It’s not always easy to find nice quality, appealing photos that are free to use, but it’s still sometimes necessary. If you’re struggling to find a website that provides you with royalty-free photos (that are actually free), check out this list for some of the best options.
1. Creative Commons
Of course, Creative Commons is probably the most well-known website designed for people to discover and access free photos. CC is a nonprofit that helps its users search for photos using websites such as Google Images, Wikimedia Commons and Flickr through their own licenses. It’s not the best at finding photos taken by individual photographers, but it’s a good way to conduct a general search if you need it.
2. Pexels
Pexels is great if you want to find more artsy pictures than what CC may turn up. Pexels comprises hundreds of thousands of free, high quality stock photos that are licensed by Pexels. The photos are all completely free and taken from Pexels’ own community of photographers, as well as other sources such as Pixabay and Little Visuals.
3. Unsplash
Unsplash is another website with beautiful photos that are provided by a large community of photographers. It’s easy to search or browse their website, and you can even follow your favorite photographers when you make a (free!) account. As a bonus, Unsplash also offers an iOS app in addition to their main site.
4. Burst
Burst is a stock photo platform that provides thousands of royalty-free photos. If you don’t know quite what you’re looking for, browse their front page where they break their photos down in categories. You can use these pictures for pretty much any marketing endeavor, and they even encourage their users to edit and modify the photos to fit their personal needs.
5. Canva
Canva has an abundance of nice photos that are free to use, and they even let you use their in-website tools to design your own graphics based on those photos. This is a great option for anyone who needs to make infographics, posters, and more, but doesn’t have the resources to do so.
These websites will definitely give you some great choices and expand the range of photos you can possibly use for your articles, projects and even your own websites. Just don’t forget to provide credit to the original photographers, even when it’s not necessarily required that you do and happy searching!