Top 10 Stock Photo Websites

Whether you are a student, a web agency or a graphic designer, you’ll likely need to source high-quality images for your project or business. We’ve compiled a list of the best stock websites that you are sure to find useful. For your convenience, we’ve also included 5 free and 5 paid stock photo websites. Before we start however, let’s quickly go through some commonly-used terms when it comes to stock photography.

Royalty-free images are not necessarily free to purchase. Most of the time, you are still required to pay a flat one-time cost, but subsequently you will not be required to pay for the photo again. After buying a royalty-free photo, you can use the photo over and over again, from commercial purposes to social media, Youtube videos, billboards, adverts and more. You are also not required to give any attribution.

One thing to note about royalty-free is that you are acquiring the right to use the photo in a certain way, not the property of the photo itself. The photographer who captured the photo is still the owner of the photo and holds the copyright. Stock agencies (such as Shutterstock, iStock and Adobe Stock) that sell royalty-free images are actually selling the licenses that give buyers the right to use the photos, but they don’t transfer the copyright of the images.

Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license means that the owner is giving up all copyright to their photos and that these photos are now completely free to download and use without attribution.

Now that you have a better idea of what these terms mean, let’s jump right into our top 10 free and paid stock photo sites.

StockSnap.io offers thousands of high-quality stock photos from categories such as business to nature and people. The best part? All of their photos are free to download without attribution. StockSnap.io also allows you to check a photo’s views, likes and downloads so that you can choose an image that makes you stand out.

It’s hard to come up with a stock photo compilation without mentioning Pexels. Not only does Pexels supply hundreds of thousands of free stock photos for your needs, but they also tag each image to make it convenient for your searching. Their search engine has built-in features such as auto-fill suggestions, recent searches and suggestions of related search terms, making it easy to find what you need.

Unsplash is another top favourite. With over 3 million high resolution royalty-free stock photos to choose from, it’s no wonder they are well-loved among the web community. All their stock photos are completely free to download and use without attribution. The site is also constantly updating its database to bring you fresh photos, adding 10 photographs every 10 days.

Unlike other traditional stock photo sites, Gratisography prides itself for its unique collection of quirky and creative stock photos. While they may not have a wide range of photos, they make up for it with quality over quantity. If you are looking for something a little different, their unique photos truly allow you to stand out.

Pixabay has a collection of over 2.6 million professional stock photos, illustrations, vectors, videos, music and sound effects. All their images are thoroughly reviewed by a designated staff member for quality and legality checks. On top of that, all their photos are under the Creative Commons Zero license and are completely free to download and use.

Envato Elements sell their digital assets through an unlimited subscription plan. With a monthly subscription, you’ll have access to an unlimited number of image, video, music and graphic downloads. This is in contrast to most of the other subscription stock photo sites out there which usually limit your number of downloads per month.

Shutterstock is one of the forerunners in the stock photo industry. With more than 400 million photos in their libraries, Shutterstock offers an extensive variety of high-quality stock images for you to choose from. One thing to note however is that it is also one of the pricier stock photo sites out there.

Vecteezy provides millions of free high-quality stock photos, vectors, illustrations and videos. While most of their resources are free to download, they require attribution. The good news is that Vecteezy also offers monthly and yearly subscription plans which start from as little as $4.50/month. These plans allow you to download their digital assets without needing to provide attribution and without limit.

More than just a stock photo website, Adobe Stock gives you stock photo integration with every Adobe product. They offer stock photos, illustrations, vectors, videos, audios and more. Adobe Stock also provides both free and paid images. While they do offer free images, they have a very limited selection of free photos which might not be sufficient for your needs.

You can buy their paid images through a subscription or on-demand plan. They offer their on-demand plans through a credit system, where they price their assets in credits. A standard image is 1 credit, for example. On the other hand, premium images start from 12 credits. The larger the credit pack you buy, the less each credit will cost you.

Depositphotos is one of the best stock sites that we’ve come across. Not only do they offer over 234 million stock photos, vectors, videos and music, their price plans are also reasonable. On top of this, they also offer tools such as free background removal and image upscaler software on their site. This is incredibly useful for people who are not skilled in photo editing. As for Despositphotos’s paid plans, they offer both on-demand and subscription plans.

We hope the above list helps in narrowing down the right stock photo website for your needs. To make the most bang for your buck, we recommend you to plan the amount of images you’ll roughly need for your project from the start. You could also use the watermark images first for prototyping before committing to an image download.

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