It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an online article, putting together a report, or developing an innovative app — you need captivating visuals to engage your target audience. While there’s no shortage of websites with stock photos, most suffer from the same problems: their prices are too high, the photos are cheesy, and you need to create a user account and agree to lengthy terms of service just to use the website. In this article, we present the top 5 websites you can use to download free stock photos from talented photographers and graphics designers. We highly recommend you check out and bookmark all 5 of these websites since each contains a different collection of free stock photos.

#1 – Pixabay

Pixabay is arguably the most popular website that allows users to download free stock photos without any hoops to jump through. The site is available in 26 languages, and it’s estimated to offer over 1.8 million high-quality photos, illustrations, vectors, videos, and even music!

To download a free stock photo from Pixabay, all you need to do is enter a keyword in the prominent search bar, choose the best result, and click the “Free Download” button. Thanks to the Pixabay license, all photos are free for commercial use, and no attribution is required.

The only downside is that the best stock photos on the site are usually sponsored results from iStock, a premium stock photography provider owned by Getty Images. To download iStock photos, you need to purchase credits or get a monthly subscription.

#2 – Life Of Pix

Life of Pix is more than a free provider of stock photos. It’s a booming community of photographers from around the world, who are on the site to showcase their best pictures. Each week, Life of Pix makes one photographer the “Photographer of the Week” and highlights the person’s top 10 photos on its social networks and website.

The photographer receives recognition, and Life of Pix users get to download free stock photos with heart and soul. Not too long ago, Life of Pix partnered with Adobe Stock, allowing Adobe to advertise its premium stock photos on its site. The good news is that Adobe Stock photos are clearly distinguishable from original Life of Pix content, so you can easily ignore them if you’re not interested in their content.

#3 – Stockvault

Offering over 130,000 free stock photos, textures, backgrounds, and graphics, Stockvault may not have the biggest collection of stock images, but you would be hard-pressed to stumble upon any low-quality images that you would be embarrassed to use for your project. That’s because all of Stockvault’s content is hand-picked by its staff, who always make sure to include topical images as well as evergreen content.

We really like how Stockvault organizes thematically similar stock photos and graphics into image collections, such as education, medical, flowers, protests, beach holiday, or business concepts. These collections make it incredibly easy to find all the stock photos you need with a few simple clicks.

#4 – Unsplash

Unsplash is the product of over 200,000 photographers from around the world sharing their best images and offering them under the Unsplash license. According to this license, all photos can be downloaded and used for free for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, and there’s no need to attribute the original photographer. However, photos can’t be sold without significant modification or offered on a different stock photography website.

We recommend Unsplash to those who are looking for contemporary photos that don’t look tacky or staged. Just keep in mind that some photos on Unsplash are sponsored and created to advertise a certain product or service in a subtle manner.

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#5 – Pexels

Launched in 2014, Pexels is yet another website where you can download free stock photos of people, places, animals, events, and more. All photos on the site are free to use, and users are not required to attribute the photographer or the site itself. What’s more, you can even modify photos downloaded from Pexels without running into any licensing issues.

When browsing Pexels, make sure to click the Explore button to discover popular collections of free stock photos, trending photography topics, and an interesting photographer leaderboard showing which users have uploaded the most viewed photos.

Which of these websites do you like the most? Do you know any other websites offering free high-quality stock images that you can recommend? Make sure to post them in the comments below!