Best Paid and Free Stock Sites for Designers: Our Favorites

Shutterstock is our top choice when it comes to premium stock content. Its vast library of high-quality photos, vectors, and illustrations ensures we always find exactly what we need.

Best for: Premium stock photos, illustrations, and vectors.

Adobe Stock is seamlessly integrated with Adobe Creative Cloud, allowing us to access and edit assets directly in tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, making it ideal for designers and creatives looking to streamline their workflow. It’s a time-saver we rely on for premium content.

Best for: High-quality assets like photos, videos, templates, and 3D content.

Freepik offers a vast collection of graphic resources, including vector graphics, illustrations, and photos. It’s an invaluable resource for finding high-quality assets for our projects, often available in both free and premium versions.

Best for: A wide variety of graphic resources, including vectors and photos.

Midjourney is a powerful AI-driven platform that generates unique images based on text prompts. We use it to create custom visuals tailored to our specific project needs.

Best for: Generating unique, custom images using AI.

Iconfinder is our go-to for premium, customizable icons that suit web and app design perfectly. It offers both free and paid options, but the premium icons are worth the investment.

Best for: High-quality icons for UI/UX projects.

Unsplash is our favorite free platform for high-quality, authentic photos. The images have a creative edge, making them perfect for lifestyle and editorial-style designs.

Best for: Free, creative lifestyle photography.

Pexels offers a wide range of free stock photos and videos. We find it perfect when we need consistent quality visuals across different projects.

Best for: Free, high-quality photos and videos.

For icons, Flaticon is unbeatable. It offers millions of free vector icons in various styles, which we often use in web and mobile projects.

Best for: Free vector icons for web and mobile design.

When it comes to free patterns, The Pattern Library is our favorite. The collection is creative, and the patterns are perfect for backgrounds in web and UI projects.

Best for: Free, unique background patterns.

GraphicBurger provides us with a variety of free design resources like mockups, icons, and UI kits. It’s a great place to find freebies that can elevate a design quickly.

Best for: Free design resources, especially mockups and UI kits.

AI platforms like Midjourney are redefining how we create visuals, while established sites offer a wealth of assets for various projects. Whether you’re seeking premium content or reliable free assets, these stock resources will help you elevate your design and marketing work, keep your projects fresh and innovative.