Pexels: free stock photos and videos that don't look like stock

Photos and videos in one place

Pexels offers both free stock photography and free stock video under one license, which makes it especially handy for content creators who need a thumbnail and a background clip from the same visual world.

The video library is the underrated half: short clips of cities, nature, workspaces and abstract textures that lift a social post or presentation instantly.

Searching like an editor

Generic searches return generic results. Search for the feeling or the detail instead of the subject — 'rainy window' beats 'sad', 'hands kneading dough' beats 'cooking'. Concrete nouns find concrete images.

When you find one photo with the right mood, open the photographer's profile and the related collection; curators have often done your searching for you.

License essentials

Free to use, commercially included, no attribution required — with the familiar limits: don't sell the media unaltered, don't portray identifiable people in a misleading or sensitive context. Check the license page for the current wording before a big commercial project.

A note on video file sizes

Download the resolution your project actually needs. A 4K clip for a phone-sized social video is wasted bandwidth at every step — compress and resize before publishing, exactly as you would with photos.