Any creative knows that photos are an essential part of making your blog or website look as beautiful as possible. Many times we have little budget to buy premium photos, and it can be hard to find beautiful, copyright-free images. Thanks to stock photography sites and the generosity of many photographers, you’ll find a large number of beautiful free photos to use on your site, blog or social media. In this post, I’ve updated my personal list of 9 of the best free stock photo sites I actually use for my WordPress Themes.
One quick correction to something I said in the original version of this post: I wrote that every site here uses a Creative Commons Zero license, and that’s not quite accurate anymore. Pexels and Pixabay, for example, now use their own license terms. In practice they work almost the same as CC0: free for commercial use, no permission or credit needed. Still, it’s worth checking each site’s own license page before you use a photo for something big.
Unsplash
If I had to add just one site to this list, it’s this one. Unsplash is the biggest and best-known free photo library out there, with a huge selection and consistently gorgeous quality. It also plugs directly into tools like Canva and Figma, so you don’t even have to leave what you’re working in to search for a photo. Free for commercial use, no credit required.
Pexels
This is still my favorite site for free stock images. It’s really easy to use, with a huge and constantly growing library you can search by popularity, category, or color. You can even take a look at my own collections if you want to see exactly what I use.
Rawpixel
Rawpixel is one of the first sites I check for images. It’s easy to use, with a good selection of stock photos. It’s not just photos either: you’ll also find free design vectors, PSD mockups and other resources, which is why I keep coming back to it.
Kaboompics
Kaboompics has a large selection of high-quality, royalty-free stock photos. You can filter by category (travel, lifestyle, people…) and by color, which makes finding exactly what you need much faster.
Pixabay
This image bank has more than 1.5 million shared photos and videos, so it’s hard not to find something that works for your project. Beyond photos, you’ll find illustrations and videos too, and you can filter by category and download images in different sizes.
Picjumbo
Picjumbo has a nice variety of categories, from business to abstract and fashion shots. It’s a solid backup for whenever the sites above don’t have quite what you’re looking for.
A few more worth knowing about
Burst (by Shopify)
Shopify runs this one, and it shows: it’s built for businesses selling physical products, with lifestyle and e-commerce shots that are harder to find on the other sites above.
StockSnap
A smaller library than the others on this list, but well curated and in high resolution. This one is genuinely CC0.
Gratisography
The odd one out on this list. If you’re tired of every stock photo looking the same, this is where you’ll find something different.
Quick comparison
| Site | Best for | License |
| Unsplash | Biggest library and visual quality | Unsplash License |
| Pexels | Searching by color and popularity | Pexels License |
| Rawpixel | Vectors, PSDs and mockups too | Own license |
| Kaboompics | Matching your brand color palette | Own license |
| Pixabay | Photos + videos in one place | Pixabay License |
| Picjumbo | Varied categories as a backup | Own license |
| Burst | Product and e-commerce photography | Own license |
| StockSnap | Curated, high-resolution library | CC0 |
| Gratisography | Quirky, different-looking images | Own license |
There are some really beautiful photos to choose from across these sites, in every category you can think of: business, abstract, fashion, and more. Between these nine, you should never be stuck without a good photo for your next blog post, your website, or your social media. Bookmark this one and come back whenever you need fresh images.
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