You don’t need to be a master photographer to get high-quality images for your commercial projects. You don’t even need to hire a photographer directly to take them for you. Nowadays, we have dozens of stock photo websites at our disposal where amateur and professional photographers can submit their work for commercial use. Some of these photo libraries are free, and most have millions of top-shelf pictures that you can use for every occasion and that we love to use for every type of website. 

Nearly every big-name stock photo site now has pictures good enough for our web builds. Still, we like a few of those websites a bit more than the others, so let’s look through our favorites and talk about why they stand out.

1. Pexels

Pexels is one of the best and biggest photo libraries on the internet and we use it nearly daily. It has millions of free stock photos and videos, and its library continues to grow. Not only is Pexels free, but it's free for commercial use. We use their stock photo and video library for our website builds, but you can use it for whatever personal or professional projects you want. 

Pexels is easy to navigate and breaks its photo library into neat, themed collections. For example, we’re officially a few weeks into Autumn as we write this, and Pexels has already created several Fall-themed photo categories. You can explore only the pictures with Autumn subjects and colors there, but Pexels also does this type of organization for several other topics.

Another unique element of Pexels is how it keeps things fun for its users and photographers. They have monthly leaderboards tracking the most viewed photos and profiles over the past 30 days and occasional challenges encouraging photographers to take pictures following specific themes. 

2. Unsplash

Unsplash has existed since 2013, but Getty Images, the world’s premier source of royalty-free pictures, purchased it in 2021. The service hasn’t changed much since the acquisition. It still provides millions of great photos from hundreds of thousands of photographers. 

Unsplash has a more expansive library than Pexels, but it does come with a few caveats. For starters, Unsplash doesn’t have a video library; their selection is limited to photos. Secondly, many of Unsplash’s pictures are exclusive to Unsplash+, the platform’s paid subscription service ($84 a year or $12 monthly).

That’s not to say we don’t love Unsplash. In fact, Unsplash+ is probably worth the price if you use a lot of royalty-free pictures. Especially because Unsplash+ doesn’t cap how many photos you can download a day like the free service. Unsplash’s library has over five million quality pictures, and they’re all exclusive to the website.

3. Nappy

Nappy launched in 2017, making it relatively new to the stock image scene. But it’s already one of our favorite places to find photos, and we’re not the only ones. Nappy’s photo library already has over a million downloads and hundreds of millions of views. And though their library is limited to just pictures, the diversity within those photos and the quality of the photography is what helps them stand out.

Nappy’s mission is to replace the cliche and lack of representation common in stock photography with fantastic, diverse images. They built their brand on the idea that everyone should be included in commercial photography, but most stock photography models are white. Nappy’s library prioritizes stock pictures from black and brown photographers and models to help bring cultural diversity to the stock image space.

The photos on Nappy look great, their website is easy to use, and the company is working toward an admirable goal. There are so many reasons to give Nappy a try.

4. Adobe Stock 

The downside to Adobe Stock is that, unlike the other three websites we’ve looked at, Adobe Stock doesn’t have a free version. However, they do offer a free trial that gives you 10 free downloads, and all you have to do to sign up is create an account with a valid email address. Either way, Adobe’s stock photo service still stands out for the depth of its library. They offer several styles of royalty-free images, including illustrations, vectors, and 3D assets.

Adobe’s illustration styles range from digital renders to stylized paintings, so you won’t have trouble finding a type of art that matches your brand. They have the same depth for their other categories of images too. They even have video and audio downloads in all their subscription plans.

Adobe has several price plans for its stock photo service. Learn more about all of them here on their website.

5. Elevae (Formerly Social Squares)

Elevae has the smallest photo library on this list, with over 6,000 images, but it isn’t just a photo library like the other stock image websites we use. Because, in addition to its top-notch gallery, Elevae has a great selection of webinars and tutorials that show upcoming entrepreneurs how to make the most of those photos. They also offer Canva and website templates and discount codes for web design tools.

Plus, Elevae’s smaller library is a positive in some ways, saving you time sorting through thousands of pictures and instead only selecting from their refined, top-notch library.

Though Elevae isn’t free, they do offer a generous free trial. The trial gives you 20 free downloads before you have to commit to a membership plan. And if you time your sign-up right, you might get a few free extra photos. For example, Elevae offered six free fall-themed pictures for anyone who purchased a membership at the time of writing this on October 5, 2023. 

Elevae also has some free educational resources that will walk you through how to make your social media more engaging, generate more revenue from your business, find captivating images on their website, and more.

Elevae Membership Pricing

• Quarterly Membership: Billed quarterly at $50/month ($149 total at the billing date). This plan gives you access to Elevae’s growing photo and video library, along with marketing training tools and social media caption templates.

• Annual Membership: Billed annually at $42/month ($499 total at the billing date). In addition to everything included in the quarterly membership, this plan has a few business masterclasses and training courses.

• Image-Only Membership: Billed monthly at $39/month. Image-only is Elevae’s cheapest plan, though you can only access their photo library with it.

We recommend combing through all five stock image websites to find the one that works best for you. Though we love all these websites and though they’re similar in several ways, each has a distinct style and unique selling points that will appeal to some people more than others. 

But whether you use all five of these sites or just one, we hope this list helps you find high-quality images for your next project!