9 Best Pixabay Alternatives for your Next Project.
Pixabay is a popular website offering free images. All images on Pixabay are licensed under CC0 license and may be used without any link or permission from the author. We often use Pixabay to collect feature images on TechWiser. But there are times when we couldn’t find the images we wanted on Pixabay.
So, I took the baton and decided to look for the best Pixabay alternatives so that there are always many interesting images on our blog. All of the following websites follow the CC0 license, which means that all content may be used without permission or the need for attribution. It can even be modified and used for both personal and commercial purposes. Let’s start.
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1. Flickr
Suitable for: images with license categories
Flickr is a popular image hosting website that also offers royalty-free licensed images. Licensed Free Images are content uploaded by artists and creators that are selected and reviewed by the Flickr team and published with a license for greater clarity for everyone. Images are listed on the website’s Creative Commons page.
Moreover, you can find the page by searching in the study section or by clicking on this CC link. It has various lists that have images of this category. For example, the Attribution License contains about 35 million images that can be used by anyone, but with one condition that the consumer must provide the name, ID, or credentials of the Creator along with the image, wherever he chooses to use them.
There are different categories with different levels of terms and conditions and restrictions of use that you must comply with. It also has a CC0 section that contains all public domain images that can be used without attribution.
- Number of images: over 1 million free images
- Search function: Advanced
- Tagged images: Yes
- Has a vector image: Yes
- Sign in to upload images: Yes
- License page: Flickr license
a. FreeMages.com
Suitable for high quality stock photos
FreeImages is another stock website that has a large collection of free high quality user-uploaded images. Images are categorized and linked using tags, and you can easily search for related queries using these tags. All content is hosted on the site under CC0. You can browse through the collections, which are basically categories of images, as well as browse and download the ones selected by the editor. Uploading is very easy and you can upload files of different sizes by signing in.
You do not need to include photo credit for commercial use, however, if you are using it for editorial purposes, you must include credit.
Freeimages has a lightbox feature that allows users to create a custom list that has all of the favorites and the list is publicly available. For example, if I want, I can create a list of all the baby photos available on the site and put them in one lightbox.
- Number of images: 390K + images
- Search function: basic
- Tagged images: Yes
- Has vector images: No
- Requires joining to upload images: Yes
- License Page: Freeimages License
3. StockSnap
Suitable for a large number of images presented in different categories.
Stocksnap isn’t just an image database that offers images, but it has a trending page showing the most popular images. You can browse by category or by the latest uploaded images. It is also possible to search for images by views, publication date, favorites and downloads.
You can create an account and start adding images to your favorites, which will be saved in your account, and you can directly upload them at any time, instead of relentlessly searching for them. And you can subscribe to receive popular images every week by email.
- Number of images: 50K + images
- Search function: advanced
- Tagged images: Yes
- Has a vector image: No
- Required to join to upload images: No
- License Page: Stocksnap License
4. Unsplash
Best for: Searching for images submitted by photographers
Unsplash is not an image website, but offers images submitted by content creators and photographers. The collections page is divided into categories with different types of photos and can be viewed using tags. You can see popular images among users on the trending page.
Log in and you will be able to upload your work too, and with Unsplash you can create and modify existing images and host them on your website if you can animate the original images, which in turn will be published on the web website and available to everyone. You can create stunning images that can be redesigned by anyone on this site. Searching for images is very easy and you can search directly by entering keywords and the results are relevant if the image you are looking for exists in the database.
- Number of images: 40K +
- Search feature: Advanced
- Tagged images: Yes
- Has a vector image: Yes
- Required to join to upload images: None
- License page: Unsplash license
5. Pexels
Good for: Searches almost all types of images for free.
Pexels is a great platform for photographers to showcase their creations and all popular images are featured on the front page among all other artists. Like FreeImages, Pexels has one of the largest collections of free images. Pexels is very popular with photographers and grabs their attention and images are featured on the home page of the site. There are several ways to find images on this website: you can directly search for what you are looking for and it will display the results. You can go to the browse section and select Popular Photos, Popular Searches, or Leaderboard.
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They often run photo contests to find the best photographs that are then featured on their websites. This public building, in turn, provides better image quality for everyone. You can create and share your content on the website, and contribute to the development of a community and database of stunning images.
- Number of images: more than 100 thousand
- Search function: Advanced
- Tagged images: Yes
- Has a vector image: Yes
- Required to join image uploads: None
- License Page: Pexels License
6. Free of charge
Good for – Unusual and creative free images.
Gratisography doesn’t have such a huge database as the others, but it has one of the most unusual and creative images out there. The featured images are free and specially selected by the team, and only the wittiest images make it to the showcase. Although it does offer Shutterstock-sponsored images on its website nonetheless.
They believe in quality over quantity and offer different styles for each category. There are just over 500 images in the catalog, but each of them is unique and you won’t find it anywhere else. Published images are processed only after the image creates another use case or becomes unique.
- Number of images: 500+
- Search function: basic
- Tagged Images: None
- Has a Vector Image: None
- Required to join to upload images: No
- License Page: Gratisography License
7. Burst
Best for – awesome stock photography
Burst is a subdomain of shopify.com and offers high quality stock images for commercial use. Artists create and contribute to the website with their content (Shopify is famous among hobbyists and online sellers), and approved images are posted online. These categories differ from each other and are updated regularly.
You can find the latest additions in the New Photos section or browse the most popular ones. Burst shooting is a great option when you are looking for images of nature, nature, people and animals.
- Number of images: more than 10 thousand
- Search function: basic
- Tagged images: yes
- Has a vector image: no
- Required to join to upload images: yes
- License page: pack license
Z. Gtv.tumblr.com
Best For – Technological Stock Photos
I write a lot about technology and this user has a niche collection of high quality images that work best for technology. The images are great and also completely free. It’s not a standalone website, but the content available is awesome and worth mentioning on our list.
The collection is very niche and original, moreover, the content is regularly updated on the site.
- Number of images: 200+
- Search function: no
- Tagged images: Yes
- Has a vector image: No
- Required to join to upload images: no
9. LibreStock
Suitable for – indexing content
LibreStock is an indexing website that searches for free images on a website and displays the results when you submit a request. This search engine is optimized for finding free images on the Internet. It does offer quality results from most other image sharing websites like Flickr, Pexels, and Shutterstock.
The interface is simple and offers new images from different websites on its home page almost every day. Although the search results differ depending on the query and the content available on websites under CC0. I searched for a couple of weird queries (for example, a girl with dreadlocks and a cat) and, oddly enough, 70% of the time I got the corresponding results. However, if it can’t index the images, it offers results from Shutterstock, which is a paid site, and leaves you with two options: go to ShutterStock, or search elsewhere.
- Number. Images: Indexed
- Search Feature: Advanced
- Tagged Images: Yes
- Has a vector image: Yes
- Requires joining to upload images: No
- License page: Librestock license
What do I use?
I at Techwiser use images from the aforementioned sites or a free mockup. Mockups save a lot of time and look professional while maintaining aesthetics. I usually get all of my stuff from the Mockup world and Canva and the results are often brilliant. Most of the layouts are PSD and it’s very easy to edit them, which means I can just place my screenshots and it will automatically align them. I wrote about this because it was very useful for us and will be for you too. Here is a list of all resource websites that you can also use for stock images. You can check them out at heyalexej
READ ALSO: Mockup Tools to Add Device Frame to Screenshot
Best Pixabay alternatives for your next project
While Freeimages has a large database of images, Burst and Gratisography offer you unique image catalogs. LibreStock finds the best image searches on the web, but my favorite is Unsplash and Stocksnap. tell us about your favorite Pixabay alternatives.