The 31 Best Sites for Royalty-Free Photos

When you’re designing a website for your business, you’re probably on a budget. And beyond that, your budget is probably pretty tight.

That’s why it’s important to make every dollar count — especially when you can save a dollar instead of spending it.

That’s what these 31 sites are all designed to do. These are the best sites on the Internet that offer high-quality stock photos that you can use to make an appealing, engaging website for your business.

1. Pixabay

Pixabay is one of the largest repositories of free images online. They’re all licensed under creative commons, so you can do whatever you want with all of them.

2. Death to the Stock Photo

Death to stock photo sends you a batch of photos for free every month. They have a paid option you can use as well, if you want access to all of their photos.

3. Blogphoto

Blogphoto sends photos straight to your inbox as well, and it includes templates, planners, and other resources that can help with your blog.

4. Flickr

Flickr is one of the most well-known photo repositories in the world, and it has tons of photos under different licenses. Just filter by creative commons and you’ll get a full list of images you can use however you’d like.

5. Refe

Refe has a full listing of free images that you can pull straight from their site. Its photos are a nice mix of vintage, historical, and modern options.

6. Unsplash

Unsplash adds 10 new high-res stock photos to its site every 10 days. They’re all creative commons, so you can do whatever you’d like!

7. Fotolia

Fotolia has tons of photos, and they categorize them according to what’s shown. It’s easy to navigate and even easier to use!

8. Picjumbo

Picjumbo adds photos to its site one at a time. They’re always high-res, and they always look great.

9. Jay Mantri

Jay Mantri adds new photos to his site every once in a while. They’re all creative commons as well, and each one is high-res.

10. Superfamous

Superfamous doesn’t have any extra text or information — it’s just good, easy-access photos.

11. Photodune

Photodune offers royalty-free photos starting at $1. You pay for them, but the quality makes each purchase a worthwhile investment.

12. Little Visuals

Little Visuals have a lot of free photos on their site, and you can also sign up to receive their email newsletters.

13. Free Photos Bank

Free Photos Bank has an old-school, easy-to-navigate site that includes tons of free photos.

14. Gratisography

Gratisography offers you free, high-res photos that you can use for any purpose. They’re a little offbeat too, which means most of them don’t even look like stock photos.

15. Compfight

Compfight’s site is simple and lets you search photos right away. It’s convenient, high-quality, and (best of all) easy-to-use.

16. MorgueFile

MorgueFile has a bunch of high-quality photos along with a number of other features. It’s a great all-in-one site for photos, and it has a sign-up option for anyone who wants to stay up-to-date on MorgueFile’s updates.

17. SplitShire

SplitShire stores lots of different photos that you can use for tons of purposes. They also have a premium option, if you’d like even better photos.

18. Photo Pin

Photo Pin lets you search a giant repository of creative commons photos so you can use them on your site. It’s quick, simple, and intuitive — perfect for a blogger on the go.

19. Public Domain Archive

Public Domain Archive has tons of eye-catching photos that include photos that have become public domain.

20. IM Free

IM Free is a photo archive that has images specifically for commercial use. They also have templates and individual categories so you can quickly find what you want.

21. FreeImages

Free Images is another site that offers lots of free images with a premium option. All of the photos are great, and their paid options are even better.

22. New Old Stock

New Old Stock contains vintage images from public archives that are all available for free. They’re mostly historical, and you can use them however you’d like.

23. Function Free Photos

Function Free Photos is a blog-style photo repository that has a number of free, high-quality images. Check back for regular updates!

24. Foter

Foter is another repository with lots of categories and options. They have photos for any blog need you could have with almost 250 million photos.

25. Free Media Goo

Free Media Goo is a royalty-free option that has images marketed as “background images.” Still, they’re great stock photos, and they’re high-res enough to use on any page.

26. Picography

Picography is a site by Hidden Depth that offers lots of high-res photos in a single, scrollable column. That makes it easy to see what they have, but it’s difficult to find anything specific.

27. Free Photos by Paul Jarvis

Paul Jarvis supplies a quick zip file of his 20 best photos for free. You can also sign up to get a newsletter from him to keep up with him.

28. Pexels

Pexels is one of the most well-known suppliers of free stock photos. They cover a wide range of topics, although they often show nature landscapes and people.

29. Picsearch

Picsearch has a lot of different photos, and most of them feature celebrities. Still, they have more than 3 billion photos, which means you can probably find what you want with one search.

30. Creative Commons Search

Creative Commons Search does exactly what it says on the box — you search creative commons resources. And every photo you find, you can use however you want.

31. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is the photo-oriented version of Wikipedia. Anything added to Wikipedia’s servers is creative commons, and they’re all totally free.

Ready to improve your website? Get the free, high-quality photos you need to make an awesome website without spending a dime!

Use these stock photos on your site

All of these stock photo sites give you an incredible variety of high-resolution photos to use, and you only have to pay for them if you want. At worst, you’ll find photos with a one-time fee. At best, you’ll find the perfect photos for your site at no additional cost.

Have you found the stock photos that you like? Now get the website that’ll make them pop off the page! Check out our rankings of web design companies to find an agency that’s right for you.