10 Places To Find Free Stock Photos For Blogging

Last updated: September 2026

Free stock photo sites let you download and use photographs at no cost, under a licence set by the site rather than by copyright law. The best of them in 2026 are Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Canva and StockSnap. Every one of them carries restrictions, usually around selling unmodified images, showing identifiable people, and implying endorsement by a brand.

Key takeaways

• Free does not mean copyright free. Each site grants you a licence with conditions, and the conditions differ between sites.
• Attribution is optional on most major sites, including Unsplash and Pexels, but the other restrictions are not.
• Australian copyright is free and automatic under the Copyright Act 1968, so an image found through Google Images is owned by somebody the moment it was taken.
• The riskiest images are the ones with recognisable faces, logos, branded products or private property in them.
• Google reads your filename and alt text, not the photograph, so a good image with a filename like IMG00023.JPG does nothing for your blog.

What is a free stock photo site?

A free stock photo site is a library that hosts photographs contributed by photographers and grants visitors a licence to download and use them at no charge. The site does not give away copyright. It grants permission, and that permission comes with conditions written on the licence page.

This distinction is where most blogs get into trouble. “Free to download” and “free to do anything with” are not the same sentence.

Two conditions appear on almost every major site. You cannot sell the image as the product itself, meaning as a print, a poster or on a mug, without adding real creative work to it first. And you cannot use a photo of a recognisable person in a way that implies they endorse your business.

Which free stock photo sites are worth using in?

Ten sites still hold up. The table below covers what each is best for and what its licence allows, so you can pick before you start searching rather than after.

Unsplash, and what the licence actually says

Unsplash is the default starting point because the library is the largest. Its licence page grants an irrevocable, worldwide licence to download, copy, modify and use the images commercially, without permission from or attribution to the photographer or Unsplash. The same page names two things you cannot do: sell the images without significant modification, and compile Unsplash images to replicate a similar or competing service.

Unsplash has been owned by Getty Images since 2021. The free licence has not changed, but a paid Unsplash+ tier now sits alongside it with different terms, so check which library an image came from before using it in an advertisement.

Pexels, and the rule about people

The Pexels licence allows free personal and commercial use with no attribution, and specifically bars using images where identifiable people appear in a bad light or in an offensive context, selling unaltered copies, implying endorsement by the people or brands shown, and redistributing the photos on other stock platforms.

That endorsement clause is the one Australian small businesses breach without noticing. Putting a smiling stranger next to the words “our happy customers” implies something the licence does not permit.

Burst, and why it is still on the list

Burst is in maintenance mode. Shopify has stopped accepting new submissions, and the library has moved to shopify.com/stock-photos. The existing images remain free and downloadable, and the retail and product sets are still among the better free options for an online store, which is why the site stays on the list with a warning rather than getting cut.

What does Australian copyright law say about using images?

Australian copyright protection is free, automatic and unregistered. The Australian Government’s business.gov.au guidance states that the moment an idea or creative concept is documented on paper or electronically it is automatically protected by copyright under the Copyright Act 1968, that there is no registration process in Australia, and that protection generally lasts 70 years after the death of the author.

Read that in reverse and the practical rule appears. Every photograph you find through Google Images is owned by somebody, from the instant the shutter closed, without anyone filing anything. Right-clicking and saving is not a licence.

If you use an image you had no licence for, the copyright owner can ask you to remove it and can pursue you for damages through the courts. Australia has no fixed statutory penalty for this, so any figure quoted as a standard fine, usually a United States number, does not describe Australian law. What Australian businesses actually receive is a takedown demand, sometimes with an invoice attached from an agency that monitors image use at scale.

Licences are not the only right in play. A free stock photo can be correctly licensed and still cause a problem if it contains a recognisable person, a logo, a branded product or private property. Those carry separate rights, and the stock site does not clear them for you.

How do you make stock photos work for SEO?

Search engines cannot see a photograph. They read the text around it, the filename and the alt attribute, which is why an unedited download called IMG00023.JPG contributes nothing to a blog post.

Google’s own image SEO documentation says the filename gives Google light clues about the subject matter, recommends short descriptive filenames such as my-new-black-kitten.jpg over generic names like IMG00023.JPG, names alt text as the most important attribute for providing metadata about an image, and asks that images sit near relevant text on a relevant page.

Four steps, each taking seconds. Rename the file before uploading, using hyphens and plain words. Compress it, because a 4MB hero image will cost you more in page speed than the photo earns in engagement. Write alt text that describes what is actually in the picture. Place the image beside the paragraph it illustrates, not wherever the layout has a gap.

There is an AEO angle too. Alt text is now read by AI search tools building an understanding of your page, so a description written for a screen reader is doing a third job it was never designed for.

How do you pick a photo that does not look like stock?

Pick the image that could plausibly have been taken in your business, and reject the one that could belong to any business anywhere. That single filter removes most of the usual suspects: the diverse team laughing at a whiteboard, the handshake over a desk, the woman with a headset.

Three habits help. Search for the object rather than the concept, so “flat white on a marble counter” rather than “customer service”. Prefer photos with a specific, unglamorous detail in them. And crop hard, because tight crops read as intentional while full frames read as downloaded.

Then check the obvious geography. An image of a house with an American power point on the wall, a left-hand-drive car in the driveway or snow in the background will quietly tell a Melbourne reader this page was not written for them.

When should a Melbourne business stop using stock photos?

Picture a cafe in Brunswick East. The website uses three downloaded photos: a barista who does not work there, a bowl of granola they do not serve, and a room with better light than the actual shop. The photos are correctly licensed and they are costing the business customers, because the first thing a visitor does is compare the website to the Google Business Profile pictures taken by real customers, and the two do not match.

Here is what DigiFix would do. Week 1: shoot the room, the staff and six menu items on a phone during the quiet hour after 2pm, which produces more usable images than most owners expect. Week 2: use those on the homepage, the menu page and the Google Business Profile, and keep stock photography for the blog only, where the image illustrates an idea rather than a promise. Ongoing: add one real photo a fortnight so the library grows without anyone booking a photographer.

The rule underneath is simple. Stock photography is fine for an idea and wrong for a promise. Any image implying “this is us” or “this is what you will get” should be a photo of your business.

What do Australian businesses ask about free stock photos?

Where should your business go next?

If you are setting up a content process, decide once where images come from and write it down, because the mistakes happen when someone is in a hurry and grabs whatever loads first. If you already have a library of downloaded images, spend an hour checking the ones on your homepage and service pages, which are the ones that make promises.

The DigiFix blog covers the rest of the content process, starting with how to choose a topic worth writing about and what makes website copy convert. You can see finished work in the DigiFix portfolio, and meet the people who would do it on the About DigiFix page.