45 Best Royalty-Free Stock Photo and Image Websites

Finding the right image for your designs, blog posts, social media or presentations is not an easy task and it can be very frustrating. Sometimes you want to get a certain type of image, but you are not able to find it, and you eventually spend more time in finding that image than finishing your project. Another problem is that even if you find a suited image its price is very high, and it disturbs your budget.

Thus in order to help you out, today we have a list of 45 Best Royalty-Free Stock Photo and Image Websites. These websites will not only save your precious time but will also keep the budget under control. These sites boast both: stock photos and graphic resources. Whenever you want a photo, simply check out the websites in this list and pick the photo that suits your project the best.

These websites have a plethora of beautiful, inspiring, professional quality photos which you can use to enhance the look of your project. Check the websites out, they will definitely prove to be useful for you!

Free Stock Photos

Below are given the some websites where you can find absolutely free images. The term “Creative Commons” is used for these images.

Flickr

On Flickr you can find photos from both, professionals and amateurs photographers. Mostly the images are copyrighted, but if you wish to find free images, simply head over to the creative commons section. This section has all the images that you can use for free. Don’t forget to check out amazing public domain photos from the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library.

flickr.jpg

Historical Stock Photos

As the name suggests, on this website you can find a great collection of historical photos that are now available to the public domain. You can use these photos for free.

Historical Stock Photos

Google Images

You can find millions of photos on Google images, but most of them are copyrighted. Just use the photos carefully and wisely.

Google-images

Creative Commons Search

Here you can not only find amazing images but also music, videos, writing and code too.

Creative Commons Search

Best Stock Photo Websites

The photos on these websites are not absolutely free, but they are only royalty free, which means that you can buy a professional photo once and use it many times without paying a royalty every single time. When you decide to get an image from any of these websites, be sure to read the terms of service to know the rules and regulations.

Depositphotos stock photos

Price of photos start at $0.50 only, but their monthly subscription makes it even cheaper.

Depositphotos

Stock.Xchng

This website has more than 400,000 photos. Here people can share their photos. You can use most of the photos for free, but you should always contact the creator to make sure he/she has no problem with it. Stock.Xchng is now part of the popular Getty Images.

stock.xchng

Fotolia

Fotolia boasts a collection of more than 15 million photos, vector art and videos. Photos start from $0.75, but if you plan to use a lot of images then you should get a monthly subscription which starts at $75 only for 5000 photos.

Royalty Free Stock Photos

iStockphoto

iStockphoto has millions of amazing, high quality photos. Every photo has a different credit value. You have the choice of getting “credit packs” or a subscription.

istockphoto

BigStock

BigStock is another website with really cool low cost stock photos. They have millions of images with a starting price of $0.99.

Bigstock

Alamy

According to this website they are the biggest stock image website with most photos. It boasts a humongous collection of 27 million images. You can buy individual images so you won’t waste any unused credits. This website also has a really awesome iPad app.

alamy

ShutterStock

ShutterStock is the most popular and biggest subscription-based stock photo service. This website is updated with thousands of high quality photos, illustrations, and vectors daily. This is a great place to find extremely high quality and high resolution photos for advertisements and print. Although you get 1 high resolution photo starting at $19, which is a bit expensive, but keeping in mind their quality they are definitely worth it.

shutterstock

Corbis Images

On this website you can buy photo CDs which you can use unlimited times royalty free commercially.

corbis

Getty Images

Getty Images is a household name in this industry. They are one of the best provider of digital media in the world. They have royalty-free stock photography, editorial images, video, music and multimedia.

gettyimages

Specialized Stock Photos

Arabian Eye

As the name suggests, this website is an amazing photos resource for photos related to the Middle East. It is run by Corbis Images.

corbis

VectorStock

This website is dedicated to royalty-free vector backgrounds, textures, icons and photos. They have some really awesome, unique vector art.

vectorstock

Vecteezy

This website is also a vector-only resource. They have some really fabulous graphics.

vecteezy

Sweet And Talented

Want to find good quality photos of movie stars, musicians and celebrities for your website? Is yes, then this website is an amazing place to search as it boasts some amazing photos.

sweetandtalented

PhotoEverywhere

PhotoEverywhere has more than 3500 free travel stock photos. It has photos of popular tourist destinations such as San Francisco, Caribbean beaches and Scottish Highlands etc. The best part is that they also provide panoramic photos.

photoeverywhere

bigfoto.com

This website offers absolutely free photos from around the planet. All you are required to do is linking back to the creator or their website.

bigfoto

Trip Album

This website is in French, but it is quite simple to navigate. It has amazing photos from beautiful places in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

tripalbum

More Stock Photos For Great Prices

Dreamstime

Dreamstime is one of the most famous source of images for advertising agencies, magazines and media companies. They have great images and that too, for a price starting at 20 cents.

dreamstime

everystockphoto.com

It is a photo search engine and blog that has millions of images from many sources.

everystockphoto

freerange

On Freerange you are required to register, but membership is free. This website boasts fabulous photos. The awesome thing about this website is that photographers are given a share of freerange’s ad revenue for giving their photos free of cost. So in short, you get free photos, and the photographers get some bucks. Great, right?!

freerange

Thinkstock

Thinkstock offers extremely high-quality photos in packs (price starts from $99) or in subscription programs for $199 per month.

thinkvalue

Photl.com

The amazing thing about Photl.com is that their images are only present in photl.com base. You have the ability of downloading up to 40mb worth of photos daily.

photl

123RF

It is a great photo search engine and most of the low-resolution photos are free. Most blogs and websites would be satisfied with these photos.

123rf

morgueFile

morgueFile boasts creative and unique photos. You can use the photos for free, unless and until you are not using them commercially or unethically, for example, re-selling them or claiming that they are yours.

morguefile

Epictura

Epictura boasts a large collection of millions stock photos which are ideal for corporate communication. They specialize in edited and compiled stock images from Corbis, Pixtal, Fancy, Denkou & PhotoAlto and other thousands of agencies and photographers.

epictura

RGBStock

This one is not a very big website, but they have some good, absolutely free photos which you can use wherever you want.

rgbstock

Pixmac

Millions of stock photos are present on this website. It has a credit purchase model in which price of a photo starts from $0.92.

pixmac

Jupiterimages

This website has more than 2.5 million royalty-free stock images and illustrations from places like Getty Images and other high-quality places.

jupiterimages

StockLib

StockLib has more than 11 million royalty-free stock photos with price starting from $1 only.

stocklib

ImageBase

All the photos in this website are free to use and come under Creative Commons license. The photos are in two high resolutions: 1600 x 1200 or 3072×2048.

imagebase

Free Pixels

The photos on this website are really high quality. They are free for personal and commercial use.

freepixel

Openphoto

This website has absolutely free images which are sorted by categories. You can also search them by their awesome search feature. You are required to register only when you wish to upload photos.

openphoto

Stockvault.Net

Stockvault.Net does not require any registration. You can simply download free stock photos from their large collection of high quality stock images. They have both, free and for sale photos in different sections.

stockvault

PicFindr

This website has a lot of great images which you can use for free.

picfinder

UnProfound

The photos on this website are sorted by colors. You can also search them by color.

unprofound

Pixel Perfect Digital

The collection of photos on this website is not very big, but the images are of good quality. A short description is also given with each photo. You have the ability of either browsing through categories or using their very basic search option.

pixelperfectdigital

Freestockphotos.biz

This website is a great place to find amazing free stock photos and clip art illustrations.

Freestockphotos

Free Media Goo

This website not only has free stock images, but also boasts free textures, audio and flash movies. The collection is not very large and some of the photos can be quite amateurish.

FreeMediagoo

Free Web Photos

You can find really high quality royalty free stock images on this website. You should definitely check it out!

Freewebphoto

Free Stock Photos Bank

You are not required to register on this website. Here you can find amazing high resolution photos which you can use for free.

freephotosbank

5000 Free Stock Photos

As the name suggests, this website has a collection of 5000 free stock images and 8000 cliparts which you can use for free. No registration is required.

public-domain-photos.jpg

Cepolina Photos

Cepolina Photos has 1400 categories with more than 16000 free images in them. Six photo resolutions are present (up to 1600X1200 pixels). You can use the images for private or commercial use.

cepolina photo.jpg

deviantART’s Stock Images section

deviantART is a household name in this industry. The photos on this website are amazingly beautiful. They have extremely high resolution photos which you can download without registering.

deviantart.jpg


About the author

With a passion for Knowledge, Smashinghub has been created to explore things like Free Resources For Designers, Photographers, Web Developers and Inspiration.

Twitter Visit author website

Subscribe to Smashing Hub


2 Comments

  1. WrightTasha says:

    I’ll suggest you to visit this site http://www.kozzi.com/. This is the best inexpensive stock photo site I’ve used. Try it too.. Lots of stunning stuffs here.