Free to use images for commercial use

Can I use Google images for commercial use?

Unless you have either received express permission from the copyright holder or are using public domain images or images that hold the necessary Creative Commons license, using Google images for your website is violating copyright law. There is a Usage Rights filter for Google Images, but that isn’t always accurate.

Free to use images for commercial use (Creative Commons License)

The Creative Commons license means you can do any and all of the following:

• Download the image file
• Publish, revise, copy, alter, and share that image
• Use the image (as-is or as you’ve altered it), in both personal and commercial contexts

You can use the image without buying any rights, acquiring written permission from the image’s creator, or attributing the work to the image creator.

Pexels vs StockSnap vs Pixabay

Over 10 images were easily downloaded from Pexels and StockSnap. Pixabay requires a login to download, so it wasn’t tested.

Pexels and StockSnap both have high quality images. Pixabay has a lot of not safe for work images, so the SafeSearch filter is required to get quality results.

Pexels has the most useful filter, with minimal clicks to filter by orientation and image size.

Pexels is recommended as they don’t require you to login, and they don’t spam a lot of sponsored content of paid stock image platforms.

Pexels

Search resulted in a subset of 500K quality images.

Filter by: Horizontal, Vertical and Size.

Easy to use filter with minimal clicks.

Images are of a high quality, and accurately match the search phrase, with no annoying sponsored images.

Visit Pexels Popular Searches.

The image compositions and quality is of a high standard.

All photos and videos on Pexels are free to use and modify. Attribution is not required.

Download without logging in: YES, downloaded 10 images without logging in.

StockSnap

Search resulted in 7893 images.

Sponsored content appears at the top of search results. Scroll further down the results otherwise you’ll be opening links to Shutterstock.

The search filter is not great.

Images are of a high quality, although they stray from the search phrase.

Visit StockSnap Popular Searches.

StockSnap uses the CC0 license. Use the image as-is or altered, in both personal and commercial contexts. Written permission and attribution is not required.

Download without logging in: YES, downloaded 10 images without logging in.
Sort by: Relevance, date, and other not very useful attributes. Not possible to search based on size.

Unsplash

Pixabay

My test search resulted in 41 images. Some images risqué, not safe for work. Need to enable “SafeSearch”.

Download without logging in: NO.

Forced login, images with low quality content. Not recommended.