Last updated: 20.04.2017 – 104 SOURCES and counting!

Stock photos are generally bad for your conversions. But if used as a decorative element or for blog post images, they can be pretty effective.

A big problem however is that large stock photo sites only offer clean, unnatural looking photos, and is possibly the least persuasive type of imagery in existence.

There are tons of free photos out there. It can take hours to sift through them and find the best for your website. You know, those with laptops, hipster coffeeshop workplaces, and so on.

Luckily, I’ve prepared 60 handpicked startup photos for your blog or website to hurry up the process. It has mostly shorts of workplaces, tables, laptops, and technology, you know, the type that comes most in handy. Grab the bundle for free!

Should you need something more, I’ve also been collecting sites with free stock photos for a long time now — and I decided to share this personal list of sites with free stock pictures with you. I sifted through the list and tried to only keep those that are producing their own photos, not reposting the same ones as the rest of the sites.

Multi-Author Sites

FreeImages (used to be Sxc.hu) This website is one of the oldest free stock sites I know. Some photos are useful and others aren’t. Worth checking out.

Burst A free stock photo site powered by Shopify. Great photography suited for new entrepreneurs!

morgueFile This site, too, has been around since forever. A great collection of free photos by various authors.

Flickr‘s CC search Flickr has been offering free image hosting for more than 10 years now. Not many people know about the “Creative Commons” search which turns up free photos. For searching Flickr, you can also use tools like PhotoPin, CompFight, or IM free.

WikiMedia This Wikipedia’s website offers different types of public domain content — photos, video, and even sound. Some need attribution, but it’s definitely a site not regularly used by people in need of free stock pictures.

Pixite Source An interesting new kid on the block of free stock images and textures. Founder Greg reached out to me with an interesting pitch for this website: Each week we feature a piece of content for our #pixiteweekly edit challenge on Instagram. Artists remix and edit this original content into new pieces of art that we then showcase on both platforms.

Magdeleine Every day, there’s a new free photo available here. You can browse the collection by colours, tags, or categories.

Public Domain Archive If you used one of the pics from this site, you can get featured here!

Re:splashed Beautiful, clean photos, including of screens, workplaces, landscapes, and food.

Life Of Pix Photos taken by Leeroy agency’s photographers.

PicoGraphy Another site with high-quality photography.

ISO Republic Very colourful images of everyday objects. Founded by Tom Eversley in 2014.

Designers’ Pics Original stock picture every day taken by Jeshu John.

StokPic Also offers email signup, and plenty of original photos.

FreeJPG Authors can submit photos to this site if they want them featured. A nice collection, worth taking a look!

Streetwill Beautiful free vintage photos to use any way you want.

Uhdwallpapers Colorful wallpapers and desktop backgrounds on just about everything.

Skitterphoto Nature stil rocks at skitterphoto, very playful!

Barnimages Two photographers from Latvia and beautiful colors. Simple as that.

Visual Hunt They hunt free high quality stock photos for us to enjoy.

Negative Space Photo collections for every season.

Foodshot.co Handpicked food photos from around the web.

Ancestryimages Historians, genealogists and anyone undertaking family history, ancestry or local history research – welcome!

Bigfoto Big photos for big fans.

Dreamstime A little of everything for every dreamer there is.

Boss Fight Their mission is to be your final “Boss Fight” when it comes to finding completely free (do whatever you want) stock images, photos, and photography.

FreeImages.red Sad dogs, funny dogs, happy dogs, sad rope, funny rope, happy rope, everything.

Realgraphy Storytelling Photos for Forever.

Find a photo You can select through thousands of free stock photos and browse by color, collection or source. Basic but resourceful.

Foter Also rich with vintage pics, you hipsters!

Free Media Goo Enjoy the royalty of free images and good carma!

Free Range Stock Photos that make it into the collections are either artistically and photographically interesting, or they provide photographic documentation of an item or event. So, every photo of a rock on the site may not be great art, but it’s still worth your while.

Pikwizard Over 30,000 images to fulfill all your creative needs!

Free Digital Photos Also illustrations for websites, advertising materials, newspapers, magazines, ebooks, book covers and music artwork.

Free Photos Bank Want kids and puppies? They give you kids and puppies.

Image Finder. Can bring some fairytale in your life.

Photo Everywhere A world of images, especially travel photography.

Pickup Image Laypeople or professionals, just pick it up!

Photober They even have the healtcare and abstract section.

Pixabay Plus illustrations, vector graphics and videos.

Splashbase Including a lot of cute goats, sheeps and donkeys.

StockPhotos.io A site to scratch your designer itches.

Stockpholio They don’t speak much. They say it’s all about photos.

UpicM Free pics no tricks!

Raw Pixel They keep smashing the mould to bring you the images you crave.

Free Stock Images A stunning collection with over 15,000 free stock photos in high resolution.

Single-Author Sites

MMT Free photos of details from nature taken from Jeffrey Betts.

KaboomPics A ton of free photos available for download. No particular theme.

Epicva Really a multi-author site, but with the “single-author” feel to them.

LittleVisuals These guys regularly update their collection with photos from nature. You can also subscribe to their emails and get a weekly pack right into your inbox.

UnSplash UnSplash is quite similar to LittleVisuals. You’ll find great photos here, all 100% free to use.

New Old Stock If you run a website for hipsters, you’ll love these old, mostly black-and-white pictures.

SuperFamous Sometimes, a nice natural texture or a bird eye’s view of Earth is what you need for that special design. Attribution required!

Death To The Stock Photo This is an email-only delivery of beautiful free pictures every month. Due to the photos not being available to just anyone, these are pretty rare to find being used around the web. Highly recommended.

JéShoots These free photos are taken by Jan Vašek. Under devices, you can also find free iPhone mockups for interfaces.

GetRefe Beautiful free photos taken by my good friend Tomas Laurinavicius during his travels. There is a premium version of this website available here with an awesome section of free photos (this site’s header photo is one of them).

PicJumbo Very high-quality photos. These can be extremely useful as they feature a big variety of topics — from mobile phones to food. [/halfhal] [halfhalf] Gratisography These amazing conceptual photos are unfortunately being used by everyone on the web. It’s also one of the few sites that offers free pics of people.

StartupStockPhotos This website needs more far more publicity. If you’re in need of some fresh office photos (and we all are), this site will provide it.

SplitShire Another great site with pictures of landscapes, people, food, and technology.

Snapwire Snaps Another Tumblr blog with option to subscribe as well as download free photo packs.

Stock Image Point 20 new pictures added every month, mostly travel- or nature-themed.

WeFunction Here are a few packs of free photos by WeFunction.

RaumRot Markus Spiske offers his own photo packs as well as curated Flickr photos for creatives. These are truly priceless collections of hipster photos.

Jay Mantri Another nature photographer who decided to share their photos with us. No attribution required.

Crow the Stone Picturesque photos from travels. Various scenes, perfect for travel or global blogs.

MovEast Similar, but with more sea. Need images of dolphins? They’ve got stuff like that here.

Bucketlistly Not for commercial use, but still some nice travel photos available here.

TravelCoffee Very high-quality photography from travels, this time more varied. From waterfalls to cities.

Cupcake Another one of those cute nature photo blogs.

Realistic Shots 7 new photos every week by Henry Ryes.

BestStockPhotoFree A fresh new website with lots of gorgeous photos up for grabz!

PhotoStockEditor Another website with a few very nice photos. Mostly travel-related, but also some business and food imagery.

FancyCrave Free and unique images taken by the well-known founder of InspirationFeed. Definitely worth checking out.

SketchJar Need pics of monkeys? We got pics of monkeys. And many others. If you’re looking for some images with personality, this is the place to find ’em.

LibreShot Flowers and random daily moments of a travelling entrepreneur (I suppose).

GoodFreePhotos An insanely large collection from a single author with various themes, ranging from travel to technology and art.

Freenaturestock Designer Adrian Pelletier’s blog will not only offer amazing photos, but also some tutorials on effectiveness.

Epicantus Tumblr For specific photo requests you can also contact the author Daria.

End the Echo Andy is a freelancer and the creator of The Print Handbook. He lives on the beautiful north coast of Northern Ireland.

J éshoots Who dares to say no to pasta made by Jan Vašek? Not me.

Stokpic Ed Gregory started this solo project when he decided to give away his photos for free.

Special Mentions

This pack of food photography These photos require attribution, but it’s not very common to find good quality photos of cooking ingredients (mostly you’ll only find full meals). Enjoy!

The Pattern Library Even if you’re not looking for patterns, it’s worth checking out this website. Be warned, however: scrolling though them is super-addictive.

SubtlePatterns Although not exactly stock photo site, this list would hardly be complete without SubtlePatterns. If you’re in need of nice, seamless textures for use in web projects, this site is what you need.

Paul Jarvis’ photo pack Here’s a pack of 20 great photos taken by a famous designer.

Free Goodies For Designers‘s photography category In this category, you can find a couple of themed photo bundles, such as textures, sky photos, and nature photos.

Graphic Burger‘s photo tag A quick search on Graphic Burger will reveal a few high-quality photo packs, as well as psd mockups and textures.

Dribbble‘s search Dribbble users are known for sharing useful freebies, including photo packs.

Mazwai Need a special hero shot for your website? Why not try these amazing hi-def video clips by Matt Devir?

Distill Alternatively, you can get 10 free HD videos every 10 days. Seems like a bargain, doesn’t it? 🙂

Pexels A subscription-based pack of high quality stock photos, just launched.

StockSnap Amazing resource to help you search for free stock photos. Highly recommended, just like Pexels (similar concept).

Conclusion

The best way to stand out from the rest is really by shooting our own photos or at least adjusting them to our own style. But this can be a chore, and sometimes we just want to ship something out there without making our lives harder. I hope this list will help you out when you need it.

Now — I promise I’ll keep it updated, and you promise you’ll share it around. Deal?

READ NEXT: Do you want to learn more about creating graphics for your blog? Here’s the last guide on that topic that you’ll need.