Free Design Assets

Everything here is free to use commercially, and the notes say what each license actually asks of you. That last part is the reason this list exists: "free" covers everything from public-domain-in-all-but-name to free-if-you-credit-us, and the difference only becomes apparent when a client asks where the image came from.

Three kinds of thing are mixed together. Stock libraries: photos and video, the ones you reach for when a page needs an image. Graphic assets: icons, vectors and illustrations, where consistency across a set matters more than any single file. And audio, which is the category people assume is impossible to source legally for free, and isn't.

A few caveats apply across all of them and are worth stating once. A permissive license covers the file, not what's depicted in it: recognisable faces, logos, branded products and some buildings carry separate rights regardless of what the download page says. Aggregated libraries that accept public uploads don't verify that the uploader owned the work. And none of these offer indemnification, which is the actual thing you pay a stock agency for.

Good starting point if you're building something and don't want a subscription for assets, or you've been defaulting to one library and want to know what else is out there.