Are you looking for awesome visuals to use for your blog or website and don’t have enough resources to develop your own original content?
Fret not because the world of the internet is full of opportunities. For those who do not have the budget or time to capture original photos or create illustrations, there are many fantastic stock photo sites to get high quality visuals.
In this post, we will cover the top 10 paid & free stock photo sites out there.
Let’s dive right in…
Table of Contents
Paid Stock Photo Websites
The greatest advantage of buying from a paid stock image website is conflict-free, top-class content. Let’s start by finding out about five of the best paid stock photo sites:
Shutterstock
Shutterstock showcases one of the biggest collections of stock photos and other valuable visual content, which include illustrations, vector images, videos, music, etc. All of these 360 million images are just a couple of clicks and a reasonable payment away. Following are some features that make this website a great stock photos resource:
- Its Curated collections showcase the visual content related to the latest and upcoming trends.
- The Offset collection boasts some incredible award-winning images that you should definitely check out.
- You can also add your own touch of creativity to the pictures using Shutterstock Editor, which offers a range of editing features and templates.
Adobe Stock
You might already know Adobe from their famous Photoshop software, but did you know Adobe also has this fantastic stock photos website that offers a range of images, vectors, videos, 3D visuals, illustrations, and other fantastic photo assets? Adobe Stock is definitely your one-stop shop for buying the best visual content. Here are some of its best features:
- Adobe offers easy access to its stock images through its Adobe Creative Cloud applications.
- The image collection gets updated daily through highly competent contributors.
- The platform keeps you up-to-date with the latest visual trends.
iStock
iStock is another fantastic option to purchase outstanding and unique images. If you are a designer searching for some creative and novel visual assets or a marketer seeking unique photos for your promotional campaign, iStock has got everyone covered. It’s greatest features include:
- In addition to buying images from this platform, iStock also offers freebies on a weekly basis.
- The stock photos website can be accessed in multiple languages. iStock has its own editor that allows artists and designers to play with the images and other visual content they buy.
- You can also get smartly categorized and high-resolution content on iStock with the help of a fantastic discount.
Dreamstime
Like its name, Dreamstime offers users photos that they dream of. The 170 million stock images collection gets updated every day through great artists, photographers, and contributors. What makes Dreamstime an ultimate stock images platform? Let’s see below:
- If you are on a budget and could really use some great free content, check out their website.
- It’s not just images; you could also buy high-quality audio clips, music, and videos.
- To designers, this website is no less than a heaven of design assets. Icons, clipart, logos, you name it, they have it all at Dreamstime.
Depositphotos
The list of best-paid stock photos sites will be incomplete without the mention of Deposit Photos. This fabulous website is literally overflowing with thematic collections of stock images. Why choose Deposit Photos for your next creative project? Because:
- Deposit Photos offers royalty-free content. It means that users can get the content by paying a specific license fee once and use the images as much as they like without having to worry about renewing the license. This way, you can avoid copyright violation and can use the content as ethics demand, instead of illegally downloading free content from the web.
- The website has organised its visual assets in various categories for easy and smooth access. Images are classified as Professional Stock Photos & Pictures, Illustrations & Paintings, Vector Arts & Backgrounds, and more. Not only that, there’s a section for sound effects, music tracks and templates as well.
- The visuals are enormous! It includes as much as 221 million images, vectors, illustrations, and so much more.
Free Stock Photos Websites
Sometimes your financial constraints can make things difficult. To make sure a tight budget doesn’t come in the way of your creativity, here’s a list of stock photos sites that offer their content for free.
Unsplash
Unsplash brings together more than 50,000 contributors who share their work on the platform. Unsplash has more than 300,000 excellent-quality images. It may not be a huge collection, but it most certainly has top-of-the-shelf quality content and that too, for free. Let’s check out what extraordinary features Unsplash has to offer:
- All the great images are available to you under the Unsplash license.
- The curators on this platform smartly and very carefully select the best submissions and showcase them on the homepage.
Pexels
Pexels is a fantastic stock photos website has so much to offer. It’s very famous among the blogging community because the images are available for free and because the quality is just excellent. Here are some great features of this stock image website:
- The images are up for grabs under Pexel’s own license, which allows you to use your own creativity on their pictures as you like.
- Images are tagged and categorised in a way that makes accessing them really simple and easy.
- Not just images, you can also get great-quality stock videos.
Burst (by Shopify)
Shopify has curated a wide range of stock images for entrepreneurs on the Burst platform. The photos are original and were captured in-house to offer free visual content to enterprises looking to promote their businesses. Burst is a great image resource because:
- Some images are available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, while others are covered under Shopify’s own photo license. It takes out the probability of violating any laws.
- The pictures on Burst are all created around a business theme, which makes them an excellent resource for your e-commerce promotional and marketing campaigns.
- In addition to assets related to the business niche, there are many high-quality images for general purposes as well.
Reshot
Reshot prides itself in offering one of a kind and unique visual content to its users. The Reshot team boasts that they have non-stocky images on their website. They have just the visuals that you need for your social media posts, blogs and websites, “keepin’ it real”, as they claim. Why Reshot? Here’s why:
- Although this stock images site has over 25,000 high resolution photos, rest assured they all are high-quality and fantastic.
- The visual assets on Reshot are not limited to just images; they include illustrations and icons for designers as well.
Pixabay
Are you a blogger or a content marketer? If yes, Pixabay should be your go-to stock photo site to get high-quality images for free.
- Pixabay offers its assets licenses under the CC0. Meaning, no need to worry about copyrights.
- The platform offers free vectors and illustrations as well.
- Artists who contribute to the visual stock don’t require you to give them credit, but they sure do appreciate the nice gesture.
Wrapping Up
So there you have it, 10 of the best paid and free stock photo sites.
The 5 best paid stock photo sites:
…and the 5 best free stock photo sites:
Have you checked any of these websites? What other fantastic stock photos sites can you think of? Tweet your comments and insights to my Twitter profile here.
