large selection of beautiful free stock photos and high-resolution images. StockSnap adds hundreds of images on a daily basis.

All photos uploaded on stocksnap.io are released under Creative Commons – CC0 and do not require attribution. No more hassle trying to figure out whether you can use photos for commercial use and whether you need to provide attribution.

6. UNSPLASH:

Over 200,000 free high-resolution photos brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers.

Unsplash offers a large collection of free high-resolution photos and has become one the best sources for stock images. The Unsplash team combs through new submissions and features the very best photos on their homepage. All photos are released for free under the Unsplash license.

7. FLICKR:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free flickr.com

Flickr is and has been for a long time, one of the greatest image libraries on the internet. With over 3 million, high-quality public domain images alone.

Flickr is one of my favorite website to search and download free images. Whenever I am in hurry to download any image for my article then Flickr is the website which I visit.

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8. BURST:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free burst by shopify

Burst is a free stock photo site that is powered by Shopify.

Burst is a resource from Shopify that provides free stock photos for entrepreneurs. All photos are licensed under Creative Commons CC0 and can be used as you see fit.

You can use free photos from Burst on your online store, product packaging, or anywhere else you’d like. You can even use these pics to create t-shirts, mugs, or other products. Burst was launched to help entrepreneurs make better products, websites, and marketing campaigns.

9. NEGATIVE SPACE:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free negative space

Negative Space provides 20 new photos every week released under Creative Commons CC0. The photos are searchable and can be sorted by category, copy space and color.

10. FREESTOCKS.ORG:

Freestock offers a wide range of high-quality photos all released under Creative Commons CC0.

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11. FREERANGE:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free freerange

You can download stock images from FreeRange for personal and commercial use. Also if you are a photographer then you can also upload the images and earn money with their Adsense revenue sharing program.

12. LIFE of PIX:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free life of pix

Life of pix is an awesome website to download free, public domain photography. Better yet, their Life of Vids website contains even more impressive stock video footage, completely for free!

Also, the user interface of Life of Pix is also great, it’s very easy to search and download photos you want.

13. MMT STOCK:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free mmt stock

MMT Stock is a collection of high-resolution photos provided by Jeffrey Betts. Jeffrey likes to share photos of computers and workspaces as well as flowers and nature. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0.

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14. FOODIESFEED:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free foodiesfeed

FoodiesFeed offers thousands of beautiful realistic free food pictures in high resolution. It’s the perfect stock photo site for food bloggers.

15. PICJUMBO:

Free Image Download Website for Commercial Use Royalty Free picjumbo

Picjumbo is a collection of totally free photos for your commercial & personal works. New photos are added daily from a wide variety of categories including abstract, fashion, nature, technology and much more.

Can I use royalty free images for commercial use?

Yes, you can. All royalty free images are free for use by anyone. You don’t even have to give credits to the author. Just simply download any image you want from above mentioned sites and use them in your project work, in blog posts or for any other work.

Also, all images available on above sites are of very high quality. So, you don’even if you want HD quality images, you can use any of the above sites.

Are royalty free images copyrighted?

No, they are not. You can use them for any of your work. They are not copyrighted.

Can you use royalty free images for book cover?

Yes, you can use them for book covers. They are royalty free and hence free to use for any type of work.

Can royalty free images be used for Logos?

Yes, royalty free images can be used for Logos.

How to find royalty free images on google?

  1. First, go to Google Images and then search for your desired image.
  2. Then click on Tools > Usage rights option below the search bar.
  3. Then choose the option “Labeled for reuse”.

If you want to modify the free images then chooose the second option, “Labeled for use with modification”.

How to download royalty free images?

To download royalty free images, just go to any of the stock images site and download the images you want from there for free.


Saksham Kumar

I'm a passionate blogger and a creative person. I love Tech, Blogging and I read a lot about startups & Internet Entrepreneurs. Life motto: Live simply, Love generously and Learn constantly!

1 Comment

Olabiyi Malik · September 8, 2017 at 2:40 pm

Hi,

Thanks For This Great Information

Cheers..
Abdul Malik

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