5 Best Websites to Find Free and High-Quality Images for your Blog Posts

If you are looking for free-to-use and high quality images, I have compiled a my best list of 5 stock photos that you could use.

When I needed some pictures for my blog posts (for SEO purposes or just to illustrate my sayings). I had to search for images free to use, so without copyrighting. So, like you I browse on the internet some list of websites that I could get photos from. 

But I’ve quickly noticed that those lists were not linking to the right websites: The pictures were not of high quality, you could not really choose the format of the downloaded image, you needed a subscription to get them, or often there were just not enough pictures to make your choice.

Which is why I created this article to get free and high quality images for your blog posts:

A quick reminder about the use of images on the web

As you know, you cannot utilize any picture for your blog posts as there is a legal framework that protects their author. I won’t get into the details but to know more, you can read about Creative Common Licenses. 

Just keep in mind that some pictures: 

• cannot be utilized;
• can be utilized but with conditions;
• or can be utilized without any conditions.

Only the last one is interesting for your blog posts.

To get those free images, (license CC0), you must go to free stock photos websites. 

There are many on the Web, but some are better than others. And here is my list:

Each of this website is illustrated with one of the many pictures they offer. I voluntarily include a very different image per website to show you that it can be easy to find an image for your blog, regardless of your topic. There are no affiliation links, those are free to use websites.

The 5 free stock photos I use every day for my blog posts

1. Pexels

Maybe my most-used and favorite free stock photos.

Link to the website: https://www.pexels.com/

The great features:

• High-quality and free images available (of course that’s the point of the article)
• No sign up involved when downloading the images
• Their stock of photos is relatively wide, you can easily have several pages of pictures depending on the topic.
• Efforts in tagging well their pictures, so that it’s easy to search one in particular Plus, their stock is relatively wide.
• You can choose the dimensions of your picture when downloading it. A real added value as many other free stock photos websites don’t offer this feature. As you know the dimensions of your image impacts its file size and if your picture is too heavy, your website can slow down.

If you want to know more about that, I’ve already started a complete article on how to optimize your images not to slow down your website. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter to know when it will be released.

2. Pixabay

This stock photo is quite similar as the previous one, you’ll see that the layout of their website looks alike.

Link to the website: https://pixabay.com/

• High-quality and free images
• You can also choose the dimensions of your pictures when downloading it, as you can see below.

• A wide range as well: when I searched for “Sunset” 54 584 free images were available on Pixabay VS 7 080 free images for Pexels. But then, you won’t go over those thousands of images, and quantity isn’t equal to quality. What you just need to keep in mind is that Pixabay stores a lot of pictures.
• No signing up needed to get the different sizes of the picture.

3. Unsplash

If I don’t find my luck on Pexel or Pixabay, I visit Unsplash.

Link to the website: https://unsplash.com/

• Lots of free and high-quality images that are different than Pexel and Pixabay (often same content on Pexel and Pixabay).
• Wide range as well: 27.3K photos “Sunset” were available.
• Display vertical photo, so it is great if you need portraits pictures rather than landscapes in your blog post (see below).
• There is no sign up to get the pictures.

A little downside is that you cannot choose the dimensions of the picture when downloading it. I had to resize and compress the picture above because the original was 45000×3000 and weighed 1.56MB.

4. Kaboompics

It answers my criteria in terms of features: great high-quality and free images with a custom size download available.

Link to the website: https://kaboompics.com/

• Very great if you’re looking for aesthetics pictures.
• Filter your search with Vertical or Horizontal Photo.
• Download the file with a custom size (see below).
• There is no need to sign up to get your pictures.

Little downside, there are less pictures available than the 3 previous websites.

5. Negative Space

I use this one less than the others. But it can help to have unusual content.

Link to the website: https://negativespace.co/

• High-quality and free images.
• Compared with the other free stock photos, you can find original content for the topic you’re looking for as the other stock photos sometimes use the same stock.
• Not too visited so it has content that other bloggers don’t use.
• No need to sign up to download the picture.

You cannot download per size though.

Having these 5 websites in your bookmarks will be enough to answer your images needs. If you are still not satisfied, you will need to invest in paid stock photos or you can still check on the below websites. They are mentioned in other articles but I don’t really recommend them, you’ll see why.

Free websites mentioned by other listing articles that I don’t recommend:

• Public Domain Pictures
  • Pictures look old, very simple and the interface of the website makes it even older.
• Free Images
  • Although there are more than 380K pictures available, I’ve never got any image there. The quality isn’t that great. The pictures look old. And there is a mix between quality and amateurish pictures.
  • You have to sign it before downloading a picture. I am OK to sign in if it’s worth it. But it is not. Plus, the other free websites that I mentioned you allow downloading without signing up.
• Designer Pics
  • Oldish photos.
  • The range is quite poor, when typing sunset no pictures were available.
  • You can’t download per size
    
• Gratisography
  • Less than a thousand pictures available.

You can still check the last websites to see by yourself. As I said I am not using any of them, even if they are often recommended in other articles about free stock photos websites.

If this article was useful, if you have any inquiry or if there is a website that you are recommending as well, please let a comment 🙂