You can legally find free photos and images for emails and websites on stock photo sites with an open licence. The best known are Unsplash with more than 6 million photos, Pexels, and Pixabay with more than 6.3 million files. They allow commercial use in a newsletter without paying and without crediting the author, but each prohibits something different: selling a photo unaltered, using logos in advertising or showing people in a bad light. An image you googled on someone else's website is not free. In the Czech Republic and Poland the author can claim twice the usual licence fee for it, and Czech law also allows an administrative fine of up to CZK 150,000. Below you will find a comparison of 11 sources with licences verified in October 2026, search examples, the legal risks and how to prepare a photo and insert it into an email.
Key takeaways
- Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay allow commercial use in email without paying and without crediting the author.
- In our October 2026 test Unsplash came out best (96 out of 100), followed by Pexels (93) and Pixabay (91).
- Apart from Kaboompics, no free stock photo site guarantees that the people in the photo have consented to advertising use.
- Paid photos are mixed in with the free results, you can spot them by the Unsplash+, Sponsored or iStock labels.
- For a photo used without a licence, the author in the Czech Republic can claim twice the usual licence fee, and a fine of up to CZK 150,000 is possible.
- For an email, download the photo at twice the target width, scale it down, save it as a JPG under 2 MB and add alt text.
In short: what you may do, what you may not, the risks and what to watch out for
- What you may do: use photos from free stock photo sites in newsletters, on websites and in advertising, edit them, and you do not have to credit the author.
- What you may not do: sell photos unaltered, redistribute them on other stock photo sites, use them in a logo or imply that the people and brands in the photo endorse you.
- The risks: the author can demand that you stop using the photo, remove it, apologise and pay money, even for a single email.
- What to watch out for: recognisable faces, prominent logos, paid results in search and licences that require crediting the author.
What has changed since the article was published: The article was published in April 2019 under the title Where to find quality photographs for your email marketing for free and was written by Veronika Jandová. It recommended three stock photo sites: Unsplash, Pixabay and Gratisography. In October 2026 we expanded it to 11 sources with licences verified directly with the sites, and added a comparison table, the legal rules in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, search examples and a guide to preparing a photo for an email. We also corrected the original claim about fines in the tens of thousands of crowns under the Copyright Act. Images created by artificial intelligence are covered in a separate article.
What a free photo means and what the licence allows
A free photo is a photograph you may use without paying, on the terms of the licence under which the stock photo site offers it. So free does not mean without rules. People also search for such shots as free images, free photos to download or copyright free photos. The last label is inaccurate, because the author keeps the copyright. The author of the photo still owns the copyright and the licence determines what you may do with the photo.
On free stock photo sites you will come across three types of licence:
- The site's own licence (Unsplash License, Pexels licence, Pixabay Content License) allows commercial and non-commercial use without crediting the author, but comes with a list of prohibitions.
- CC0 is a Creative Commons licence by which the author waives their rights to the extent the law allows. You can use the photo for anything.
- Creative Commons with conditions (CC BY, CC BY-SA) requires you to credit the author and the licence, and possibly to share an edited work under the same licence. You will meet these licences mainly on Wikimedia Commons and in the Openverse search engine.
The stock photo site's licence covers only the photo itself. Trademarks, logos and the likeness of people in the photo do not fall under it. Unsplash explicitly states in its terms of use that the licence does not include trademarks, logos and brands or the likeness of recognisable people, and that you may need permission from the brand owner or the person concerned.
Watch out: If an image contains protected brands and logos, for example fashion brands, social networks or the Olympic rings, first find out whether you may use the photo for free or whether you need a licence for the brand. This warning was already in the original 2019 article and it still applies.
Comparison of free stock photo sites
Free stock photo sites differ mainly in their licence terms, the size of their library and how much paid content they show you among the results. The table summarises 11 sources, and we verified the licences directly on their websites on 12 October 2026.
| Stock photo site | Licence | Commercial | Credit author | Main restriction | Paid in results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsplash | Unsplash License | yes | no | do not sell without significant changes, do not use for AI datasets | Unsplash+ with a lock |
| Pexels | Pexels licence | yes | no | people not in a bad light, do not sell unaltered | Sponsored results |
| Pixabay | Content License | yes | no | logos not commercially with products and services, do not sell on a standalone basis | Sponsored images iStock |
| Burst (Shopify) | CC0 and Burst licence | yes | no | do not sell unaltered | no |
| StockSnap | CC0 | yes | no | do not imply endorsement | Shutterstock tiles |
| Canva (free photos) | Content License Agreement | yes | no | people not in a bad light, do not use for AI | premium photos in Canva |
| Kaboompics | Standard License | yes | no | do not use for AI or image generation | not determined |
| Gratisography | Gratisography licence | yes | no | do not redistribute on other stock photo sites | Shutterstock advertising |
| Magnific (formerly Freepik) | Magnific terms | unclear on the free plan | yes, on the free plan | without a subscription only with author credit | premium content |
| Wikimedia Commons | per file | per licence | often yes | CC BY and CC BY-SA licences have conditions | no |
| Openverse | per file | per licence | often yes | does not verify licences, check them yourself | no |
Source: licence terms and websites of the individual stock photo sites, as of 12 October 2026.
| Stock photo site | Number of files | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Pixabay |
6.30 million
|
photos, videos, music |
| Unsplash |
6.00 million
|
photos, illustrations |
| Burst |
0.02 million
|
photos |
Library size is not everything, though. Wikimedia Commons has more than 149 million files, over twenty times more than Pixabay, but each has its own licence and often requires crediting the author. For a newsletter, a smaller stock photo site with a single licence is more practical, because you do not have to check every photo separately.
The best free stock photo sites: an overview
For a typical newsletter, the trio of Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay is enough in most cases. The other sources come in handy when you are looking for a specific style, e-commerce photos, or historical and encyclopaedic images.
We tested every stock photo site ourselves in October 2026. We entered the same searches everywhere: three for people (woman working on laptop, family dinner, team meeting office), three for objects (coffee cup, gift box, sneakers) and three for nature (forest, mountain lake, autumn leaves). For roughly the first twelve free results we judged how many photos match the search, are of good quality and suit a business newsletter. The score from 0 to 100 is the share of such photos. It is our rating on a single date, search results change. Below the rings you can see what the site offers besides photos.
The Overall score is the average of two numbers: the average of the People, Objects and Nature categories and the licence score. The licence score shows how easily you may use a photo in a business email:
- 100: commercial use without crediting the author (Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Gratisography, Burst, StockSnap, Kaboompics and paid versions)
- 80: free and paid photos are mixed and you mostly work with them inside the tool (Canva free)
- 40: you must credit the author or each file has a different licence (Magnific free, Wikimedia Commons)
- 30: the site does not verify licences (Openverse)
Example: Unsplash scores 90 for People, 92 for Objects and 95 for Nature. The category average is (90 + 92 + 95) ÷ 3 = 92.3, the licence gets 100 points, so the overall score is (92.3 + 100) ÷ 2 = 96. Magnific has almost equally good photos (average 91.3), but the free licence requires crediting the author and gets 40 points, so overall (91.3 + 40) ÷ 2 = 66. You will also find the calculation below the rating of each site.
| Stock photo site | People | Objects | Nature | Average | Licence | Overall, free | With a paid licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsplash | 90 | 92 | 95 | 92.3 | 100 | 96 | 96 (Unsplash+) |
| Pexels | 88 | 82 | 88 | 86.0 | 100 | 93 | no paid version |
| Pixabay | 70 | 85 | 92 | 82.3 | 100 | 91 | no paid version |
| Burst | 75 | 80 | 80 | 78.3 | 100 | 89 | no paid version |
| StockSnap | 65 | 75 | 85 | 75.0 | 100 | 88 | no paid version |
| Canva | 85 | 88 | 88 | 87.0 | 80 | 84 | 94 (Canva Pro) |
| Kaboompics | 50 | 85 | 55 | 63.3 | 100 | 82 | no paid version |
| Gratisography | 30 | 40 | 45 | 38.3 | 100 | 69 | no paid version |
| Magnific | 92 | 90 | 92 | 91.3 | 40 | 66 | 96 (Premium) |
| Wikimedia Commons | 45 | 50 | 80 | 58.3 | 40 | 49 | no paid version |
| Openverse | 30 | 40 | 70 | 46.7 | 30 | 38 | no paid version |
A paid licence only changes the licence score, we did not test photos from the paid offer. With a Magnific subscription you no longer have to credit the author, so the score rises from 66 to 96. Unsplash+ adds a warranty against third party claims of up to USD 10,000 per photo, but the score does not change because the free licence already has full marks.
Prices of the paid versions as of 12 October 2026: Unsplash+ costs €12 a month, or €4 a month (€48 a year) with annual billing in a launch offer. Canva Pro costs CZK 2,400 a year for one user in the Czech Republic, prices in other countries differ. Magnific Premium costs €16 a month, or €12 a month with annual billing.
Unsplash
Website: unsplash.com
Unsplash is a stock photo site with more than 6 million photos and illustrations from around 400,000 authors, which according to its figures have been downloaded more than 7 billion times. The photos have a clean look with a touch of luxury and convey a mood or situation well, which makes them suitable for newsletter header images.
The licence allows commercial and non-commercial use without crediting the author. You may not sell the photos without significant changes or collect them into a competing service. The terms of use also prohibit use in connection with machine learning and AI datasets. Unsplash does not accept images from generative AI. Paid Unsplash+ photos are mixed in with the results, though, and you can recognise them by the For Unsplash+ label and the lock on the download button. In the licence filter you can choose to show only free photos.
Pexels
Website: pexels.com
Pexels offers millions of photos and videos from more than 600,000 authors and is owned by Canva. It is useful when you need a short video to go with a photo, for example for your website or social media.
You may use the photos and videos commercially and without crediting the author. The licence prohibits showing recognisable people in a bad or offensive light, selling photos unaltered, for example as a poster or print, implying that the people or brands in the photo endorse your product, and using photos in a trademark or company name. Pexels does not accept content from generative AI. Results labelled Sponsored are paid partner photos and lead to the partner's website.
Pixabay
Website: pixabay.com
According to its own figures, Pixabay has more than 6.3 million files including photos, illustrations, vectors, videos and music, from more than 400,000 authors. It is also open to amateur creators, so the selection is wide but the quality varies. It is best for illustrations and vectors. Like Pexels, it is owned by Canva.
Commercial use without crediting the author is allowed. But watch out for one rule you will not find elsewhere: if a photo contains recognisable trademarks, logos or brands, you may not use it commercially in connection with goods and services. Pixabay also accepts AI images if the author labels them, and in search you can choose authentic content only or AI content only. The Sponsored images iStock block contains paid photos. You can download full resolution after registering.
Burst by Shopify
Website: shopify.com/stock-photos
Burst is the stock photo site of the e-commerce platform Shopify, with more than 20,000 photos focused on products, retail and business. It suits e-shop newsletters.
Some photos are under the CC0 licence, some under the Burst licence. Both allow commercial use without crediting the author, and the Burst licence also prohibits selling photos unaltered and collecting them into a competing service. You can download high and low resolution versions.
StockSnap
Website: stocksnap.io
StockSnap offers thousands of photos under the CC0 licence, so you may use them commercially without crediting the author. The only explicit restriction is that you must not use a photo to imply endorsement by the author or by the people and products in the photo. Among the results there are Shutterstock tiles labelled Sponsored, and those are not free.
Canva
Website: canva.com/photos
If you create graphics in Canva, you have millions of free and premium photos at your disposal. You may use the free photos in advertising and promotion and also download them on their own. The licence prohibits reselling or redistributing the photos, using them in a trademark, showing people in a bad light and using the content for machine learning and AI. Canva states that it usually does not obtain consent from the people in free photos and that the assessment is up to you.
Kaboompics
Website: kaboompics.com
Kaboompics is the stock photo site of a single author, Karolina Grabowska, with thousands of stylish photos of interiors, fashion, food and work. The photos share a consistent style and colour palettes, which makes them well suited to a series of newsletters.
Kaboompics is the only stock photo site in our comparison that states it has consent from the recognisable people in its photos (a model release). You may use photos under the standard licence commercially without crediting the author. However, the licence prohibits selling or redistributing photos unaltered, creating a competing platform and using the photos for AI training, image generation and facial recognition. Photos labelled Editorial Use Only are for non-commercial editorial purposes only.
Gratisography
Website: gratisography.com
Gratisography was founded in 2011 by photographer Ryan McGuire. Its photos of people, nature and things do not look like typical advertising shots, some are rather quirky. It is a good fit when you want your newsletter to stand out.
You may use the photos in personal and commercial projects without crediting the author, even on products, as long as the photo itself is not what you are selling. You may not redistribute them on other stock photo sites, pass them off as your own or use them for pornographic, illegal or offensive purposes. Gratisography also has a separate collection of AI images and shows Shutterstock advertising on its website.
Magnific (formerly Freepik)
Website: magnific.com
At the end of April 2026 Freepik was renamed Magnific, and freepik.com addresses redirect to magnific.com. It offers free and subscription photos, vectors and illustrations. According to the terms, free users must credit the author and have a limited number of downloads per day. Magnific's documentation is contradictory on whether content from the free plan may be used commercially. For a company newsletter, plan on a subscription instead. Magnific also has its own AI image generator and tools to upscale and edit images. At Quanda we use it for the images in our blog articles.
Wikimedia Commons and Openverse
Website: commons.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia Commons is the largest collection of freely usable files, more than 149 million. The licences, however, vary from file to file. Some files are in the public domain, others under Creative Commons licences that require you to credit the author and the licence, and possibly to share an edited work under the same licence. It is suitable for historical photos, maps and pictures of places and personalities, not for everyday illustrative images.
Website: openverse.org
Openverse is a WordPress project search engine that searches more than 800 million images and audio recordings from open sources, for example Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. It does not host the photos itself or verify licences, so check the licence and the correct author credit on the source page.
What to watch out for: people, brands and paid results
The most common problem with free photos is not the photo itself, but what is in it. Watch out for three things.
Recognisable people. The Czech Civil Code allows a person's likeness to be disseminated only with their consent, and advertising is not among the exceptions. The same applies in Slovakia and Poland. Apart from Kaboompics, free stock photo sites do not guarantee that they have consent from the people in the photos. A photo with a prominent face in a promotional newsletter is therefore a greater risk than a photo where the person is seen from behind, in the distance or only as hands.
Logos and brands. A logo in the background of a photo is usually not a problem. The risk arises when the brand is prominent, when the photo implies a connection with the brand or when you combine it with your own product. Photos labelled for editorial use only do not belong in marketing.
Paid results. Unsplash shows paid Unsplash+ photos with a lock, Pexels shows partner results labelled Sponsored, Pixabay shows an iStock block, and StockSnap and Gratisography show Shutterstock advertising. Clicking such a result leads you to a purchase, not a free download.
Tip: For every photo you download, save a link to its page, the author's name, the download date and a screenshot of the licence. Stock photo sites change their licences from time to time and a photo may disappear. The record helps you prove on what terms you obtained it.
What can happen if you use a photo without a licence
For a photo you have no licence for, the author can claim compensation, even if you used it in just one email. Under the Czech Copyright Act a photograph is a work if it is original, meaning it is the author's own intellectual creation. An ordinary stock photo meets this condition too.
| Country | What the author can demand | Additional money | Fine or penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Czech Republic | stop the use, removal, an apology, compensation | unjust enrichment equal to twice the usual licence fee (Section 40(4)) | administrative offence up to CZK 150,000, criminal offence from a scale that is "not negligible" |
| Slovakia | stop the use, removal, compensation for damage and non-material harm | handing over unjust enrichment under the general rules | criminal offence punishable by up to 1 year in prison (§ 283(1)), up to 2 years for greater damage |
| Poland | prohibition, removal of the effects, compensation for damage | twice the usual fee (Art. 79), triple the fee was struck down by the Constitutional Tribunal in 2015 | criminal offence under Art. 116 |
Source: Act No. 121/2000 Coll., Copyright Act (Sections 40, 105a, 105b) and Criminal Code (Section 270); Slovak Act No. 185/2015 Coll. (Section 58) and Criminal Code (Section 283); Polish Act on Copyright of 1994 (Art. 79 and 116), as of October 2026.
The original article spoke of fines in the tens of thousands of crowns. More precisely, in the Czech Republic you pay the author at least twice what a licence would usually cost, plus any compensation for further damage and legal costs, and the authorities can impose an administrative fine of up to CZK 150,000. If you are not sure where a photo comes from, do not use it.
How to choose a photo that grabs attention in an email
A photo in a newsletter has one job: to support the message of the email and get the reader to keep going. Readers know generic stock shots from dozens of other emails, so it pays to search more specifically.
| Instead of a generic search | Try a specific query | Why |
|---|---|---|
| business | team meeting laptop window light | situation and light instead of a concept |
| happy customer | woman unpacking parcel at home | a specific moment relevant to an e-shop |
| christmas | wrapped gifts kraft paper flat lay | a style and composition that suit a header |
| office | coffee notebook desk top view | a detail without faces, lower consent risk |
| healthy food | breakfast oatmeal berries natural light | colours and light that create a mood |
Search on stock photo sites works best in English. Describe the situation, light, angle (top view, close up) and mood. Set the orientation to match the spot in the email: a full width header image needs a landscape photo, an image in two columns is better as a square.
A stock photo does not have to be your only source, though. Authentic photos of your company, team, products or customers grab more attention than a shot the recipient has already seen in five other newsletters. Your own images are one way to increase the click-through rate, as described in the article Email click-through rate: 8 mistakes that lower it.
How to find a free photo and prepare it for an email
You can find a free photo and prepare it for an email in seven steps: from choosing a stock photo site, through checking the licence and resizing, to inserting it with alt text and saving a record of the licence.
Step 1: Choose a stock photo site by its licence
For a newsletter, choose a stock photo site that allows commercial use without crediting the author, such as Unsplash, Pexels or Pixabay.
Stock photo sites where crediting the author is mandatory, for example Wikimedia Commons or Magnific without a subscription, are less suitable for email. Crediting the author and the licence for every photo would clutter the email unnecessarily.
Step 2: Search specifically
Type the situation, light and mood in English rather than a generic word, and set the orientation to match the spot in the email.
You will find examples of specific queries in the table above. When you like a photo, look at other photos by the same author. They tend to share a style, so you can put together a consistent series for several newsletters.
Step 3: Check the photo and the licence
Before downloading, check that the photo is not paid, does not show a prominent logo and that you can use any recognisable people in advertising.
Check whether the photo has an Unsplash+, Sponsored or Editorial Use Only label. For a photo with a prominent face, consider whether you really need it in a promotional email.
Step 4: Download a large enough version
Download the photo at least at twice the width it will have in the email, so with Quanda's default settings at least 1,240 px.
The default email width in Quanda is 650 px. After subtracting margins of 2 × 16 px, 618 px is left for the image. Doubling the width keeps it sharp on high resolution displays, as explained by Litmus and in the article How to resize an image online. The original from a stock photo site is often more than 5,000 px wide, do not insert it into an email.
Step 5: Crop it and scale it down
Crop the photo to an aspect ratio that fits the email layout, scale it down to the target width and save it as a JPG under 2 MB.
Save photos as JPG, graphics with text and transparency as PNG, and animations as GIF. The article JPG, PNG or GIF? explains why. You will find how to crop in the article How to crop an image to a specific size, and the dimensions in the help article Image size in an e-mail campaign. Mailchimp recommends images under 1 MB, Quanda under 2 MB. The smaller the file, the faster the email loads.
Step 6: Insert it with alt text
Insert the photo into the Image component and fill in alt text that describes what is in the photo and why it is there.
According to Microsoft, classic Outlook for Windows does not automatically download images from the internet by default. The alt text then fills the empty space. In Quanda you can also style it as a prominent headline, as shown in the article Can't see images in an email? Styled alt text shows a headline. So never hide an important message only in an image.
Step 7: Save a record of the licence
Save a link to the photo's page on the stock photo site, the author's name, the download date and a screenshot of the licence.
A simple spreadsheet or a folder of screenshots is enough. If someone gets in touch a year later, you will have proof of where the photo comes from and on what terms you used it.
How to get an image into Quanda
There are two ways to insert an image into an email in Quanda. In the email editor, you insert a file from your computer or an image address copied from your website into the Image component. Quanda then hosts the image, so it loads for recipients even if you later delete it from your website.
If you create campaigns with an AI assistant, for example in Claude or ChatGPT, via the Quanda MCP server, you have three options:
- An image from the web: give the assistant a link to the image. Quanda downloads it when the campaign is saved and hosts it itself.
- A file from your computer: the assistant can upload it to Quanda itself, or you upload it on the Images page in the Quanda MCP app. There you can sort images into folders and reuse them.
- An image from an earlier campaign: the assistant can list the images you have already uploaded, such as your logo, so you do not have to upload them again.
JPG, PNG and GIF work reliably in emails. Classic Outlook and some other email programs do not display WebP and SVG.
Your own photos and AI images
If you cannot find a free photo, you have two other options. Your own phone photos are of good quality these days and look authentic, all you need is daylight and a clean background. The second option is images created by artificial intelligence. These have their own rules: in the Czech Republic, according to a 2023 judgment of the Municipal Court in Prague, they are not a copyright work, and from August 2026 realistic looking images must be labelled under the European regulation on artificial intelligence. Also note that Unsplash, Kaboompics and Canva prohibit using their photos for AI, so do not upload them to a generator as a reference. Which AI generator to choose and how to write a prompt is covered in AI image generators: a big comparison and prompting guide.
Checklist: a free photo in an email
Before inserting a photo, check the licence, the content of the photo, its size, format, alt text and the licence record.
- The photo is from a stock photo site that allows commercial use.
- It is not a paid result (Unsplash+, Sponsored, iStock, Shutterstock).
- The photo does not show a prominent logo or brand associated with your product.
- For recognisable people, I am sure I may use them in advertising.
- The photo is twice the width of its spot in the email and saved as a JPG under 2 MB.
- The image has alt text and the message is not only in the image.
- I have saved the link, the author, the download date and a screenshot of the licence.
Free photos for emails: summary
You will find legal free photos for emails mainly on Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. They allow commercial use without crediting the author, but do not sell them unaltered, watch out for logos and recognisable people and do not confuse them with paid results. Download the photo at twice the target width, scale it down, save it as a JPG under 2 MB and add alt text.
The original version of this article was written by Veronika Jandová.
You can learn how to work with images and the visual side of an email in the free online course Email Copywriting and Design That Gets Read. And if you are not sure what to do with the images in your newsletter, get in touch and we will be happy to take a look.
