- "Free stock" spans several licence types - public domain, site licences, attribution-required and editorial-only - and only the first two are genuinely no-strings.
- Site licences (Unsplash, Pexels) allow commercial use but forbid redistributing the image as stock itself.
- Model and property releases, not the licence, are what usually create risk in ads and packaging.
- Keep a dated record of the licence terms before you ship client work - terms can change without notice.
- AI-generated stock sidesteps model releases but raises its own ownership and trademark questions.
Why “free” isn’t one thing
Every site in this directory is free to use, but they don’t all mean the same thing by it. One site has waived copyright entirely. Another keeps copyright and grants you a broad, revocable licence. A third asks for a credit line and treats a missing one as a breach. From a download button, all three look identical.
The practical consequence: an image that’s perfectly safe on a blog post can be a problem on a billboard, on product packaging, or inside an app you sell. Knowing which bucket you’re in takes about a minute and removes almost all of the risk.
The licences you’ll actually meet
Public domain and CC0
The photographer has given up their rights, or copyright has expired. Museum archives, government agencies, and most CC0 sites sit here. You can modify, resell, and redistribute with no credit required. This is the only bucket where the image itself is fully unencumbered.
Custom site licences
Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay each publish their own licence. They’re generous - commercial use is fine, no credit required - but they share one restriction that catches people out: you can’t compile the images and offer them as a competing stock service, and you can’t resell an unaltered copy as a print or template asset.
Attribution required (CC BY)
Free, including for commercial use, provided you credit the creator in the form they specify. The credit has to be visible to the viewer of the work - a line buried in a sitemap doesn’t count.
Editorial only
Common with event, sports, and news photography. The image may illustrate a story but never promote a product. If the asset is going anywhere near a campaign, this bucket is off the table.
| Licence | Commercial use | Credit | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| CC0 / public domain | Yes | Not required | Trademarks still apply to logos in frame |
| Unsplash / Pexels licence | Yes | Appreciated | No redistributing as stock or templates |
| CC BY | Yes | Mandatory | Credit must be visible in the work |
| Editorial only | No | Usually required | Never for ads, packaging or merch |
Four checks before you download
None of these take long, and together they cover the situations that actually end in a takedown notice or an invoice.
- Read the licence on the site, not on a blog. Aggregators go stale; the source page is the contract.
- Look for recognisable people. A free licence isn’t a model release. Commercial use of an identifiable face needs one.
- Look for property. Landmarks, artwork, branded products, and interiors can carry their own restrictions.
- Save your evidence. A dated screenshot of the licence page and the download URL, stored with the asset.
The licence protects the copyright, not the person in the photo. Releases are a separate question - and they’re the one clients get sued over.
Where AI-generated stock fits now
Generated imagery removes the release problem: there’s no model and no property. It introduces two new ones. Ownership of generated output varies by jurisdiction and by the tool’s terms, and models will happily reproduce a trademark or a recognisable style if you ask them to. Treat generated assets like any other download - record the tool, the prompt, and the date, and keep brand names out of the frame.
A workflow that scales
For a team, the fix is boring and effective: one shared folder per project, each asset filed with a short text note containing the source URL, licence name, download date, and whether a credit is owed. Two minutes at download time; hours saved when someone asks, eighteen months later, where the hero image came from.
If you only adopt one habit from this piece, make it that note. Everything else here is a way of deciding what goes in it.