This may have been not easy in the past to find stock images for your designs, but it has become a fairly simple job thanks to Services Like Shutterstock. Shutterstock is a repository of over 160 million free photos, videos, and music tracks with royalties. Needless to say, this is where you will find anything you require.
There is one problem, however. Shutterstock-like services and websites are very costly. Shutterstock allows you to download only 10 photos for $29/month if you look at the monthly prices. It’s a pretty high price to pay now and not every one of us can afford it. Fortunately, there are platforms that allow us to download royalty-free photos for free.
Now, their selection may not be as large as Shutterstock‘s, but without you having to spend a cent, they get the work done. Well, you come to the right place if you have been searching for certain websites. Here are the 11 best alternatives to Shutterstock that you can use in 2020 for free.
Best Free Shutterstock Alternatives in 2020
Pexels
With over a million royalty-free pictures, when compared to Shutterstock, Pexels might feel like a small website, and it actually is. All the images, however, are professionally shot, high-quality pictures. Pexels deals mainly with outdoor videos, including landscapes, houses, crowds, beaches, etc. On this page, there are also a very large number of people-centric images. In different lighting conditions, the images are shot With most of them having an excellent “bokeh” effect. All images come with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which ensures that both personal and commercial uses can be used with these images. Without asking any permission or setting a connection to the source, you can use the images. In other words, it does not need either money or attribution.
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Foter
The Foter is the first service that comes to mind whenever I think of free Shutterstock alternatives or any free stock-photo hosting platform in general. More than 335 million free stock images are hosted by the website, with about 220 million available for commercial use. This makes Foter almost twice the size of Shutterstock’s repository. The quality of the pictures, however, is not as good as they are on Shutterstock. The pictures may even be free to use, but there is a catch. You will have to send credits to his photographer wherever you use them while using a picture from Foter. Although it is not a big deal, it does take additional effort. Also, if you use images on your website as headers, the attributes might feel out of place. Nonetheless, this is the biggest repository of royalty-free stock photographs and should thus not be overlooked.
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Unsplash
The Unsplash collection maybe just a fraction of what is provided on Shutterstock with over 200,000 stock photos, but these images look nice for boys. Every picture is high resolution and beautiful. All the pictures have the impression of being photographed professionally. For that matter, the quality of photographs on Unsplash rivals those offered on Shutterstock or any paid website. Unsplash is a community website that uploads hundreds of new images every day with over 41000 users. With fast load time, the website is as good as the images themselves. The pictures are grouped into various groups, allowing you to locate the appropriate images quickly. You may used the search bar at the top to search for unique images.
What’s better is that with a royalty-free license, all the pictures here come and can be used commercially. Unsplash only asks you to supply the photographers with a credit badge, so that they get their dues. That, however, is also not mandatory. This is the first website that you can check out if you are searching for a website with high-quality professional images. I personally use this site for all my MacBook & iPhone wallpapers, so I have no qualms about recommending it as a capable alternative to Shutterstock.
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The Stocks
The Stocks is a website that does not host its own images but pulls images from other websites that host royalty-free stock images. It is actually possible to find material from several of the websites on this list here. So for your needs, it can serve as a one-stop solution. There’s one thing I need to note, though. The website is a little sluggish to load and it isn’t easy to find photos that you want as they are not properly categorized. If you can get over this nuance, it will suit you well with The Stocks. Particularly because you can also find royalty-free images, audios, icons, fonts, and colors along with photos.
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StockcSnap
Another website that hosts royalty-free photographs licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) is StockSnap. The pictures on the website are given by its group of photographers, just like others. You can either search your library by category or by what’s trending, most views, most downloaded, and most preferred. The pictures are all High resolution and look fine. This site does feel gadget-centric as I find more images related to technology and gadgets particularly MacBooks. You must certainly check this one out if you are looking for such photos.
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Pixabay
In my opinion, Pixabay is the most popular website that allows you to download royalty-free photos. With over 1.7 million photos as of writing this post, it is also one of the biggest. All sorts of pictures can be found here. All these images here come with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, much like Pexels, which allows you to use the images individually and commercially without infringing any copyright. You can also find royalty-free vector graphics, diagrams, and videos here apart from images. The website doesn’t disappoint when it comes to efficiency. Most of the images are of high quality and can be downloaded depending on your requirement in different resolutions. The Pixabay is one of the best free Shutterstock alternatives you can find, hosting one of the biggest sets of genuinely royalty-free stock images.
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Freeimages
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A service named Freeimages is next on the list. This one boasts a collection of approximately 400,000 royalty-free stocks of photographs that are added every day with new ones. The pictures can be downloaded and used for personal and commercial purposes, much like other free stock-image websites. You do need to build an account, however unlike others, before you can download the photos. You can download & use as many images as you want once you log in though. And if you use the photos for commercial purposes, you still do not need to give credit to the artist of the website. The photographs hosted on this website look very elegant and are high-resolution. Here you can also find vectors and diagrams apart from pictures.
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SplitShire
Another great free-stock photo site that puts quality above quantity is SplitShire. The crazy thing about this site is that only the Owner of the website clicks and uploads all the images. Basically, the website is a reflection of ten years of his hard work and enables users to use those images free of charge. Since these pictures have been taken over the past ten years by a photographer, you will find very interesting images here that you won’t find on other stock picture websites.
Although the images cover several categories, including technology, abstract, nature, stuff, marriage, landscape, and more the best images belong to the categories of places and buildings. The pictures here are original, and on other stock photo websites, you can not find them for free. The site is totally free to access. There is a premium edition that allows you to import images in bulk, but you don’t have to pay anything if you are content with manually uploading one picture at a time. If you are searching for any exclusive images on some other stock picture website that are not available, certainly check it out.
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Life of Pix
Life of Pix is a website for photo sharing where various photographers can upload their shots for free. For me the best aspect of this website is not just the quality images it hosts, but also the photographers’ dedicated page that allows you to check for your favorite photographers’ photos. This is not something you’re going to find on any other stock picture websites, so I love Pix’s Life for it. Although the range of images here is very small, all the pictures are of high quality. My favorite set of images on this website include nature, cities, and animals. Some fantastic photos for these categories can be found here. All the pictures are of good quality, something that will be enjoyed by everyone. You certainly should check out this website.
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Burst
Have they ever heard of Shopify? Ok, let me enlighten you a bit if you haven’t. Shopify is a development platform for websites that enables you to create your own websites for e-commerce. Shopify made Burst to help its clients use its platform to find stock images for the websites they create. What’s great, though is that Shopify did not keep the service locked for its clients only but made it open to anyone who wants to use it. On this page, there are only about 1000 photos present. However, although other websites host the photographs submitted by their group, the pictures on Burst have been taken by paid professional photographers. Since the website is built for its customers by Shopify, all the photos here are more business-oriented. So, if you own a company or serve as a professional advisor, this could be the best place for you to find royalty-free stock images.
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Foca
Though Foca does not match Shutterstock in terms of number, it is a better touch as far as variety is concerned. Whether you want high-resolution pictures, eye-catching videos, or pro-looking models for commercial use, it can live up to your order. Faca even lets you edit your preferred image, just like Shutterstock, and even choose the desired size for it. Thus, making beautiful posts for sharing on social networking sites such as Facebook or blogs such as Tumblr is simpler for you. A strong set of simple tools for making social media graphics is one of my top picks for this Shutterstock alternative. And yes, my eyes have also been captured by the ever-increasing roster of beautifully crafted wallpapers. So just in case you want to try cool wallpapers, don’t miss out on giving them a look.
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Also, Check :
Best Free Shutterstock Alternatives for Stock-Photos
There are lots of very good free alternatives to Shutterstock out there, as you can see. Others have the quantity, whereas others concentrate on consistency. You should certainly check out Foter if you are searching for a wide repository of pictures. Those looking for results can see Pexels and Gratisography. My favorite, however, remains Unsplash. Check all of them out and let me know which of them are your favorite Alternatives to Shutterstock. Support the group by listing some other successful free stock photo website that you feel should be on the list, but that’s not.