Places with free (no-attribution) images for your website/project

📄 Wiki page | 🕑 Last updated: Oct 1, 2022

Free, high-quality photos and images are an extremely valuable resource to almost all developers, and especially to web developers.

Images published on sites in this list are either public domain (usually CC0 license) or published under permissive licenses which allows personal and commercial use and modifications with no attribution.

Note: Despite the fact that attribution is not required, it's nice to give an attribution to author whenever you can.

For each site, I'll include a bit of general info, license info and a screenshot of the search results for the term "penguin".

Without further ado, here's a list of sites which I find the most relevant in this regard:

Pixabay

Pixabay, Penguin

Pixabay was founded in November 2010 in Ulm, Germany by Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinberger.

The interface is clean with no obtrusive ads.

Images are published under CC0 license (Creative Commons Zero), which basically means that the author has dedicated their work to the public domain and waived their copyright rights. You can find more info here: Guidelines.

Unsplash

Unsplash, Penguin

Unsplash was created in 2013 by Mikael Cho. Today it's owned by Getty Images (but it operates as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images with Cho still in charge).

The interface is not as clean as it once was (there is a lot of ads).

Images are covered by custom Unsplash license. It allows personal and commercial use without attribution, but there are some restrictions (using images in a similar or competing service, selling unaltered copies, including selling the photos as prints or printed on physical goods). You can find more info here: License.

Burst

Burst, Penguin

Burst is Shopify’s free stock photo site created in 2017.

The interface is pretty clean with no obtrusive ads.

Uploaded images are published either under CC0 license or under custom Burst License (at Shopify’s sole discretion). More info:

Pexels

Pexels, Penguin

Pexels was founded in Germany in 2014.

The interface is pretty clean with no obtrusive ads.

Images are published under custom license which allows personal and commercial use without attribution, but there are some restrictions: License.


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