Comprehensive Guide to the Top 10 Cost-Free Picture Archives

If you want to add some spice to your content, it’s essential to be able to find free images online.

You don’t need a subscription to a stock photo site or money on hand; there are plenty of places with high-quality photos you can use for free. All you have to do is search for them!

We’ve gathered ten of our favorite sites where you can find free images—and they’re all free once you sign up (or log in). So, get ready because there’s no limit on how many times you can use these fabulous photos in your projects.

1. Pexels

Pexels is one of the largest free stock photo sites online. The site has over 500,000 high-quality images, and all photos on Pexels are free for commercial use. All photos on Pexels are licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0), which means you can use them in your work without asking permission or giving attribution.

Pexels’ images have various categories, including nature, food, objects, and architecture. You can also browse by keyword or search by image type, such as “food” or “people.

2. Unsplash

Unsplash is a popular free stock photo website where you can download images for free. It has many ideas, including landscapes and cityscapes, people, food and drink, animals, transportation, and more. Some photos are also accompanied by quotes that can be used as captions.

Unsplash was founded in 2011 by Mikael Cho (who also co-founded Crew) to create an online community for photographers to share their work with others.

Today Unsplash has grown into one of the most popular free stock photo sites, with over 15 million monthly users worldwide.

3. Kaboompics

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Kaboompics is a free stock photo site that offers a good selection of images. The search functionality on Kaboompics works pretty well and allows for quick indexing of keywords that are relevant to your searches. Their database contains an extensive list of categories, each with hundreds of photos.

Kaboompics also has a “free commercial” section which provides more than 1 million images for your commercial projects without any restrictions or attribution required.

4. Pixabay

Pixabay is one of the most popular websites for free images. It has a wide range of photos from different photographers and categories, so it’s easy to find an image that could fit your needs.

The site is easy to navigate and searchable by keyword or category. You can also browse by “popular” images, which will show you what other people are looking at on Pixabay at any given time.

5. Snappa

Snappa is one of my favorite sites for free images because it’s easy to navigate, has a wide selection of photos and graphics, and doesn’t require attribution or watermarks.

The site has an extensive library of free stock photos, vectors, mockups, and templates categorized by industry (e.g., technology), scene (e.g., cityscapes), and more.

It can be a little hard to find exactly what you’re looking for as there are so many options; if you have trouble finding what you want in Snappa’s search engine, try clicking on one of the categories listed above to narrow it down some more.

6. Freerange

Freerange is a photo agency that offers free and premium photos.

The site has a wide range of subjects, including nature, animals, food, etc. Photos are high-quality, royalty-free images you can use commercially if you choose.

7. Shutterstock Collection

One of the best places to get free images is Shutterstock. They have a collection of over 70,000 royalty-free images that are available for commercial use, and they don’t watermark their photos.

You can search through the site’s entire collection or narrow it down by category (e.g., animals or nature). You can also download all images in full resolution or view them as thumbnails on their website.

8. Morguefile

Morguefile is a free photo archive founded in 1996, during the early days of the Internet. It aims to provide a free image exchange service for people of all backgrounds to use in their work.

Here, you can find free, high-resolution digital stock photos for business or public use. The images are available in various formats and high quality to meet the needs of various scenarios, such as cartoonists, comic book artists, designers, educators, and all creative arts.

9. Dreamstime Images

Dreamstime is a stock photography website with over 20 million images. It allows you to search for images by keyword, color, and style. Dreamstime also offers thousands of different licenses, from $1 to $50 per image.

If you’re looking for something specific, Dreamstime has many categories, including animals, architecture, people, nature, and more.

10. CC Search

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CC Search is a search engine for Creative Commons photos, which means you can use the images on your website without paying anything. CC Search has an extensive collection of images to choose from, and they are all free. Just type your keyword in the search bar, and you’ll find plenty of relevant results.

You can also choose whether you want to display ads on your site. If you want to keep them off completely, there is an option that allows users who visit your site to download high-resolution copies at no cost (as long as they attribute credit).

Conclusion

And that’s it! I hope these sites help you find the perfect image for your project.

Remember, if you’re looking for images that aren’t copyrighted or stock photos, you should definitely check out our list of websites where you can also download free photos.

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