Free Stock Websites [For Images, Icons, and Mockups]

Whether you are a professional designer or not, finding beautiful stock images can be a daunting task - especially if you are looking for free images.

In this guide, our team has created a shortlist of the best free stock image websites to help you spend less time searching and more time designing.

Bonus: We've included the top sites for royalty-free icons and mockups because they're a must have for any serious web designer.

The best website for free stock images
There are hundreds of websites that offer free stock images.

However, only 4 are now suitable for bookmarking

Each of the following sites offers:

Millions of free images
High quality image resolution
Easy-to-use search functionality
Similar or related image suggestions
Ability to like or save images later
Creative Commons Zero License *
* Note about free photo license:

The free stock websites presented below provide a license agreement that is equivalent to or similar to the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, meaning you may use their content for commercial and non-commercial purposes without any payments. However, there are always certain restrictions that are based on common sense. For example, you can't resell images or download all images to create a competing website.

Unsplash

Unsplash is the source for finding beautiful images for your design. 1 of more than 160,000 photographers. 1. With over a million resources, we suggest starting your image searches here.

To help you find your images faster, Unsplash offers a number of features, including: Image filters for orientation, color and size, as well as helpful suggestions when searching.

Due to the popularity of Unsplash, searching for unique images can be a bit more complicated than some other stock image websites, and image relevance is not as good when searching for specific images using several keywords.

Professionals:

APIs for integrating unsplash libraries into third-party applications and websites;
Easy-to-use search function (collection, color, orientation, suggestion, etc.);
Textures and patterns available;
Very subtle advertising.
Cons:

Very popular source, meaning images are used more;
Finding very specific images can be challenging.

Pexels

In our opinion, pixels are very close to seconds in the case of fax stock images.

You can see more "stock" images in pixels, making the site with many features not found in Unplus: 26 available languages, free videos, pre-built apps and plugins as well as some great search functionality to look for specific images when it comes down to it. Comes.

Another advantage of using pixels and unsplashing together is that the same search does different types of images, so you don't always seem to get the same content.

Professionals:

APIs for attaching pixel libraries to third-party applications and websites;
Native applications and plugins (such as: Chrome extensions, Photoshop plugins, etc.);
26 available languages;
Thousands of free stock videos;
Search for specific images;
Very subtle advertising.
Cons:

Some images have a more “stock” feeling;
Very popular source, i.e. images are used more.
Pro Tip: Clicking on a photographer and exploring their collection matches the color stigma of the image and the great way to find photos from the same photoshoot. This can be helpful when mocking designs for your clients.

Pixabay

When you look at the features offered in Pixar, you think it will be at the top of our list for free stock images. However, the quality and relevance of image search is not as good as that of Unsplas and Pixels

Despite a few setbacks, Pixby is still a powerful source of content, especially if you connect to their database using one of the available third-party applications and plugins. Interestingly, the site also provides vectors, images, videos and music.

Professionals:

API for integrating Pixabay Library into third party applications and websites;
Large collection of applications and plugins (Adobe Spark, Google Docs, Photoshop, etc.);
Available images, vectors, videos and music;
26 available languages.
Cons:

There are many "stock" looking images;
The relevance of the image may vary depending on the search;
Advertising can be misleading.

StockSnap

Stocksnap gives you millions of free stock images to choose from. With good quality images and decent search functionality, StockShop is a good site to check if the other resources described above are not working.