Gone are the days when using stock photography meant cheesy smiles of people in suits or sub-par clip art style photos. There’s been a growing trend of sites offering high-quality stock images, often for free or low cost. You’ll have no doubt come across many of the images from these sites in blog posts, startup hero images, news websites, and more.
When I’m designing a website for a client I know how hard it can be to try and find the perfect stock photography images for our their website and I often get asked my readers, “where do you find stock photos for your web design projects?”
So I made this list of resources for you to get stock photos (free and paid) and will include working coupons if available.
I recommend keeping an external hard drive or using something like Google Drive that is strictly used to store images on as I have even included sites that will email you FREE stock photos every week that you can save to your hard drive and use later. You never knew when you will need that one special picture!
SEE ALSO: A good looking website isn’t much without well-written content. Looking to improve your copywriting skills as well? Don’t forget to check out my in-depth Grammarly review.
Post Update: This post was first published 3 years ago when this site was very new and actually ended up going viral for a few days with 30k views in one day and well over 2,000 shares. It was even featured on Hacker News Nation’s YouTube channel that you can watch here: https://youtu.be/RlHSEOumAIY.
It’s amazing to know that this post has helped so many people over the years find better stock photos!
Sadly, after this post went viral, the old owner no longer had the time to invest in this website. DesignRope has gone through a ton of major changes including a new owner, a full redesign, added HTTPS compatibility, and much more.
This list is now updated for 2017! I have removed the broken links and added a ton more working and reputable websites to the list. If you know of any quality stock photography website that’s not listed here – please reach out to me in the comments below and I will add it for everyone to use.
Don’t forget to share and bookmark this page to keep as a reference for a later time!
1. Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock
I really enjoy Adobe Stock’s selection of stock images to use for my web design projects. If you’re a designer you probably already use Adobe creative cloud anyways so why not also get 10 free stock images for just signing up with them.
2. Unsplash
Unsplash
Unsplash is easily one of the best-kept web designer secrets out there. They offer a ton of completely FREE (no attribution required) high-quality images. Be sure to bookmark this website for later use!
3. Depositphotos
Depositphotos
Depositphotos offers a ton of paid royalty-free stock photos, vectors, images, and videos to use for your creative needs. Be sure to use our promo code: OS2422749 and then click here to get 10% off!
4. TheHungryJpeg
TheHungryJPEG
TheHungryJPEG is one of my favorite places to shop for fonts, themes, photos, and just about anything else one might need for design work. I found the quality and pricing to be much better than some of the other marketplaces out there like ThemeForest. Also, their customer support is awesome (shout out to Dan!).
5. 123RF
123RF
123RF.com offers over 77 million of paid stock photos for commercial use. I would be surprised if you weren’t able to find the exact stock photo you were looking for here.
6. LittleVisuals
Little Visuals
Little Visuals is another completely free stock photography site that offers 7 FREE stock images (no attribution required) emailed to you every week.
7. Death To The Stock Photo
Death To The Stock Photo
“Death to the Stock Photo” has a premium option but you can get 7 FREE stock images (no attribution required) emailed to you monthly using the link below.
8. New Old Stock
New Old Stock
New Old Stock is a stock photography site that offers high-quality images from the past. All photos are free with no attribution required.
9. SuperFamous Studios
SuperFamous Studios
If your looking for free high-quality nature inspired photographs then check out SuperFamous Studios. One thing to note is that they DO require attribution if you plan to use any of their photos.
10. PicJumbo
Pic Jumbo
PicJumbo offers new stock photos that are free to use every day for commercial and personal use. No attribution required.
11. The Pattern Library
The Pattern Library
The Pattern Library is one of my favorite sites on this list. The website offers a collection of high-quality repeating patterns (no attribution required) that you can use for a variety of design work.
12. Gratisography
Gratisography
Gratisography is one of the more popular free stock photography sites on the web. They offer FREE high-resolution pictures you can use for personal or commercial projects with no copywrite restrictions or attributions required.
13. IM FREE
IM Free
Unlike some of the other free stock photography websites on this list, they actually have their free photos collections categorized.
14. Creative Market
Creative Market
Creative Market is a very well known online marketplace that offers high-quality paid stock photography as well as themes, fonts, and other templates. They also offer free photos weekly.
15. Dreamstime
dreamstime
Dreamstime has been around for a very long time now. They are the perfect solution when you’re looking for cheap high-quality stock photography at a very affordable price.
16. Snapwire
Snapwire
Snapwire is unique in that it offers custom to order paid stock photography. Think of it like a 99 Designs for stock photos! You can also
You can also visit their Tumblr where they post free stock photos every week.
17. Photos.com
Photos.com
Photos.com is owned by Getty Images and provides a ton a paid premium stock photography to use on websites, print, and even posters.
18. Envato PhotoDune
PhotoDune
One of the largest stock photography sites on the web. PhotoDune is offered by Envato who is the maker of the famous ThemeForest. PhotoDune has a variety of stock photography that starts as low as $3 per photo. They also offer free pictures every week.
Very good and comprehensive list!
Try this one for vintage photos: http://www.colaimages.com
Wow, thank you very much! This is exactly what I was looking for!
http://www.splashbase.co/
Adding one more to this list.
http://thestocks.im/
One more!
Hi Ben,
Great collection you have here. Some new and cool projects. Thank you for featuring Refe among others.
Great list! Thanks so much. Found some new sites that I haven’t used before. This is one that I have found useful too. http://search.creativecommons.org/
Thanks again.
Pixabay.com is a good resource. No attribution required
An extensive and useful list of stock photo websites can be found here : http://www.crazyleafdesign.com/blog/cloud-stock-photos-resources/ .Thought this would be a good addition to your awesome article.
Howdy! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this site?
I’m getting sick and tired of WordPress because I’ve had problems with hackers and I’m looking at options for another platform.
I would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction
of a good platform.
We are actually running WP. Good theme + plugins + server setup and you’ll have zero problems.
Here is another site for free photos
http://stockphotos.io
Great way to find stock photos, thanks for the info!
This list isn’t complete without at leat a mention of Compfight.com.
Some great sites (both paid and free) here!
I’ll vote for http://yayimages.com which offer unlimited images for just 10 bucks per month. And their search is pretty awesome as well. We’re using it for all our websites now.
Thought I might as well throw my contribution into the ring: canweimage.com. It’s basically a modern, responsive abstraction on top of Wikimedia Commons.
This is a very useful collection. Thanks alot for taking the effort to document them in one place.
nice, thanks.