Photography
has always been an integral part of design. Unfortunately, we’ve grown
accustomed to seeing crappy stock images of people in suits shaking
hands. Not only are a lot of these stock photos tacky, but they cost a
lot of money!
Thankfully, there’s been a growing number of
websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web.
Best of all, they’re free!
In this post, we’ve curated a list of awesome websites for free stock photos.
Quick Note About Licenses
Many of these photographs are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under
creative commons public domain
dedication. This means you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the
work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
However,
some photos may require attribution. We’ve done our best to identify
which license they fall under but we still advise you to do your own
research and determine how these images can be used.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into our top picks for free stock photos.

StockSnap.io
has a large selection of beautiful free stock photos and high
resolution images. The site also has a very handy search feature making
it easy to browse through the thousands of images available. In
addition, the site tracks views and downloads so you can find the most
popular photos available.
StockSnap adds hundreds of images on a
daily basis and all photos are released under creative commons public
domain – no attribution required.

Unsplash
offers a large collection of free high-resolution photos and has become
one the best sources for stock images. The Unsplash team combs through
new submissions and features 10 high quality photos every 10 days. All
photos on Unsplash are released under the creative commons public domain
license.
ImageFree
was launched in 2010. Our aim is to present you with an alternative to
the expensive stock photography. We believe in community support so we
created a website where creative people could exchange their photos for
inspiration or work.

Burst
is a resource from Shopify that provides free stock photos for
entrepreneurs. All photos are licensed under Creative Commons CC0 and
can be used as you see fit.
Burst was launched to help
entrepreneurs make better products, websites, and marketing campaigns.
Most of the pictures are original photos that were taken in-house and
are themed around trending business niches — everything from DIY beard
oil to Aliexpress LED sneakers. You can also find more general
photographs as well.

Gratisography
offers free high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and
commercial projects. New awesome pictures are added weekly and are free
of copyright restrictions. All pictures are captured by Ryan McGuire of
Bells Design.

Negative
Space provides 20 new photos every week released under Creative Commons
CC0. The photos are searchable and can be sorted by category, copy
space and color.

Freestock offers a wide range of high quality photos all released under Creative Commons CC0.

Picography
contains beautiful free stock photos submitted by Dave Meier and
various other photographers. All photos are released under Creative
Commons CC0.

MMT
Stock is a collection of high resolution photos provided by Jeffrey
Betts. Jeffrey likes to share photos of computers and workspaces as well
as flowers and nature. All photos are released under Creative Commons
CC0.

SkitterPhoto
offers a wide variety of free stock photos and are released under
Creative Commons CC0. All pictures are authentic and created by
Skitterphoto’s owners.

Life
of Pix is a resource created by the LEEROY creative agency offering
free high-resolution photos with no copyright restrictions. New pictures
are added weekly.

This
mention comes with a bit of sad news. The owner of the site Nic passed
away but his photos remain in his memory. All photos that have been
posted were released under the creative commons license public domain
dedication.

Every
month a photo pack of 10 photos within a certain category will be
delivered to your inbox. The goal of Death to Stock Photos is to bring
you a variety of options in which to use for your mockups, blog posts or
social media.
Death to stock photo uses their own license which you can read on their webpage.

FoodiesFeed
offers thousands of beautiful realistic free food pictures in high
resolution. It’s the perfect stock photo site for food bloggers.

Picjumbo
is a collection of totally free photos for your commercial &
personal works. New photos are added daily from a wide variety of
categories including abstract, fashion, nature, technology and much
more.

A
curated collection of free resources, all for commercial use. Since the
photos are curated from various sources, some photos may require
attribution.
Vintage photos from the public archives free of known copyright restrictions.

Free mobile photos for your personal or commercial projects.

Pixabay
offers a large collection of free stock photos, vectors and art
illustrations. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0.

7
new photos released every Thursday under the Creative Commons CC0
license. Jay Mantri posts some really nice photos with a variety of
different themes.

Kaboom
Pics offers a wide variety of high quality free stock photos including
abstract, city/architecture, fashion, food, landscapes and more. Photos
can be used for commercial purposes but cannot be sold or redistributed.

Epicantus
contains free original photography by Daria. You can use these hi-res
photos for your landing pages, blog posts & designs. All photos are
released under creative commons CC0.