7 Sites to get royalty free stock images & photos for your blog

Does anyone give you free-high quality stock images to use it for professional and commercial purposes?

Why not?

sites to get free stock images

There are many cool websites where you can get free stock photos to use it for professional and commercial purposes.

Every time, people don’t want to read 5000 words plain text articles. It reduces their interest in reading the articles.

So you should focus on using some other kind of visual to make your content better.

Image is one of the important types of visuals used by bloggers and creators.

If you are thinking that, you need to pay for getting high-quality royalty free stock images, that’s wrong.

There are over hundreds of websites where you can get free stock photos.

Some site allows you to use free stock images for commercial purposes as well. 

Every site has its conditions for using its royalty-free stock images and photos for your needs.

Nowadays different types of images are used by the creators and bloggers to keep attracting their audience.

When it comes to using visuals and images, stock images are one of the easier things to get and use.

For getting good high-quality photos, you always don’t need to take your camera and go for a shooting.

That is not the case.

We are in the modern world, everything comes to your place right.

You have seen that there many social media profiles use these high-quality free stock images to make their quotes and facts.

Reasons to choose free stock images

No cost 

 These images are free of cost. If you are going to any other visuals like using infographics and video animations, you need to pay for software to get good quality. But these stock images are completely free of cost to use in your blog posts.

Time saved

If you are a blogger who writes blogs regularly. Then, you don’t want to take your camera and go out for photography every day, to get the images for your needs. 

Sometimes you also don’t get images as you need. This leads to loss of time and deviation from the work.

So from sitting at your own desk, you can get free images in hundreds of categories.

Blog engagement

High-quality images represent your blog quality. Quality images are one of the ways to increase the user experience of the blog content.

If you are placing some related images in your blog post, keeps your readers encouraged and attracted to read more.

Mostly every blogger uses social media. Using these free high-quality stock images in social media attracts others.

The blog with high-quality relevant featured images gets more views when shared on social media.

In social networks, posts with images get more attention. Mostly if you are using high-quality images, then you get more engagements.

These free stock images are mostly not suitable for lifestyle bloggers. Because lifestyle bloggers mostly take their own images, that is what their audience also likes.

If you are having a cooking blog, then taking photos of your own recipes is more important.

Increased content

Images help to increase your content. Your plain text is not only the content. Whatever the things you are giving in the blog post is content. 

So the images are also content. If you are giving any valuable images that support your text, then it creates more value for the users.

There are no copyright issues when using these royalty-free images in your blog post.

Most of these free images sites don’t have any copyright issues for use in your blogs. But it is advised to read their conditions for using the free stock images.

You can also edit these free stock images for your needs. Many free websites also allow you to edit and use these free images to sell.

Mostly the free images in these websites are taken up by some photographers and published on these websites, for some benefit.

Websites to get royalty-free stock images

Luckily we are in the modern world, everything is made easier. 

Free stock photos from these websites are in high resolution and well-edited, use them.

Usually, you don’t need to edit it. Because images are already edited and available in many pixel sizes.

If you are using social media, then you can choose it with high pixel resolution and for blogs, a medium resolution is enough.

It is because the high-resolution images will consume more space and also slow down your website.

Every time before using the images in your blogs, please optimize the images to make sure it is blog and SEO friendly.

Even though there are hundreds of websites that give royalty-free images, I have handpicked some best websites to match your every need.

Some favorite websites to get free stock images and photos

The websites mentioned under this subheading are my personal favorite, where I usually get free images for my purposes.

Pexels

Free images website - pexels

The free stock photos and images are some of my personal favorites. Pexels drives over 14 million traffic per month to its website.

If you want popular and regularly updated stock images, then pexels is the right choice. It covers free stock images in hundreds of categories

The added advantage of pexels is it also has free stock videos to use for your purposes.

The stock images and videos in pexels are released under a commons zero license, which is completely free use.

Pexels are mostly filled up with only high-quality stock images, which allows free download.

When downloading it gives you the different options of sizes to download. You choose the quality of the images based on your needs.

Choose different image sizes

If you are downloading this free stock images for your blog post, then I would personally recommend you to go for medium quality. It will most suited, limited pixel size with great quality.

This website also gets stock photos from other websites like pixabay and many others to provide high-quality free stock images to their users.

Sample image from pexels
Credits – Pexels

What is allowed in pexels?

  1. All photos and videos you can use for free
  2. Attribution not required, if you are interested you can give credits to the photographer
  3. You can edit and modify the photos and videos, as you need.

What is not allowed in pexels?

  1. Don’t sell the unaltered copies of the images as a poster and digital product.
  2. Don’t sell or redistribute the images and videos on other stock photo platforms.
  3. You are not allowed to use the endorsement of your brand by-products or people in the images.

Visit – Pexels

Pixabay

Free stock photos and images - pixabay

Pixabay is also one of the top popular websites, which is more similar to pexels. 

It drives over 25 million visitors to their website per month. Pixabay provides photos, vector graphics, illustrations, videos, and music to its users.

Pixabay has a wide variety of high-quality images in its library. It also released images under a commons zero license, which doesn’t require any attribution and permission to use.

Pixabay allows everyone to upload the images and videos, but it is completely reviewed for approval. So they can able to manage the quality of their free stock images.

Visit – Pixabay

Unsplash

best free images website for blog post

The images in Unsplash are really good and look so attractive. The library of Unsplash contains millions of free stock images in different categories.

Over the years the Unsplash becomes one of the famous and trusted sources of free stock images, which are of high quality. 

Unsplash allows you to edit and modify their photos as your need and can be used anywhere you want.

All the stock photos on this website are used for professional and commercial purposes.

One of the important features that Unsplash offers is its collection. This collection feature allows you to save the images, that you have come across and it helps to see the images related to your collection.

If once you use it, you will start loving it.

Visit – Unsplash

Some other famous websites to get free stock images

Gratisography

Free pictures for your personal purposes - websites

It doesn’t provide you many varieties of pictures, but if you want images that stand out then it is a better option to go with.

Sometimes we are confused with so many pictures to choose from, but in these cases, it offers only limited pictures but says great stories.

If you love fantasy and creative types of images, then gratisography could be better to get free stock images.

You can use these free stock photos for your personal and commercial purposes. You can also edit and modify the images.

Visit – Gratisography

Libre shot

Compltely royalty free stock images websites

If you are thinking about free stock images to download, then Libre shot also needs to consider.

It provides free images, which are free for commercial use, no watermark, no attribution, and guaranteed origin.

All the images on this website are taken by Martin Vorel. He was an SEO consultant in an online marketing agency and a photography lover.

The libre shot is formerly known as freepix.eu.

You can use these images on education materials, marketing materials, ebooks, posters, flyers, advertisements, and social media, etc…

Visit – Libreshot

Picjumbo

Beautiful free stock images - picjumbo

From picjumbo, you can download free stock photos, background images, and high-resolution images that are free to use for personal and commercial use.

They offer beautiful free stock photos in many categories. It is a freemium website.

For more high quality and attractive images, you should have to go for paid plans.

Their premium membership starts from $9.99/month or $79/month to get quick access to their exclusive content.

You can also subscribe to their blogs and get new images directly delivered to your inbox.

Visit – Picjumbo

Freepik

Best free image sources

It is one of the popular websites to find free vectors and stock images. It is also a freemium website, which offers both free and paid images.

But for a blogger, the free version is more than enough.

It provides you some cool vector images and images to make your website great.

It has images of many sizes as portraits and landscapes.

Visit – Freepik

Pikwizard

Sites to get high quality stock images

Pikwizard offers you an extreme collection of over one million free stock photos and videos.

The images from these websites are royalty-free and safe for commercial use and no attribution is required. But it has some conditions that, particular images in these websites need to get the permission of the creator.

So before taking the images from this site, read the conditions of the chosen image.

If you are willing to provide attribution to the photographers, it is always appreciated.

Visit – Pikwizard

How to legally use free stock photos and images

When it comes to the legal use of images and photos, there are many types of licenses available using images.

To be more specific, there are many types of common licenses in the photography field.

On some websites, every photo and every photographer has their own conditions for using their free stock images.

If you don’t obey their conditions, sometimes the problems could be severe.

Normally, the photographer who took that particular photo has full copyrights for that photo.

The conditions and license of using that photo are given by the photographer.

How to make yourself safe when using other’s stock image

Mostly use the images from well-reputed, free stock images websites. They have mostly written in the proper terms and conditions for using the images.

Always be safer side before using other’s property.

If you are taking any images from an unknown website, then feel free to give credits to the creator.

Giving credits is considered one of the best practices of using images in your blogs.

What is your recommended website for free stock images?

I mostly recommend websites like pexels, pixabay, and Unsplash to download free high-quality stock photos and images. These are the websites, I mostly used to find images in different categories.

What are royalty-free images?

Royalty-free is one kind of license used by photography sellers for selling stock images. There are different types of licenses used by photography agencies. Take a look at the different types of stock image licenses.

Conclusion

 The above mentioned are some cool websites where you can get your free stock images.

Before using it in your blogs, don’t forget to edit and optimize the images for your blog’s needs.

Your image should be optimized for SEO to make it useful. Reduce the size of your image, before using it in your blogs.

Mostly try to have your image size within a few hundred kilobytes, so it doesn’t slow down your web pages.

If you are using wordpress, then plugins like Short pixel automatically optimize the size of your images.

You can also use websites like Canva to better edit your image. Canva also has thousands of pre-made templates for every occasion.

There are still many royalty-free stock images websites available online but read their conditions before using them.

Thank you for spending your valuable time reading this article. If you find this article useful. Then kindly share it.

Do you use any other free stock images sites to get images for your blogs? Comment me below, so that other readers also know it.

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