Before I first started my online business, I honestly thought that all the photos on different websites were taken by the website owners or bloggers. I had no idea how anyone would have time to produce all the gorgeous photos. Then I discovered stock photos and that truly changed the game. In this Best Stock Photo Websites Review, let’s take a look at all of the amazing stock photos websites out there, with both free and paid options. 

Best Stock photo websites

Why should I use Stock Photos? 

Let’s say you run a health and fitness business and want to create a series of professional-looking promotional images for your business. You would likely have to hire a photographer, set up different scenes and settings, go to different locations and potentially hire someone to edit your photos and turn them into promotional images. 

This can easily become quite costly and could end up taking days or even weeks. 

With stock photos, all of the work is done. Stock photos are photos that have been taken and edited by photographers and are ready to be used. 

With a click of a button, you can download the images that you like, without having to go through all the hassles. Especially for images for your blog posts, website, social media posts and promotional materials, having stock photos give you so much flexible.

What can you do with stock photos?

Depending on the stock photo website, the agency or the artist, the license might be different. 

For example, with popular stock photo websites like Unsplash and Canva, All photos can be downloaded and used for free for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. No permissions required, although they recommend giving attribution to the author. 

Why should I pay for stock photos? 

There are so many free stock photo websites out there, with a wide variety of images. Why would you need a paid subscription service? 

Well, the most important reason why you might want a stock photo membership, is so you have photos that stand out from the crowd and from your competitors. 

Throughout the years I have been in business, I have come to realise that having a paid stock photo membership gives you a lot more options, ones that stand out from your competitors. Not only will you be able to use these images for your website, but having these different images to use for your social media platform, your campaigns, ads and even products. 

You can also find a lot more options with paid stock photos and stock photo memberships. Depending on your business, some stock photo memberships can provide specifically what you’re looking for, to make suer they match your branding even more. 

Best Stock Photos Websites 

1. Canva: Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content Canva is a versatile free graphic design app: full editor, Instagram story maker, video maker, video collage creator, logo maker and poster maker, book creator & mood board creator.
2. Unsplash: Unsplash is the world’s premier platform for HD photography. Unsplash is a community where anyone can share high-resolution photos for anyone to use freely. The photos on Unsplash are free to use and can be used for most commercial, personal projects, and editorial use. 
3. Shutterstock: Shutterstock is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools. The company licenses images, video, music, and editorial assets,  as well as custom content tailored to a brand’s needs. 
4. Pexels: Pexels is a free stock photo and video website and app that helps designers, bloggers, and everyone who is looking for visuals to find great photos and videos that can be downloaded and used for free.
5. Pixabay: Pixabay.com is a website for sharing photos, illustrations, vector graphics, film footage and music under the Pixabay license. Pixabay is the most valuable free alternative to commercial stock photo sites.
6. Burst by Shopify: Burst is a free stock photo platform that is powered by Shopify. The photographers are constantly shooting and uploading high-resolution images to help you find the perfect free stock photo for their next project.
7. Reshot: Reshot is a massive library of handpicked free stock photos you won’t find elsewhere. Built for startups, freelancers & makers who are sick of tacky stock photos. It’s free to use commercially and editorially, with no attribution required.
8. Freestocks: Free Stock is a source for thousands of free, high-quality stock photos, vectors & more for both personal and commercial use.  Curated with care and free forever, no attribution required.
9. Picography: Picography has been providing stunning images to millions of people for the past 3 years. It is now one of the top sources for gorgeous, high-resolution, free photos.
10. Foca stock: Foca provides free photography for personal and commercial use. The content spans many categories, including nature, city scenes, technology, workspaces, and macro photography.
11. Snappa: Snappa is a graphic design tool for digital marketers and small businesses that create highly engaging images without the help of a graphic designer. Snappa enables you to easily create online graphics that can be used for ads, social media, and blogs without the need for graphic designers or Photoshop.
12. Picjumbo: The world’s quirkiest collection of free high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and commercial projects. All completely free of copyright restrictions.
13. Kaboom pics: Every month, over 70.000 people from 209 countries visit Kaboompics, a royalty-free service for stock images. Kaboompics is one of the most popular sources of free images for lifestyle, interior design and specialized bloggers in World.
14. Skitterphoto: Skitterphoto was founded by passionate amateur photographers from The Netherlands. Skitterphoto now offers photographers around the world the opportunity to show off their work and share their work worldwide through the platform.
15. Life of Pix: Life Of Pix is a community who shares free high-resolution photos with no Copyrights restrictions. Photos are for personal & commercial use.
16. Little visuals: Little Visuals began life as a passion project of Nic Jackson. The website has free, high-resolution intending to recapture history. Free of known copyright restrictions. 
17. Foodies Feed: Food photographers from all around the world share their photos under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license to help accomplish the ultimate goal of Foodiesfeed, to make the online space related to food more beautiful and eliminate all the ugly sterile stock photos that people still keep using.
18. Stocksnap: The #1 source for beautiful free photos. High quality and high-resolution stock images free from all copyright restrictions (CC0) – no attribution required.
19. Gratisography: Gratisography is the world’s quirkiest collection of high-resolution free stock images, composed of the world’s best, most creative pictures — images you just won’t find anywhere else.
20. Morguefile: Morguefile is a free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” The site was created to serve as a free image exchange for creative professionals and teachers to use in their work. 
21. Stockvault: We are a free stock photo community where photographers & artists can share their photos and artwork with people from all over the world. All their stock photos, images & vectors are 100% free.
22. Picjumbo: Picjumbo is a free stock photo site created in 2013 by designer & photographer Viktor Hanacek. Now it’s one of the best free stock photo sites with thousands of very high-resolution free stock images.
23. Pikwizard: Pikwizard has close to 100,000 high-quality images, with 20,000 of these completely exclusive to the site. What makes Pikwizard stand out however is its high-quality images of people, which are few and far between on the best stock photography websites.
24. Rawpixel: Rawpixel is smashing stereotypes to create design resources that reflect today’s society as it is. They strive to explore new ways to express concepts with creativity and authenticity. They are extremely proud of having the most diverse stock photos in the industry but we want to do more.
25. Reshot: Reshot is a curated gallery of authentic stock photos that are free to use to elevate your next creative project. They aim to provide creatives in need of visual content, a place to freely explore and license some of the world’s best imagery.

All of these different stock photo websites provide a wide range of stock images for you to choose from and use for your website, products, services and a lot more. Check them out and see for yourself!