If you are a blogger or website owner, you know the importance of good-looking images for making the page more attractive. But you cannot use any random image by searching on Google Images. Services like Shutterstock provide millions of royalty-free images that you can use on your blog post or web pages without worrying about copyright. But Shutterstock is not free. It costs $29 per month for only 10 images. That is costly enough to affect your monthly budget. So, you might be searching for free Shutterstock alternatives for downloading free royalty-free photos.
There are many good websites where you download high-quality royalty-free photos. You can also see these as good Shutterstock alternatives to download high-quality royalty-free stock photos.
Free Shutterstock Alternatives
1. Pexels
Pexels is my favorite website for downloading high-quality stock images for free. All the images available on this website can be used even on commercial projects without requiring any kind of credit or link back. It has thousands of images ready to download. The website basically curates photos from different photographers and users who contribute photos. If you are a photographer, you can also create your account and share your photos free of cost to help others.
2. Pixabay
Pixabay is also a big website with over 1.2 million images and videos. It has a big community of users who keep uploading high-quality photos. All these photos are available for free. You can either search for photos or browser by category. All the images available on this website come with Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensing. It means you can use it both personally and commercially without violating any copyright. Not just photos, you also get videos, vector graphics, and illustrations here.
3. Unsplash
Unsplash is also a similar kind of website for downloading free photos. There is no need to provide credits to the photo owner but you can do if you want. In the Explore section, you can browse photos by different categories. You can also submit your photos and share them with other users of Unsplash.
4. Foter
Foter offers over 335 million free stock photos. You can browse lots of categories to browse high-quality free stock photos to use on your website. It is also available as a WordPress plugin to use images directly from the WordPress dashboard. You can download different sizes to download. Licensing is available for images and most of the images are free for commercial usage. So, you do not need to worry.
Also see: Best Websites To Download Wallpapers For Your Smartphone
5. StockSnap
StockSnap is also a good source of free stock photos. You can browse hundreds of high-resolution images added weekly. Images have also been categorized into over 20 categories. All images are available in high resolution. All images come with the Creative Commons CC0 license. You can also create your account and submit your photos to others.
6. Gratisography
Gratisography is also a notable website for downloading free high-resolution pictures for personal and commercial projects. All the photos are free to use. You can download any number of images without creating the account. The website adds images weekly. Images are also available in different categories for easy access.
7. ISO Republic
If you are looking for free stock photos, you can download it from here for free. Photos are available in different categories. Images come with CC0 License. So, you can download and use it in your personal or commercial projects. The website has different categories to explore. Not just photos, this website now also offers videos.
8. Freeimages
Freeimages also has a large collection of images. All images are of high quality. To download images, you need to create an account here. It also shows EXIF data of photos to let know the camera settings.
9. LibreShot
LibreShot contains free photos for commercial and private use. Images are licensed with CC0. You also do not need to give any attribution for using the images. Images are also categorized. If you are looking for good Shutterstock alternatives, you can also consider this as well.
Final Words
There are a few more websites to download high-quality royalty-free stock photos. If you cannot afford the Shutterstock subscription, you can use these websites to download free high-quality photos. All these websites allow you to use these photos for personal and commercial purposes. You also do not need to give credit to use photos.