The Best Free Stock Photo Sites for Web Designers

We’ve all heard of Unsplash, Pexels, and so on. Their catalogs are extensive and they’re popular for good reason. That’s also the problem though—their images quickly become overused.

Let’s look at a handful of the best free stock photo sites that are quietly dominating their own niche. These are great resources for adding the right polish to any well-thought-out website design.

StockVault is a hidden gem when it comes to free textures. Few other stock photo sites have so many useful textures for wallpapers and website backgrounds.

Burst by Shopify offers high-resolution images that are especially useful for entrepreneurs, focusing heavily on office scenes, business people, and other technology related content. The images are free to use under their own custom license.

MorgueFile has an impressively thriving community with many long-term veterans consistently uploading images for years. You do need an account to download content but it’s free to create and the CC0 license makes it worth it.

Gratisography shares quirky, creative, and uniquely original photos. If you’re searching for images that stand out from the norm, look no further.

Startup Stock Photos is laser-focused on sharing free business photos and they have some of the best we’ve found. If you need a good shot of an office or someone working on a laptop, they have it.

Foodie Factor is a lesser known free stock site with magazine-quality food images. The best part is their content hasn’t been used to death and new images are uploaded weekly.

Free Nature Stock is what it says it is and there’s lots of outdoorsy images, videos, and even free vectors. The CC0 license makes these downloads perfect for using as hero backgrounds, logo mockups, and featured blog images.

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