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20+ absolutely legal places to get FREE stock photos and FREE vector graphics

Our treasure-chest collection of websites to easily access free stock photos, stock images, license-free illustrations, and free vector graphics. Royalty-free commercial use photos!

Good quality photos have always been an integral part of any blog or social media profile, especially in the field of travel blogging or lifestyle influencing. Unfortunately, sometimes we may not have the time nor resources to take those perfect pictures. Hiring a professional photographer usually costs a lot of money. Thankfully, there’s been a growing number of websites with beautiful free stock photos and free vector graphics available royalty-free, even for commercial use! In this post, I will share some of the awesome websites I myself go to, whenever I need a great photo for my travel blog or a vector image for the next cool kids' activity kit. 

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Quick Note About Licenses

Many of the photos and vector graphics available for download using the websites listed below are royalty-free, have no copyright restrictions, or licensed under creative commons public domain, also known as Creative Commons Zero license or CC0. This means you can download, use, copy, modify, and distribute those stock photos even for commercial use, all without asking permission from the author and all for free.

However, some websites may need you to create an account with them, and yet others will permit the use of a photo for free in exchange for author attribution. I’ve done my best to identify which license they fall under, but I still advise you to do your own research on how these free stock photos and free vector graphics can be used.

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Why are the stock photos, high-resolution images, and vector graphics made available for free?

There are a variety of reasons why someone wants to offer stock photos and vector graphics for free download. 

Some larger sites attract bloggers and entrepreneurs with free images and illustrations for personal use, yet if you want commercial rights you gotta pay. Others partner with paid resources such as Shutterstock or iStock in such a way that if you search does not return anything on their resource, you are directed to the paid site. Free sites will make a referral commission on any photos or vector graphics you purchase on the paid website using their links. 

Other smaller resources may simply be a team of photographers and designers who want to give back to the community. For example, Viktor, the owner of PicJumbo states on his site: “I just want to make the internet a more beautiful place. I was a web designer, photographer, and WordPress developer and a few years ago there was no access to free high-resolution photos, so I started this site to change it and I published all of my photos for free.”

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Free Stock Photos, royalty-free for commercial use

Without further due, let's dive into my list of go-to places to download free stock photos, free vector graphics, free illustrations anytime anywhere. Most pf these photos and illustrations can be used free for commercial use.

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1. Pexels

Pexels provides high-quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 license. The Pexels site has a very cool search feature making it easy to browse through the thousands of free stock images available for download. All photos and videos on Pexels are free to use for personal and commercial purposes. Attribution is not required: giving credit to the photographer or Pexels is not necessary but always appreciated.

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2. Pixabay

Pixabay is a massive library of free stock photos, free vector graphics, art illustrations, and even videos. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0. You can copy, modify, distribute, and use the images, even use photos for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission or giving credits to the author.

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3. Unsplash

Unsplash offers a large collection of free high-resolution photos and free stock images and has become one of my most favorite places to go to download graphics. The very best photos submitted each day are featured on their homepage. All photos can be downloaded and used for free, for commercial and non-commercial purposes under the Unsplash license.

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4. Canva

Canva is a convenient online graphics editing tool that I am using every day for my travel blogging, for preparing content for my social media automations, and to create engaging kids' activities and parents' resources. Not surprisingly, even the free version does offer a large collection of royalty-free stock photos, backgrounds, graphic elements, and vectors. I am a Canva Pro user, this way I do not have to worry about anything – no cost, no license attribution!

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5. Burst

Burst by Shopify was launched to help entrepreneurs, bloggers, social media influencers, to make better websites and marketing campaigns. It provides a large collection of in-house-made free stock photos for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Some photos are licensed under Creative Commons CC0, while others fall under Shopify’s own photo license.

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6. Kaboom Pics

Kaboom Pics offers a large collection of high-quality free stock photos from a variety of categories for free download. Photos can be used free for commercial purposes, but cannot be sold or redistributed on other stock photography websites as is without significant alterations. All photos on Kaboompics can be used for free for commercial and noncommercial use.  Attribution is not required. Giving credit to the Kaboompics is not necessary but always appreciated.

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7. Stocksnap.io

StockSnap.io has a large collection of beautiful free stock photos and high-resolution images. Hundreds of images are added on a daily basis and all photos are released under the creative commons public domain – no attribution required! All photos are nicely tagged, searchable, and also easy to discover through their discovery pages. With StockSnap.io bloggers can download the free stock photo file, publish, revise, copy, alter, and share that image, and the photo (as-is or as you've altered it), in both personal and commercial contexts for free.

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8. Reshot

Reshot is a huge collection of unique free stock photos you won’t find elsewhere. Developed for entrepreneurs, startups, freelancers & bloggers who are sick of tacky and cheesy stock photos. Their free stock photos and illustrations are available for both, commercial and editorial use. No attribution required!

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9. FoodiesFeed

Finally! A great resource specifically dedicated to foodie bloggers, startups, and entrepreneurs! FoodiesFeed provides thousands of beautiful free stock photos of food in high resolution.

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10. Picography

Picography is a private resource by a team of photographers. They offer a wide range of high-quality photos all released under Creative Commons CC0. Free stock photos can be downloaded, altered, published, and used for free for commercial and noncommercial use.

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11. PicJumbo

Picjumbo is a collection of free stock photos, backgrounds, and high-resolution images that can be used for your commercial and personal works. The site warns, however, that although all photos are free to use, some photos do not have model or property release, and some photos may also contain copyrighted brands, logos, objects, or personal properties.

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12. New Old Stock

New Old Stock is a truly UNIQUE resource. It offers a large variety of vintage photos from the public archives – all free of known copyright restrictions. I have found photos from all over the world here, including many from Canada, Australia, and Portugal. The downside: the site does not have any convenient search function, so you just gotta scroll it down and look at everything… 

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13. ISO Republic

ISO Republic provides a variety of free stock photos and high-resolution images, all under the CC0 license. Another great resource for bloggers to download free stock photos for their blogs, websites, social media profiles, and even for commercial use product marketing campaigns.

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14. Picspree

Picspree offers a large selection of high-quality royalty-free stock photos. With easy searching and frictionless downloading Picspree is an excellent resource for travel bloggers, entrepreneurs, and web professionals looking for high-quality photos without needing to worry about licensing.

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15. Life Of Pix

Life Of Pix – a Montreal-based creative agency (Hello to a fellow Canadian!) now offers a collection of high-resolution images to creators, designers, artists, and bloggers for free! No copyright restrictions for personal and commercial use. They have new stock photos and even videos uploaded each week. I am sure you will find just the image you need 🙂

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Royalty-Free Vector Graphics

So far we've gone through the free stock photos websites only. What about free vector graphics for your website logos, social media, or kids' activity projects? I regularly work with vector illustrations creating kids activity kits and parents resources for families who love travel and the great outdoors. Here are a few examples of what I do with free vector illustrations:

Of course, I have a list of those places you can download free vector graphics too! Here we go:

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16. Canva

Canva, yes Canva again! Love this convenient online graphics editor! Canva is perfect for creating engaging kids' activities and parents' resources – need many vector elements for that. Even the free version of Canva offers a large collection of free vector graphics – all royalty-free and available for free commercial use!

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17. Vecteezy

Vecteezy is my next best place I always go to to download free vector graphics for my projects. This cool resource for bloggers and online entrepreneurs offers a huge collection of royalty-free vector illustrations on all themes and categories imaginable. A free account will allow you to use millions of free vector resources for personal projects, while a paid account will give you full commercial rights.