There are many websites on the Internet that offer "free" images for download, including icons, vectors, logos, clipart, stock photos, and other assets. However, just because you can download them for free, that doesn't necessarily mean you can use them in your own projects. That could be illegal, and you may get sued for it. In this article, I'll list and compare some such websites, so we can understand where it's safe to download images from, and where it's riskier.
Foreword
What "Free" Means in "Free Images"
In general, you can't download an image you find on the Internet and use it in your own projects or post it elsewhere without a license from the copyright holder, which normally means you have to contact the author of the work to negotiate a license.
One exception for this negotiation are works that are distributed with a license already, e.g. in which the author explicitly grants everyone the right to copy the file, so long as they follow some terms, which commonly include, for example, giving proper attribution to the author, so that people don't think you created the image.
Popularly, this license would be a Creative Commons license (abbreviated CC) [https://creativecommons.org/], although similar licenses exist. Some works may also be released into Public Domain (PD), which means anyone can use them without worrying about copyright. These are also called copyleft, because it's not copyright.
There's a similar, but different term, called royalty-free, in which you must purchase a license, but the license doesn't require you to pay royalties per use (i.e. it's an one-time fee).
Without a license, "free" only means free for personal use. You can view it for free and download it to view later for free, but you can't use it in your projects. Some CC licenses are free for non-commercial use, which means you can't use the image in a Youtube video, for example, if you earn money from ads displayed next to the video. Finally, some CC licenses are free for commercial use, which means you can use them however you want. Besides these restrictions, some CC licenses may also restrict you from modifying (remixing) the original image. Resizing and cropping isn't considered remixing, but tracing it or doing something that would normally give you copyright of a derivative work is considered remixing in the license.
Criteria
A few important criteria considered:
License: the free website contains license information. Without license, we are literally not licensed to use it, and it's likely they aren't license to distribute it either!
Authorship: there is author information. Without author information, we can't be sure it's not just one bot uploading random images from the Internet and claiming they're free. The more author information and the more readily available the better.
The worst thing that can happen is if you download an image which you believe you are licensed to use, but the uploader was someone who wasn't the copyright holder to begin with, i.e. they just stole the image from someone else and told you it was okay to use.
In particular, some smaller websites are communities and platforms that support licensing, while some larger are aggregators that repost licensed work from other sources. While there is nothing wrong with this, as the work is licensed, these aggregators may be programmed naively: when someone posts in a platform, the aggregator copies the information, but if it turns out the original didn't have copyright, and it's taken down from the platform were it was originally posted, the aggregator may not update its version (by deleting it) to match the situation on the source. Aggregators are great to find things, but you must make sure the things you find are actually licensed the way the aggregator claims by checking the source.
Search: there is search, which means licensing information is supported natively by the website. As licensing is a legal thing, and not a technology thing, you can grant a Creative Commons license just by writing so somewhere on the page. It's possible to find CC-licensed works in websites that do not support licensing fields through Google and other search engines. This specially matters for the very few platforms that allow both licensed and non-licensed works. Most of the platforms on this list are focus on licensed or public domain works only.
Legend:
★/☆ 10 star rating.
✅ positive remark.
⚠️ caveat, issue or disappointing remark.
❌ critical issue.
🏠 community or platform where users can create accounts and upload works themselves, presumably of their own authorship.
🌎 website with owner that publishes own works.
🍎 aggregator or search engine that indexes third-party works.
PD: public domain.
CC0: creative commons zero (as public domain as legally possible globally).
CC BY: attribution required.
CC NC: non-commercial.
CC ND: non-derivative (no remixes allowed).
CC SA: share-alike (derivatives must have the same CC license).
Forewarnings
Commercial Stock Image Advertisements
Many platforms have ads for commercial stock image platforms, which are not free. Some of these ads may look very similar to the free content on search pages.
Illustrations and AI-Generated Images
Several platforms are infested with AI-generated images. Part of the reason for this is that the platforms allow users to tip (send money to) users who upload images, so there is financial motivation to spam as many AI-generated images as possible.
In some cases, a single user will have uploaded tens of thousands of AI-generates images tagged as illustration. Needless to say, it's beyond impossible for a human artist to compete with this quantity. Without a way to filter out AI, the results end up being full of AI. In some platforms that can filter AI, often uploaders do not tag their AI-generated work as AI-generated even if the platform says they should.
The consequence is that, currently, there are almost no websites on the Internet where you can reliably search for human-made artwork that is free to use. You can only find AI-generated images and historic artworks in public domain. The only exceptions appear to be OpenClipart, which has a vetting process for new users, and FreeSVG, which requires vector images to be in SVG format (popular image-generation AI models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E do not generate SVG files, so it's not possible for AI users to contribute to this platform).
Reviews
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/] is a 🏠 platform related to the Wikipedia that hosts user-uploaded content, including photos, graphics, icons, clipart, and so on. Work uploaded to Wikimedia Commons can be used for free, including for commercial purposes. The only requirement is attribution.
★★★★★★★★★★
License: ✅ found on every page.
Authorship: ✅ uploaders have profiles. In some cases, the uploader of an image may not be its author. They may be uploading a CC BY work found in another website (often Flickr). In such case, you must attribute the photographer, not the uploader.
Search: ✅ there is full text search ✅ and there are categories that may have hierarchies.
Flickr
Flickr [https://flickr.com/] is a 🏠 platform for sharing photographs, some of which are licensed as creative commons.
★★★★★★★★★★
License: ✅ displayed on every page.
There have been issues with abuse by users of the licensing field before. The company has made its stance clear:
Flickr's new community guidelines prohibit copyleft trolling: "Failure to allow a good faith reuser the opportunity to correct errors is against the intent of the license and not in line with the values of our community, and can result in your account being removed."
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/01/pixsynnussija/#pilkunnussija (accessed 2024-09-09)
Authorship: ✅ authors have profiles and galleries, with plenty of information and means to contact them.
Search: ✅ allows searching for CC BY, CC BY NC, CC BY NC, and CC BY NC ND works. Some U.S. government institutions have Flickr accounts. Their work is in public domain which can be search for specifically as well.
OpenVerse
OpenVerse [https://openverse.org/] is a 🍎 search engine for images published in public domain and creative common licenses.
★★★★★★★★★★
License: ✅ display on every page.
Authorship: ✅ authors are clearly marked. A "Get this image" button links to the source page.
OpenVerse indexes several first-party sources, such as Flickr and the NASA, and also third-party sources such as museums.
As a happy consequence, ✅ it's the aggregator with the smallest amount of AI-generated imagery. The only AI-generated images come from Flickr accounts that uploaded AI-images to the platform that is supposed to be only for photography.
Search: ✅ it's a search engine. There are filters for all categories of Creative Commons licenses: CC BY, with or without ND, NC, and SA, and CC0 or PD only. ⚠️ All thumbnails are square, so parts of the image may be cropped.
OpenClipArt
OpenClipArt [https://openclipart.org/] is a 🏠 platform for sharing public domain clipart and vector graphics in SVG format.
Size: "Now with 180205 clipart."
★★★★★★★★★★
License: ✅ there is no license per page, but a link on the footer indicates that all works are published under Public Domain.
Authorship: ✅ authors have galleries, but apparently no way to describe themselves.
Every work has a description and new users are vetted. Work from third-parties is contributed by "librarians" who do include in detail the source of the clipart in the work page..
Search: ✅ works have tags.
PublicDomainVectors
PublicDomainVectors [https://publicdomainvectors.org/] is an 🍎 aggregator and 🌎 personal website that hosts vector artwork in public domain.
★★★★★★★★★☆
Size: "70,000 vector images in public domain."
License: ✅ displayed on every page.
Authorship: ⚠️ confusingly, it seems that this is displayed under "source" on pages. In many cases it says "Public Domain Vectors," which is the name of the website itself. Presumably that means the website owner created the vector artwork themselves and published it as public domain.
After trying several images, it seems that the only other source on the website is OpenClipart.
That said, ✅ works by OpenClipart are links that go directly to the work page on the OpenClipart website, where you can find authorship information, so it's a plus.
Search: ✅ there is a search box.
OpenGameArt
OpenGameArt [https://opengameart.org/] is a 🏠 platform for sharing free assets for game development, including graphics (sprites, tilesets, fonts), sound effects, music, and other. It doesn't have as many assets as other platforms.
★★★★★★★★☆☆
License: ✅ displayed on every page.
Authorship: ✅ authors have profiles and galleries, and their own description.
Search: ✅ works have tags.
Picjumbo
Picjumbo [https://picjumbo.com/] is a 🌎 personal website by photographer Viktor Hanacek.
★★★★★★★★☆☆
License and Authorship: ✅ all works on Picjumbo are published by Viktor Hanacek himself, all under the same custom license terms, which allow commercial use for free. Although it does note that some photos may not have model license (from the person who is modelling for the photo).
⚠️ Some of the images on the site are AI-generated. They are marked so.
Search: ✅ there is a search box.
FreeSVG
FreeSVG [https://freesvg.org/] is a 🏠 platform that hosts free vector images in SVG format uploaded by its users. Anyone can sign up.
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Size: "Total published: 168315."
License: ✅ displayed on every page.
Authorship: ✅ there is a link to the author page, ⚠️ but it's very hard to find it due to the page's design, and it seems there is practically no information about the author.
To make matters worse, many works posted by an "OpenClipart" account, so the author of works uploaded by this account would only be available through OpenClipart's website, and there is no link to the exact page on FreeSVG.
Search: ✅ there is a search box.
This website seems related to PublicDomainVectors. It seems the key difference is that it has (more?) ads instead of depending on donations.
[...] We are Vedran and Boris, administrators of publicdomainvectors.org, a website dedicated to vector images in all graphic formats with public domain license. [...]
[...] We intend to finance this website through advertising and not be dependant on donations to keep the site running. [...]
https://freesvg.org/pages/about-us (accessed 2024-09-09)
Pixabay
Pixabay [https://pixabay.com/] is a 🏠 platform for sharing work that can be used by others for free.
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Size: "Over 5 million+ high quality stock images, videos and music shared by our talented community."
License: ✅ all work on Pixabay is available under Pixabay's own content license. ⚠️ This is confusing because some work uploaded to Pixabay is in fact in public domain.
Authorship: ✅ there is a clear author profile link on every work. Authors have galleries and information about themselves.
⚠️ Pixabay allows users to upload AI-generated images, which can be a source of trouble in the future. Although it tells users they must clearly mark AI-generated images and ensure their models are free of copyright trouble, it's uncertain whether users will actually follow such rules.
Just by searching for "illustration" and hiding AI-generated images you can easily find AI-generated images that weren't tagged as AI-generated. I found one user that upload 47 images. Some of them were clearly AI and were marked as AI, others were clearly AI but weren't marked. Then there were images that I'm not sure if they were AI or not, and I can't trust the author to mark them correctly, so I'm just going to assume it's all AI.
I found another AI user on the platform that uploaded 3880 "photos" and 23558 "illustrations." Yes, this person actually generated and uploaded thousands of images for some reason. Pause for a moment to let that sink in. If an user with just 47 images can fail to tag them properly, imagine them with over 25000 images.
Search: ✅ there is a text box and tags. ✅ Although not very reliable, there at least is a way to filter out AI-generated images.
Public Domain Pictures
Public Domain Pictures [https://publicdomainpictures.net/] a 🏠 platform for uploading public domain images.
Size: "582,892 free pictures."
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
License: ✅ all works uploaded to the platform are released into public domain (CC0 license).
Authorship: ✅ uploaders are clearly visible, and may have links to their websites or social media accounts.
⚠️ In many cases, the work comes from a museum and the uploader is not the author, nor is there any information about the actual author on the page. If there is a title, you may be able to find the author by searching the title.
⚠️ This platform allows AI-generates images.
Search: ✅ there is a search box.
Pond5
Pond5 [https://www.pond5.com/] is a 🏠 marketplace that hosts some public domain and free works, including photos, illustrations, videos, sound effects, and music tracks.
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
Size: "35+ million video clips," although most of them are likely not free.
License: ✅ displayed on every page.
⚠️ Pond5 doesn't use Creative Commons licenses, but their own custom licenses which split free works into those licensed only for Editorial Use (presumably only news articles) and those that allow Commercial Use.
⚠️ Some work in public domain is marked for "Editorial Use" only instead of for "Commercial Use," which makes absolutely no sense.
⚠️ You must create an account in order to download a free image.
Authorship: ✅ every author has a gallery, ⚠️ but public domain works are all published under a single user called "Public Domain," with no information about where the PD work came from, and no information on that "Public Domain" user's profile either, even though users can write descriptions about themselves on the platform.
Search: ✅ there is search box. The options to filter by free work are found clicking on Filters, under Additional filters on the sidebar.
Newgrounds
Newgrounds [https://www.newgrounds.com/] is an 🏠 art community website where users may upload videos (in the past, flash animations), artwork, and music. It was originally only about flash animations and games. Because many such projects needed free music, it created a section for music with support for license fields so that users would upload music for other users to use in their flash projects. This field does exist for artworks, so I guess I'll include it here too.
★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Authorship: ✅ authors have galleries.
License: ✅ license is displayed on every page.
Search: ❌ there is no way to specify the license of the artwork in the search.
You can still find them using Google's site: operator. For example, by searching for:
site:newgrounds.com/art/ "noncommercial"DeviantArt
DeviantArt [https://deviantart.com/] is an 🏠 art community website.
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Authorship: ✅ authors have galleries, ⚠️ but some authors clearly upload work that isn't theirs, including screencaps of movies and cartoons, traced artwork, etc.
License and Search: ⚠️ In the past, it was possible to define a license for works that you uploaded on the platform, and the interface allowed you to search by very specific categories of artworks. In 2017, DeviantArt was acquired by Wix1, and in 2019 the website was redesigned2, moving from the iconic green to a generic dark theme. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. Among its regressions, ❌ DeviantArt ruined its search functionality, so it's not possible to search for licensed works on it anymore. You can thank Wix for this, I guess.
To search DeviantArt for CC works, you may try using Google's site: operator and double quote operator like this.
site:deviantart.com "creative commons * 3.0 license"Needpix
Needpix [I refuse to link to this] is an 🍎 aggregator for public domain images.
★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Size: "Over 2+ million royalty free, public domain images for all your needs."
License: ⚠️ licensing information isn't made clear on every page. Using a tag for "public domain" on every image and writing "other public domain images" on the page doesn't instill a lot of trust.
❌ the aggregator mistakenly marks all images as public domain even when they are not. For example, I managed to find this photo of a platypus [https://pixabay.com/photos/duck-water-bird-schwimmvogel-2666441/], which is licensed under Pixabay's license and has nothing in it that says it's in public domain on Needpix, which should be for public domain images only.
❌ the aggregator also appears to infringe upon Viktor Hanacek's copyright. Photos on Picjumbo are not Public Domain, and its terms explicit prohibit download buttons that don't link to Picjumbo's website.
Authorship: ⚠️ every page has the username and original website, but it isn't a link, so you can't just click on the link to go see where the image came from. There is no legitimate reason for this. If you can write a bot to scrape the images and find the username, you can link to the source. What a disappointment!
Search: ✅ there is a search box, ⚠️ but all results' thumbnails are squares even when the aspect ratio of the image is rectangular.
All photos hosted here are collected only from public domain sources such as: pixabay.com, pond5.com, picjumbo.com, publicdomainpictures.net, and others.
https://www.needpix.com/about (accessed 2024-09-09)
References
- https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/website-builder-wix-acquires-art-community-deviantart-for-36m/ (accessed in 2024-09-09) ↩︎
- https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/17/18623190/deviantart-eclipse-redesign-wix-acquisition (accessed in 2024-09-09) ↩︎
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