The Best Places to Get Free Images in 2026: 16 Sites and What Their Licences Allow

“Free image” covers very different deals. Some sites give you a photo with no conditions at all. Some let you use it almost any way except selling it on a mug. Some require a credit line, and some mix free images with paid ones on the same results page. The differences matter most when the image is going into something commercial: an advert, a product page, a book cover, merchandise.

This guide covers sixteen sources and, for each, the terms that actually decide what you can do: commercial use, whether you must credit anyone, whether you can sell it on a product, and whether it can go into AI training. We read each site’s own licence in October 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice. For anything high-stakes, read the licence itself and keep a copy.

The sixteen at a glance

Two sites that are gone

Older lists still recommend sites that no longer work. Reshot, the free illustration and icon site, was retired by Envato in January 2026, and its files can no longer be downloaded. Anything you downloaded earlier keeps its original licence. New Old Stock, the vintage photo archive, no longer serves its collection. And Freepik now trades as Magnific; its licence is unchanged in substance but lives at the new name.

General-purpose photo sites

1. Unsplash

Unsplash is the default for good-looking photography, and its licence is generous: use photos commercially, modify them, and skip the credit. You cannot sell them without significant modification, including as prints or on merchandise, use them to build a competing service, or put them in machine learning datasets. Recognisable people, logos and artworks shown in a photo are not covered by the licence. Downloads need no account and come as JPG, up to the full original, which can be over 8,000 pixels wide. Some results are Unsplash+ premium images, a paid tier that adds model and property releases, so check the label before you fall for one. Unsplash does not accept AI-generated uploads.

2. Pexels

Pexels, owned by Canva, has a similar licence: no credit needed, modification allowed. Its terms rule out selling unaltered copies, showing identifiable people in a bad light, implying endorsement, using the images in a trademark or business name, and commercial use of content showing logos. Pexels also has a large free video library. Downloads need no account and come in sizes from 640 pixels to the original. Pexels bans AI-generated uploads but says it cannot guarantee everything is human-made.

3. Pixabay

Pixabay, also part of Canva, says it has more than 6.3 million images, videos and music tracks, and covers illustrations and vectors as well as photos. Its licence is broadly like Pexels’: no credit, no selling images on a standalone basis (NFTs included), no commercial use of trademarks. Expect sponsored iStock rows in the results, roughly every 15 to 20 images. Those are paid images and are not under the Pixabay licence. Pixabay allows AI-generated uploads if they are labelled, and its help pages say you need to sign up for full-resolution downloads.

4. Burst by Shopify

Burst, now at shopify.com/stock-photos, offers more than 20,000 free photos weighted toward ecommerce: products, small businesses, and ready sets of images for particular kinds of shop. Commercial use is allowed without credit; you may not sell the photos themselves. High-resolution downloads ask for an email address, with a link to skip and take the low resolution version instead.

5. StockSnap.io

Everything on StockSnap is CC0, so there are no licence conditions at all, apart from not implying that the photographer or anyone pictured endorses you. No account is needed to download. The library is smaller than the big three, and results include a sponsored row and Shutterstock offers, but when you want an image with no strings, it is a good first stop.

6. Kaboompics

Kaboompics specialises in styled photoshoots, especially interiors and lifestyle, and shows a colour palette with each image, which helps when you need several photos that look like a set. Its standard licence allows commercial use without credit. Some images are marked Editorial Use Only. It prohibits reselling the originals, uploading them to other stock sites, and AI training.

Illustrations

7. unDraw

unDraw offers flat, consistent illustrations of people and ideas, the kind used across software websites. Commercial use and modification are allowed without credit. It forbids redistributing the illustrations as packs, building a competing service, and AI training.

Public domain: museums and archives

8. The Met Open Access

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has released more than 406,000 high-resolution images of public domain works under CC0. Use them for any purpose, commercial included, without permission. Look for the OA icon on an object page, which marks the images that qualify. It is the best single source of fine art, antiquities and vintage design.

9. Smithsonian Open Access

The Smithsonian’s open access programme covers more than 5.2 million 2D and 3D items across its 19 museums under CC0, with images as JPG and, where available, TIFF, and 3D models in standard formats. Natural history, aviation, American history and design are all strong.

10. NASA Image and Video Library

NASA’s library holds more than 230,000 images, and NASA material is generally not subject to copyright in the United States. NASA asks to be acknowledged as the source. The NASA insignia and logotype are not in the public domain, identifiable people such as astronauts need permission for commercial use, and images marked with a third party’s copyright need that party’s permission. No account is needed, and each image comes in several JPG sizes.

11. rawpixel public domain

rawpixel has a large collection of public domain artwork, much of it restored and cleaned up, labelled CC0. It is a good source of vintage botanical prints, posters and illustrations. Some downloads sit behind a premium plan, and we could not confirm its current account rules, so check what each image requires before relying on it.

Creative Commons search

12. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons holds over 149 million media files, and it is often the only free source for a specific place, building, historical event or diagram. The catch is that the licence varies per file: many need attribution, and Share-Alike licences require you to release adaptations under the same terms. Credit the creator rather than the uploader, and check the licence on each file page. Commons does not guarantee that licences are correct, so keep a record of the page.

13. Openverse

Openverse, run by the WordPress project, is a search engine rather than a library. It indexes over 900 million openly licensed images from more than 50 sources, including Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. You can filter for licences that allow commercial use and modification, and it gives you an attribution line to copy. It is built into the WordPress editor. As with Commons, licences are per image and are not guaranteed, so check the source page.

Free tiers of design and stock platforms

14. Canva free photos

If you design in Canva, its free photos are licensed for commercial use in your designs, including adverts, packaging and prints. Items labelled CC0, Pexels or Pixabay follow those licences instead. You may not resell the content, use it in a trademark, or use it for AI purposes. Canva Pro content has stricter rules, and a design that mixes Pro and free content falls under the stricter ones.

15. Adobe Stock free collection

Adobe Stock has a free collection that needs only a free Adobe ID. Adobe says its free assets meet the same licensing standards as paid ones, under its Standard licence for photos and vectors. Adobe does not publish the size of the collection or a download limit, and the page pushes a paid trial, but the quality is a step above most free sites.

16. Magnific (formerly Freepik)

Magnific has a very large mix of vectors, templates, photos and illustrations, and lets you filter results by licence and by AI-generated content. The free plan has the most conditions of any site here. Free use requires attribution, and downloads are capped per day. Results mix free and premium items. Content with logos, recognisable products or people is editorial-only. Reselling, print-on-demand with the asset as the main element, and AI use are prohibited.

Which one to use

• A blog header or website photo: Unsplash or Pexels.
• Something going on merchandise: a CC0 source such as StockSnap, The Met or the Smithsonian, after checking for logos and people.
• An advert featuring a person: consider a paid image with a model release; free licences do not cover the person.
• A specific real place or historical subject: Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, with attribution.
• Website illustrations in a consistent style: unDraw.
• Product photos for an online shop: Burst.

Before you publish: check three things

First, the label on the specific image. Free and paid images share results pages on Unsplash, Pixabay, Magnific and Adobe Stock, and the paid ones are under different terms. Second, what is in the picture. A free licence covers the photographer’s copyright, not the face of the person in it or the logo on their shirt. Third, keep a record. Save the page URL and a screenshot of the licence on the day you downloaded the image. If a licence is ever disputed, that is your evidence.

Getting the image ready for the web

Free image sites hand you very large files. An original from Unsplash can be 8,000 pixels wide and several megabytes, many times what a web page needs, and it will slow the page that uses it. Resize to the width you will actually display, usually 1,200 to 2,000 pixels for a full-width image, then compress. Our JPG resizer, JPG compressor and JPG to WebP converter do each step in your browser, and remove the embedded camera data on the way. If you prefer other tools, our comparison of image compressors covers the best of them.