Free Blog Images: 37 Best Free Stock Photo Sites for Bloggers

Looking to find images for your blog? You’re in luck because I’ve put together a list of my favorite free stock photo sites for bloggers here.

You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But online, we have to. When so many marketers pull people in all sorts of directions, your brain has to do some quality control and pick the best option.

This is why blog post headlines matter so much. When you do a search on Google, you choose the headline that you think will best answer your question.

The same concept applies when you’re on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. On these platforms, you look at the best headline and image combination.

So it is important to focus on your blog images and headlines to help drive more traffic to your blog.

Free blog images – 37 best stock image sites

Canva

Yeah, you heard me right. I’m calling Canva the best place to find images for your blog. That’s because they have the widest selection of images for blogs, plus other graphics, icons, and templates, all under one roof.

How does Canva have so many free stock images?

Did you know Canva bought Pexels and Pixabay in 2019? That’s right! Your favorite free design platform now has access to over 1 million free stock photos!

When you’re creating a design on Canva, say for an ebook cover, blog post image, or a Pinterest pin, you can use their images on your blog and in your designs.

Bloggers need stock photos for different reasons than other online marketers. While online marketers usually use stock images for their products or paid ads, bloggers use stock images for entirely different reasons.

For example, a blogger might need a stock photo to create a Pinterest pin, an Instagram post, a lead magnet to grow your list. But most of the time, bloggers just want images for their blog posts.

The images below were created with Canva. I use these images on my blog and social media.

Here’s where it gets better, though. If you are a Canva Pro member like I am, you now have access to premium stock photos.

This is a game-changer!

That means you can use premium stock images on your blog without subscribing to a premium stock photo site!

I use these higher-quality stock images to create pin designs like the ones here for my keto blog. Most of these images are “premium” stock photos I didn’t need to pay for.

Canva Pro

Because of Canva, I’m able to create Pinterest pins and paid ads using premium stock images.

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Pexels

While there are plenty of free stock photo sites for bloggers out there, I recommend using Pexels.

Here’s why they’re the best.

• Uh, it’s free. Pexels has completely free stock images for your blog.
• They have a lot of stock photos for just about any blog niche and any image style.
• They have fresh images (and now even free stock videos) that are uploaded daily.
• Pexels has a Discover page where all images in a “collection” follow a similar theme.

When you download images for your blog from stock photo sites like Pexels, realize that the images are HUGE. To speed up your WordPress blog, you need to compress and optimize your images.

I use and recommend using the Optimole plugin to optimize your images (without losing quality!).

By the way, you can find more free blog tools I use here.

123RF

If you’ve been around the game long enough, you can spot the difference between a free stock image and a paid one a mile away! Odds are, some of your readers can too.

There are some stock images so popular that I seemingly see them every single day. Naturally, if I see an overused stock image, I read a book by its cover and assume the blog content is old too.

So if you want to avoid being overlooked, you need to stand out with your images. That’s where a premium stock photography site like 123RF or DepositPhotos comes in to help.

Their stock photos are not available for free. Even a price tag of under $1 per picture is enough to keep them fresh, though.

In addition to pictures, they also have vectors, stock videos, and audio too.

Personally, I would only use a paid stock image site for a blog if you are already making money blogging.

I’d also recommend using them if you’re going to launch an ad campaign and need a strong visual to go along with your ad.

123RF

You’re going to find the best selection of stock images for blogs at a premium stock photo site like 123RF.

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If you’re in a blog niche where it’s harder to find stock photos, you might have better luck finding blog images at one of these other free stock photo sites.

Pikwizard

Over 1 million royalty-free stock images and videos, safe for commercial use, with no attribution required.

PXHere

There’s a big selection here for stock photos for bloggers. You can scroll for days looking for just the right stock image (but please, don’t do that!).

Freepik

In addition to stock photos, Freepik has free vectors, PSD files, and icons you can use freely in your blog posts.

Flickr

There’s an insane amount of images you can use here. But be sure to filter results to display only “creative commons” licenses to avoid copyright issues.

Pixabay

Similar to Pexels in that they have a huge library of free stock images for bloggers.

Unsplash

Another free option of stock photography to choose from.

Stocksnap

Newer stock photo site full of copyright-free images.

Reshot

Handpicked, non-stocky images.

Burst

Stock photo site created by Shopify.

FoodiesFeed

For food/health/fitness bloggers.

Gratisography

Quirky, creative stock images.

Styled Stock

Feminine-style stock photography.

Freestocks.org

Great collection of blog images.

Picography

Find free images to use on your blog here.

Foca

Free photos to use on your blog posts.

PicJumbo

There are a ton of free pictures for blogs here.

Kaboom Pics

Download thousands of royalty-free images for blog posts.

SkitterPhoto

Another nice free image site for blogs.

Life Of Pix

Great source of high-quality blog images.

Wrapping it up

Oh, one more thing before I go. Before you go using random stock photos in your blog posts, I think it’s important to know your brand first. Your brand is much more than just your blog name, the font, color scheme, or blog theme.

To me, your brand is so much more. It is the way you talk, your punctuation, and yes, the types of images you use.

So, before we get started with the list of the best places to find stock photos, I want you to find a “picture style” that fits best with your brand first.

Minimalist, flat lay, laughing faces, funny kids. There are a lot of different themes to choose from.

For example, one brand might use blog images like these:

While another one uses minimalist stock photos like these instead.

Or black and white stock photos like these.

It doesn’t matter which style you pick, but you need to stick to one style only! This will only help enforce your brand.

Oh, and by the way, it goes without saying that you should never use stock images like these:

Whether we like to admit it, online, we always judge a book by its cover. That’s why I always make sure to pick a good picture for my featured image and the images I share on social media.

Thanks for reading! I hope this post has helped you find some great sources for free images for your blog.