The 5 best places to get Royalty free photos, Creative Commons images, and stock picture photos for your blog or website are listed here with all the instructions and image licenses to free download royalty free, creative commons, stock photos. 

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The free stock photo websites in this list are the best place to find and free download royalty free images and stock pictures with these image attributions: free, royalty free ( RF), Creative Commons (CC), share alike, and public domain free photos.


The free stock photo websites in the list allow to download free royalty free photos with the type of attributions that says that you can use those royalty free photos and pictures for your personal use and can also use them on your websites. 

You can use and share these photos on Facebook as well, but you need to read copyright laws carefully for any type of free photos that comes under the attribution of “royalty free photos”, “creative commons images”, or “free stock photos” before using them on your blog or anywhere else.



You will find the three types of free stock photos websites listed here . 

And all the free images on the Internet webs come under these 3 labels:

1. Royalty Free Photos or Images.
2. Creative Commons Attributive Free Photos.
3. Public Domain free Photos.

But Before rushing to these free stock photos or royalty free photos sites you need to learn about below described 3 types of main copyright licenses involved while using these ‘intellectual properties’  or ‘creative works’ shared by the license holder. It won’t take you more than 5 minutes to grasp the concept. And it’s worth it !

Photo Credit- freedigitalphotos.net/

Understanding the copyright laws for downloading images for your blog, website


If you are a blogger, writer, or online publisher, then you must have heard about copyright laws involved in downloading royalty free photos, stock pictures, creative commons photo images offered by others, since these images come under certain copyright law/ license and you need to abide by the copyright laws and rules. 

The rules that are defined by the author/ publisher/ photographer. Some novice bloggers just take away images from any other websites on the internet being unaware by the copyright laws involved in the creative works.

You should always avoid this malpractice.  You need to give full credit to the publisher/author in order to use it for your own blog or website writing works.





Stock photo websites offer photos, images, or graphics downloading under following types/ categories

1. Paid Images-You need to pay some amount to buy these stock photos for your blog or website.Paid images come under Stock Photo License (SPL)
2. Royalty Free(RF) –You pay one time for buying these types of royalty free photos and you are not charged any royalty and are free to use/reuse it for multiple times in future.
3. Free Royalty Free Images (RF)-If i buy a royalty free image and give it to you for free, then its said,” Free Royalty Free Images”. Make sure that the license you bought provides you the right to resell it or give it others for free .
4. Creative Commons (CC) Free Images-This license has become very popular and most of the content on the internet is shared under this attribution. You can use the images/any work on your blogs for free if the works are available under this Creative Commons license. More on this later…
5. Free Images- Absolutely free in every sense.No strings attached. No license required.
6. Public Domain--Those images that fall in this category are “unlicensed/delicensed ” and you can take them free of cost and can use on your blog sites. These are free for public use. No license required. No credit or link back required.

Creative Commons

Types of Creative Commons Photos

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization and it facilitates and governs the creative work shared under CC license by authors and license holders in order to share their published creative work with others. 


The other people who build upon this shared work need to follow Creative Commons license . Creative Commons license protects the CC works and comes under following categories-

• Attribution (CC BY)
• Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
• Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY–ND)
• Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC)
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY–NC-ND)

Using Creative-Commons creative-works on your blog-

• If you are going to free download an image for your blog or website, first of all read the Creative Commons license properly and attribute accordingly
• Always give full credit to the Creative Commons license holder. Attribute the Creative Commons license work as specified by the author/photographer.
• Creative Commons license doesn’t need a permission and you don’t need to inform the author or photographer in writing, but you can do so. You are getting the images free of cost and if you leave a comment in appreciation of the work then it would make the author happy.You are also giving something in return !
• For e.g, the above image logo is a property of Creative Commons Organization, but its available for use under CC license and i have provided the link back to the original website-http://creativecommons.org/ as was explained in CC Attribution license.

Where to get Free Photos- 5 Best Online Places on the Internet

Bloggers need free royalty free photos for their blogs everyday. And, there could be some posts where you need lots of royalty free photos.

So, the real question is, where to get these royalty free photos for your blog site? What are the best places to find the royalty free images?


Nowadays due to a high demand for free photos for blog posts many photo stock websites have started providing “free royalty free” photos with high resolution, best quality, and content. 

These photos fall under creative commons attribute and you need to give proper credit in the form of a link back to the original website of the photographer or photo stock websites as required in the terms and conditions policies for use.

#1 Royalty Free Photos

What is Royalty free images? This “royalty free or RF” term is applied to give the right/permission to use any copyrighted material without the requirement to pay the royalty for each or multiple use for some period of time.


Royalty free images are of the two types-

1. Free royalty free images: you get the royalty free images free of cost. You are free to use for personal, corporate, or project work (still its better to check the license).
2. Royalty free images: you have to pay one time small charge for buying royalty free photos and you can repeatedly use it for without paying a royalty for any secondary or multiple use.

The websites listed below are a few of the best stock photo websites for downloading royalty free images. You just need to give full credit to the photographer/ author by linking back to the original site of the author, or as mentioned in the website.

Open Photo.net : An Open Place to get Royalty Free Photos

Open Photo.net is a very big site for royalty free images and stock photos. 

All the royalty free images and pictures on this website are of high resolution and good quality. 

You can free download royalty free photos from this site for personal or commercial use only by giving a link back to the author/owner of the selected picture as explained in the site. Find your favorite royalty free photos on Open Photo.net

Free Digital Photos : A big Hub for loads of royalty free, Creative Commons and stock photo 

Free Digital Photos Offers an outstanding collection of stock photos for royalty free and creative commons images. 


To get  royalty free images for your website or blog from this one of the 5 best stock photo websites, all you need to do is give a link back to the author’s Home page URL which is provided at the time of downloading royalty free photos.

‘Free Digital Photos’  really has a cool royalty free photos resources for bloggers, website owners.Royalty free photos found on this site are of very high resolution and outstanding quality..Download Royalty Free Photos for your own blog

To find more such royalty free images websites check my other post : Top 10 best royalty free web sites-2017

#2 Free Images With Creative Commons Photo Attribution

As explained above Creative Commons license permits you to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this work. And you can even use it commercially. 

You need to take care of one thing that you provide full credit to the Creative License Holder in the form of a link back to the holder’s specified page.

There are so many websites that provide free images or photos under CC license, i have mentioned only the one very famous website for such type of images. 

That is Flickr ! Flickr is the best website for getting free images under Creative Commons license. Just find your favorite photos and check for CC license.


17 Great sites to get Free Images for your Website

Flickr :The Best Website to find Creative Commons Images 

Flickr is the world’s #1 website or community for online photo uploading, sharing, and downloading.

You can find millions photos listed on Flickr. You can free download any type of image to use for your blog. 


You just have to be aware about all the above mentioned 6 categories of the Creative Commons work. And you need to give credit to the author accordingly. 

For eg, the simplest and most welcoming CC license is “Attribution”.In this you just need to give a link back to the author. And if someone else uses it from you, then by linking back to the original author will do the work !Find Creative Commons Photos on Flickr.

#3 Public Domain: Free Photos and Graphics

Photos found under the term- “Public Domain” are absolutely free for any type of use. You are free to download any picture or image, can use it anywhere. No strings attached! Free for all purpose!! No attribution required !!!

Pixabay:All free Photos

Public Domain Free Images

 All photos on Pixabay are very high quality and uploaded mostly by professional photographers.

Free for all purpose photos! You don’t need to register to get free photos images from this site. 

You can also upload your own photos on Pixabay.Pixabay is really a very good website for free downloading of any type of photos.


Pixabay has pictures for every occasion , mood , and use! No attribution required.Its Really a very famous site for getting free images for your blog or website. Find free photos on Pixabay