Top 26 sites to find royalty-free images

Updated on October 3, 2022

Are you having trouble finding powerful images to illustrate your point? Do you design your website, your brochures or flyers and are looking for visuals without breaking the bank? There are many sites ofRoyalty-free images where you can find free or low cost photos, vectors, icons or patterns.

Why use royalty-free images?

Imagine a book without a cover. It's exactly the same for a website or promotional material.

Putting royalty-free images on your website has several advantages:

• Illustrate your words depending on what you want to convey on your website
• Making it readable of your site and your articles simpler with separations between each text zone (read our article: 12 essential tools for learning to write)
• Better illustrate your products and services
• Setting the tone to your page according to what you want to convey (technologies, humor, science...)
• Attracting attention of your readers on a specific point
• Harmonize your website and communication
• Save money thanks to the free images or the subscription formulas
• Have a site in good standing with copyright laws

A picture is worth a thousand words

Did you know that? Studies show that approximately 65% of people assimilate and learn much better when a information is visual rather than written. This means that in using images you will reach a larger portion of visitors and you will have the ability to convey your messages through different channels to reach a larger portion of your readers.

Thus, focusing on visual content will have a much better chance of attracting the attention of your users than if you had only text.

Here's the proof in the pudding: this visual to present a FAQ is much more explicit than a title "FAQ":

The idea is to use images, photos, diagrams, vectors, etc., preferably colorful and relevant, to accompany your text content. Once on your website, people will tend to retain 80% of what they see versus only 20% of what they readIt is therefore essential to carry out an effective marketing campaign and to use visuals

The human brain has the ability to process images in only 13 milliseconds. Therefore, it will allow you to express your ideas using a (quasi) universal language. Statistics show that images are the strongest means of communication because they have the ability to break down language barriers, hence the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words".

Using images rather than text will allow you to reach a much larger audience that does not necessarily speak the language(s) in which your website is translated.

The human eye perceives emotions through a visual.

So how do you find royalty-free images to illustrate your point?

What images can I use on my website?

It is imperative that your images meet certain criteria and that you have the right to use them, otherwise it is a flight image !

1. 1. You must have the right to use your images on commercial media
   2. In some cases, copyright / author attribution is mandatory
   3. You can use your own images
   4. If your images contain third party people whose identities are recognizable, you must have an image distribution agreement in place to comply with RGPD legislation

Please note! The visuals of the Google image tab cannot be used on your sites and communication supports if you do not select the option Filters > License > Free to share and use

So we have put together a selection of 26 websites allowing you to find royalty-free images of all kinds to feed your content legally.

• Royalty free photos
• Royalty free illustrations
• Royalty-free vectors
• Royalty-free funds / Royalty-free background
• Royalty-free mockups
• Royalty free visuals
• Free images
• Image libraries

The 20+ best sites to find royalty-free images easily

Where to find the best free photos, vectors and royalty free images?

The best sites to find free royalty-free images :

1. Freepik

Freepik offers you a large choice of photos (free or premium version), as well as vectors, PSD and icons to feed your website.

You can easily search for what you want by entering a description in the search bar.

Freepik also has premium resources that are only accessible to its members who have subscribed.

The pluses: 

• a bank of royalty-free photos very complete, with many formats and a wide variety of styles 
• a premium subscription affordable
• the possibility to download the images directly to various sizes and weights so that you don't have to reduce them manually or risk slowing down your website
• the "collections" option that allows you to save your images in shareable folders to come back to them later and work in teams

2. Unsplash

Unsplash is a large bank of royalty-free images. They are mostly photos, but also 3D renderings.

With Unsplash for WordPress, it becomes easy to search for your visuals in the largest library of freely usable images on the Internet. From the WordPress editor, you can access millions of free, high-definition photos with no strings attached.

We like:

• the style Unsplash with often filters or images a little off-beat, which allow to create a uniform style easily
• the search by category which offers images by theme

3. Wallpaper Gallery

Wallpaper gallery will give you access to a collection of beautiful royalty-free images from around the world that have been featured on the Bing homepage. Not only will you see a new image on your desktop every day, but you can also browse the images and learn where they came from.

Benefits:

• The updates daily
• The images are purified 

4. The Pattern Library

Find all the photo templates you want with The Pattern Library and its photo gallery powered by professional designers. You'll also find a lot of tips on photo design!

5. Pexels

The most beautiful royalty-free images and videos shared for free by talented creators.

Find the best free stock images on the description. Download all the photos and use them even for commercial projects.

The little extras:

• The site offers the trends of the moment. Perfect to stay up to date!

6. Stockvault

Stockvault gathers hundreds of photography and design articles if you are in need of inspiration! Find a whole gallery of free photos classified in different categories, vectors like with Freepik or PSD. A premium version is also available if you want to have access to an even more diversified content.

7. Stocksnap

Find thousands of photos in a gallery full of content!

Like many websites offering free and legal photo content, it is a community of photographers who share photos for everyone to use.

Whether you need free images for

• Improve your corporate website
• Create a printed brochure
• Feed digital ads
• Animate a magazine

Stocksnap has the content you need!

8. Negative Space

Negative Space gathers a multitude of photo galleries taken by professional photographers. You will be spoilt for choice!

9. Life of Pix

On Life of Pix you will find a large selection of high resolution photos and videos. The choice of content on this site will allow you to find the ideal content for your website or online articles!

10. Cupcake

On Cupcake, discover an entire gallery of free photos and images available at any time. Uploading your content has never been easier!

The images are nature oriented. Most of them are taken in Sweden, that brings them all the light and the atmosphere so proper has this country out of time! A real visual journey!

11. Foodies Feed

On Foodies Feed, you will find a large choice of photos of food and decoration. There's plenty to whet your appetite!

On this food and cooking oriented platform you will find more than 2000 free photos that will delight your readers! All the content is well sorted and structured, the navigation is intuitive and the quality of the images is really excellent.

12. Kisspng

Don't bother searching for png's on Google and use Kisspng to feed your website with as many PNG's as possible !
Easy to use thanks to its search engine, all you have to do is choose your hijacked image from a ready-made selection.

13. Pxhere

Pxhere offers a large choice of images as colorful as the others! What to make you travel through many landscapes and settings as wonderful as each other!

You can find a wide range of royalty-free images by using keywords, trends or popular searches.

14. Pxfuel

On Pxfuel find all the royalty-free photos to download for free and without limit! If you have a preference for very realistic photos and vectors, and all this without ruining you, this site is made for you!

15. Needpix

You want royalty-free images to feed your website and your blog articles? Needpix will meet your expectations whether in terms of photos or videos of all kinds!

All the images of the portal can be freely used by anyone, for any purpose, commercial or not. The free photos and images are of excellent quality.

16. Cutestockfootage

On Cutestockfootage you will find quality photos and videos at your disposal. In addition, this site offers many Powerpoint templates, fonts, videos, mock-ups and more!

On this platform you will find a lot of tools for your video/sound projects, just explore the site and download as much as you want.

17. Pixabay

Pixabay is a site offering many high quality photos, illustrations, vectors or even videos and royalty-free images that will delight the most fastidious of us!

 19. Burst

Burst is an online platform gathering several thousands of archived photos.

Their philosophy is to encourage the use of their images which are of course completely free of rights. You can use the images for just about anything:

• Your website
• Your blog
• Your online store
• Your Instagram ads
• ...

The library is powered by a community of photographers around the world. The collection of images is extensive, you can find everything you need. The "quid pro quo", if you can call it that, is to credit the author of the photo.

Burst also offers a series of ideas and inspiration for your commercial visuals. 

20. KaboomPics

Like Burst, KaboomPics offers several million photos and images. However, the images are lifestyle and fashion oriented. There is something for everyone, but the colors are generally soft, warm and pastel. The content offered by KaboomPics is free and free of charge. Searches can be done either by keywords or by colors. This platform is perfect for bringing life and illustration to your blogs and essays. 

 All you have to do is help yourself!

21. Reshot

Need illustrations or icons for free? The data bank Reshot offers you more than 40 000 icons and 1500 illustrations. All these data are ready to use and completely free of rights.

Of course, with such a big library, there is something for everyone. Whether it's for a real estate agency, for an e-commerce site or for the social networks of a university, you will find what you're looking for on Reshot! 

22. Gratisography

At first glance Gratisography is an image site like others (and we know what we are talking about). Its functioning is similar to the others. They propose a quantity of free images and photos of high quality and always free of rights. 

But what makes Gratisography stand out is its originality: this free image site references images that stand out for their originality to create graphic identities that are out of the ordinary. This entirely royalty-free platform is made for you if you are looking for original royalty-free images!

23. Freerange

Freerange is a platform with over 250,000 free images and photos. Once you become part of the Freerange community, you have full access to their entire library of royalty-free images. The source and provenance of the content is always verified. This allows you to use the content for what you want and therefore for commercial purposes!

What we like:

• The search method is by keyword, by novelty or by trend.
• The reliability images

The best paying sites for professional royalty-free photos

1. Shutterstock

Upload unlimited photos, vectors, videos, or even music via Shutterstock! You can also find an editorial gallery and a design creation space via predefined templates unless you want to start from scratch!

2. Adobe stock

Adobe stock is one of the software present on Adobe Creative Cloud and allows you to use free photos, videos, vectors, audios for free in unlimited, without forgetting many templates of creation and an editorial space at your disposal as well as 3D images if you wish a quite other perspective to your Web site!

3. Gettyimages

Do you want creative royalty-free images? News photos or videos of any kind, music and something to feed your blog? Then Gettyimages' is for you and its incredible content will not disappoint you!

Our tips and tricks for finding royalty-free images and the photos you need have no secrets for you! Don't hesitate to mention your favorite sites!

Our favorites at Flowr :

• Freepik - a huge database with both photos, designs, vectors and templates for flyers and brochures. A darling for which we have not hesitated to take out a premium subscription for years.
• Unsplash - Beautiful scenic and natural photos, a must for story telling and more realistic images.
• Shutterstock - Although it's a paid site, Shutterstock offers an incredibly rich library of beautiful videos. Our favorite resource when we can't find what we want on free sites!

We would like to add that even if the royalty-free image platforms do not always ask for it, crediting the authors who make their work available to you is always a good idea!

Think your image library meets our criteria? Contact us at our address hello@flowragency.com !

Now you know how to find quality royalty-free images without breaking the bank! Need help to create your brochures, flyers or websites? Don't hesitate to send us an email to our address hello@flowragency.com !

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