Websites with the Best Free Stock Photos

Whenever we ask our designers to design something, the most hassling part of their task seems to be searching for the suitable best free stock photos for the job. Yes, photography itself is a very tough skill that requires a lot of practice over years and demands hard sweat. We are very grateful to professional photographers for providing us with their hard work. But the amount of images any creative industry needs to swallow, makes it an impossible task to buy images for each and every purposes. That is where, some good people came up with their websites with best free stock photos to reduce our headache.

Well, if you are looking for the best quality images, you must buy Premium quality stock photos. But if you are in need of a large chunk of royalty-free high-resolution stock photos, the following ones should be the best place to look for. We didn’t just listed these websites, but intensely categorized and rated them all according to your needs. The base on which this websites were rated are as followed:

Image quality: 25%
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 20%
Ease of Search: 15%
Disciplined Categorization: 15%
User-friendly UI: 10%
Hassles of logging in: 5%
Availability of Trending Items: 5%
Special Features: 5%

As well as rating these websites on those above criteria, we also added some footnotes after every website’s review, mentioning the pros and cons that would help you decide if it would be helpful for you to look for a particular stock photo in that particular website.
best free stock photos
It must be kept in mind that each and every websites mentioned in this article are all great in their own way. We are in no way judging these websites, or comparing one with others. The ratings shown here are just assessed from a web designer’s point-of view so that they can save their precious time and energy they spend searching for images and concentrate on their coding.

1. StockSnap – A random dose of happiness with a pinch of surprise!
★★★★★

It is our honour to start this list with this beautifully designed one of the best free stock photos website. StockSnap is a very user-friendly website with a huge collection of amazingly beautiful photographs. This site excelled in all of our assessment criteria except for one. But StockSnap is actually so good, that one bad sector couldn’t affect its overall rating.

best free stock photos
Image quality: 20/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 20/20
Ease of Search: 15/15
Disciplined Categorization: 6/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 4/5
Special Features: 5/5
Total Score: 85/100
Special Features:
1. Weekly subscription of featured images bundle
2. A built-in graphic editor named “Snappa”, which is really very useful for creating amazing graphics in a little more or less than one minute with almost no graphic editing knowledge!

Pros: A one-in-all solution for any stock photo related problems.
Cons: The images are not well-categorized, which makes it a little inconvenient to find the images one may be looking for. They should definitely fix this ASAP and aim for a perfect 100!

2. New Old Stock- Wanna head back to the ‘60s?
★★☆☆☆

If you are looking for images that will give you a feeling of the golden era of the ‘60s and ‘70s, New Old Stock is the one to look for. This website is full of authentic vintage photos from the public archives.
best free stock photos
Image quality: 20/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 10/20
Ease of Search: 10/15
Disciplined Categorization: 0/15
User-friendly UI: 5/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 2/5
Special Features: 0/5
Total Score: 45/100
Pros: Authenticity- Guaranteed! And who doesn’t love a blast from the past?
Cons: Despite of having an amazing collection of retro images, this website is not at all good for easy navigation. You have to be “Marlin” to find your Nemo in this vast ocean. It’s good to go retro, but don’t take your whole website with you!

3. Fancy Crave- There is something different about their collection
★★★★☆

best free stock photos
Simplicity is always attractive, though it is not necessarily true for certain kinds of websites. But that is where these guys nailed it. The simple white background blended with the overall design of this website creates a feeling of nothingness inside you. And that is when these guys strike you with their tremendous quality images!
Image quality: 20/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 15/20
Ease of Search: 10/15
Disciplined Categorization: 13/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 0/5
Special Features: 1/5
Total Score: 74/100
Pros: Free high resolution photos from professional photographers. Two new images updated every day!
Cons: Page navigation is not that user-friendly.

4. SplitShire- Their logo itself is an evidence of their awesomeness!
★★★★★
[A MUST TRY!]

Looking for single free stock photos? – go to SplitShire.
Don’t have enough time and looking forward to download a bundle for a cheap price?- go to SplitShire.
And with it, I rest my case. Have a look for yourself and i think you’ll definitely agree with me.

best free stock photos
Image quality: 20/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 16/20
Ease of Search: 15/15
Disciplined Categorization: 15/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 5/5
Special Features: 4/5
Total Score: 90/100

Pros: Some of the best free stock photos!
Cons: Relatively limited quantity.

5. Life Of Pix- Random images that makes you happy!
★★★★☆

“Free high-resolution photos, no copyright restrictions. Images for personal commercial use. New photographies added weekly! All images are donated to the public domain. Handmade with love.”- Copied directly from their website and I guess there is nothing else needed to be said about this good people.
best free stock photos
Image quality: 15/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 15/20
Ease of Search: 15/15
Disciplined Categorization: 7/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 5/5
Special Features: 4/5
Total Score: 76/100

Pros: A good amount of quality images.
Cons: You may not find their categories section from home. Go to the categories section, hover on the images there (which looks like single images, but are actually categories) and you’ll find what you are looking for.

6. Startup Stock Photos- The name says it all
★★★☆☆

If you are looking for some of the best free stock photos for startup-related project, this is the place for you. But if you are looking for something else, this site is a strict no-go. All the images here are perfectly oriented for small agencies, startup or creative agency stock photos and nothing else at all.
best free stock photos
Image quality: 25/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 15/20
Ease of Search: 0/15
Disciplined Categorization: 0/15
User-friendly UI: 5/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 5/5
Special Features: 0/5
Total Score: 55/100

Pros: Object oriented.
Cons: No search option available and navigation is not that good too.

7. Picjumbo- If you have landed here, you don’t need to go anywhere else!
★★★★★
[BEST OF THE LOT!]

You will not believe how psyched one of my designer friend was when I suggested him to check out Picjumbo. And his euphoria was not illogical. While browsing through all these websites for best free stock photos, this was the one that set all the bars really, really high. In fact, it scored a perfect 100/100 on all the criteria we assessed these websites on. Must check out their “Test Drive” feature, it’s one-of-a-kind!
best free stock photos
Image quality: 25/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 20/20
Ease of Search: 15/15
Disciplined Categorization: 15/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 5/5
Special Features: 5/5
Total Score: 100/100

Pros: Whatever you are looking for, you will find it here.
Cons: We didn’t find any.

8. IMCreator- Another one that deserves an honourable mention in this small list
★★★★★
[MUST VISIT]

The problem of writing a short review on something extraordinary good is, you always feel the fear that your words might not be doing justice to the service’s actual quality, and you will feel guilty. So, without taking that fear, it will be safe for me to redirect you to IMCreator’s Free section- an amazing collection of some of the best free stock photos.

best free stock photos
Image quality: 20/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 20/20
Ease of Search: 15/15
Disciplined Categorization: 15/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 3/5
Special Features: 5/5
Total Score: 93/100

Pros: Whatever you are looking for, you will find it here. And with it, don’t forget to check out their “BUTTON MAKER” feature.
Cons: Negligible.

9. Superfamous- A small but amazing collection of intense landscape photography
★★★☆☆

Superfamous is more of a personal travel diary and less like a stock photo collection. Yet, the images available in here are so intense and close to nature and pattern, that it would have been an injustice to leave it out of the list.
best free stock photos
Image quality: 25/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 15/20
Ease of Search: 0/15
Disciplined Categorization: 0/15
User-friendly UI: 10/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 3/5
Special Features: 2/5
Total Score: 60/100
Pros: The images available are really good!
Cons: Small collection and not categorized.

10. Focus Fitness – A collection of fitness photos
★★★☆☆

Focus fitness is a site full of fitness category photos with good quality. They have put their photos randomly but included an easy search option. They also have a categorized section so that one can search what they need.
best free stock photos
Image quality: 18/25
Copyright Flexibility/ Royalty-free availability: 15/20
Ease of Search: 7/15
Disciplined Categorization: 5/15
User-friendly UI: 5/10
Hassles of logging in: 5/5
Availability of Trending Items: 0/5
Special Features: 0/5
Total Score: 55/100

Pros: Well categorized and easy search option.
Cons: No trending or featured image section.

11. Pikwizard – A rich library of free photos
★★★★☆

This is a new website with 100,000 free images and they are updating the library regularly. Also, they store a good number of pictures of people which is a great benefit for designing your websites or apps with dummy images. No attribution is required if you add the images to your project. Sounds interesting? Then, insert it on your favorite list.

That’s not all from us. We will be adding some more websites (including Pixabay, Pexels, Designers Pics etc.) in this list very soon. Keep in touch till then and let us know what you think of this list. And in the comment section, don’t forget to suggest us your own favourite source of best free stock photos that you think must enter this list.

By Reza Haque

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