Below you will find a curated list of databases for finding free images, fonts, video, and audio. There are numerous databases available, but the sites listed below have been selected for their ease of use and extensive collections.
Top Recommendations:
pixabay – This site is curated by community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, vector graphics, and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist. Also available as an app in Canva for easy use.
Pexels – This site provides high quality and completely free stock photos and videos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist. All media is nicely tagged, searchable, and also easy to discover through their discover pages. Also available as an app in Canva for easy use.
Other Options:
Biodiversity Heritage Library Images – Over 150,000 Botanical and Animal Illustrations are available for free downloads from the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s Flickr (see original article here).
Every Stock Photo – This site is a search engine for free photos. The photos come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon, located below and left of the photos.
Flickr CC – This search engine has a selection of photos sorted by their Creative Cloud license. Be sure to cite/attribute where necessary! (Note: Not all Flickr photos are available for reuse, so be sure to stay within this search!)
MorgueFile – This site is a free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” All photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for download and re-use in any work.
StockSnap – This site offers beautiful, high quality stock photos for just about any use you can think of – including commercial usage – for free. With lots of categories and tags, this is a good search engine to use!
Unsplash – This site has a library of photographs that are free for commercial and non-commercial use without attribution. Photographs come from both professional and non-professional sources, but they are curated by Unsplash staff and are always high resolution
Vecteezy – This site is one of the largest vector graphics communities in the world. Most of the files are free to download and, depending on the license, free to use in your projects. A paid account allows you to use these files without attribution, otherwise, be sure to attribute these files to Vecteezy.
UW-Madison Photo Library – UW–Madison departments, faculty, staff, students, and alumni may use any of the images in this library for noncommercial communication pieces about UW–Madison. Requires a UW-Madison NetID login. *Images from this site are not available for use unrelated to UW–Madison.
Note about Google Image Search: We recommend using these databases instead of Google Image search because images found from Google are often copyrighted. Even if you search for images that are listed under “Creative Commons licenses,” if the image was already reused on that site without permission, it may appear in the search. If you choose to use Google Image search, make sure to search for large images and always attribute the source.
Top Recommendations:
Google Fonts – A directory of free web fonts, mixed with some paid fonts. All official Google Fonts are open source and available for use on websites and blogs. Paid fonts will take you to the website where you can purchase the font family.
1001 Free Fonts – A collection of mostly free fonts. Some are free for personal use and some are in the public domain. Most can also be purchased for commercial use.
Other Options:
dafont – Another collection of mostly free fonts. Some are free for personal use and some are in the public domain. Many can also be purchased for commercial use.
Font Matcherator – This program allows you to upload an image and find comparable fonts. It claims to be more “robust” than the program WhatTheFont (link below) in its search parameters.
Fontstruct – A website that allows you to design and create your own fonts using their online software. Includes a gallery of user-created fonts and competitions to provide ideas and inspiration.
typeconnection – This online “dating-style” app lets you choose typefaces that work well together and learn typographic terms, type history, and find the perfect typefaces for your project.
Typetester – This website lets you compare a large selection of fonts side to side, which can be uploaded straight from your computer. It is perfect for developing websites and testing designs for online media.
WhatTheFont – Upload an image to WhatTheFont to find the closest matches in the MyFonts database. MyFonts is also a resource for premium (fee-licensed) and some free commercial-use fonts.
Wordmark – This online app detects the fonts installed on your computer and helps you choose the ideal typeface for your project by comparing them.
Coverr – A collection of stock videos designed primarily as cover videos for websites. All Videos published on this site can be used for free both for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the Videographer or Coverr.co, although it is appreciated when possible.
Moving Picture Archive
– This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download. *Be sure to check for licensing!
Pexels – This site provides high quality and completely free stock photos and videos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist. All media is nicely tagged, searchable, and also easy to discover through their discover pages.
pixabay – This site is curated by community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, vector graphics, and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist.
Videezy – This site allows you to share and download Free HD Stock Videos, b-roll, backgrounds, and other cool free video footage. All the videos are free to download and, depending on the license, free to use in your projects.
Videvo – This site offers completely free stock video footage and motion graphics for use in any project. Everything on Videvo is free to use for commercial or non-commercial usage.
Vidsplay – This is a collection of completely free stock footage. You are granted non-exclusive rights to use and download our video material without the need to pay royalties for each use.
Vimeo Free HD Stock – This is a group of videos designed by a user. All clips found in this group are given away for free use in your projects. *The free nature of these videos does not apply to other Vimeo content.
Bensound – A collection of royalty free music that is licensed for reuse under Creative Commons as long as it is cited properly.
CC Mixter – This is a community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses. You are free to download and sample from music on this site and share the results with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Some songs might have certain restrictions, depending on their specific licenses.
Free Music Archive – The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads directed by WFMU, a freeform radio station. Free downloads can only be used for personal projects.
Free Sound – Freesound has a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, etc. released under Creative Commons licenses that allow for reuse. Be sure to cite files that need attribution under the CC license.
Free Sound Effects – This site contains both free and for purchase sound effects. Be sure to scroll down and select the Free Sound Effects categories (listed on the bottom left of the site).
Sound Bible – This site offers free sound clips for download in either wav or mp3 format. They offer free and royalty free sound effects and clips.
Sound Gator – This is a free sound effects library. Users can download sound effects for films, videos, multimedia projects, presentations, apps, games and just about any other project – but are not allowed to sell, license, distribute or post online the individual sound effects (i.e., must be a part of a larger project).
YouTube Audio Library – This page contains a large collection of free downloadable music and sound effects. This link will take you to the YouTube Creator Studio for the Audio Library. You must be logged into a Google account to access the audio library.