Discover free clips that have been carefully organized by category.
Quickly find high quality stock footage from around the web.
For each category, we created a short film using the best free stock footage available online. If you like a particular clip, take note of the ID and then use the download tool to be linked directly to the source of that clip.
Benefit from the hours we've spent culling, crafting, and editing each film.
Here is our roundup of the best free stock footage websites. We've spent many hours searching for free footage, downloading clips, and editing videos. We feel confident in recommending these sites based on the overall experience we've had with each of them. It's our opinion that you won't find better free stock footage sites than these. Free stock sites come and go and changes to policy or the overall experience fluctuate, so we will keep this list updated to reflect the current state of high-quality free stock resources.
Pexels offers free stock photos as well as free stock video. They have a large and diverse collection of clips created by users from around the world. Downloads are simple and fast and the video files are generally high quality.
Most of the clips on Pexels have been tagged well and using the search functionality of the site works nicely. The user interface is clean and simple.
Overall Pexels is one of the very best sites online to download free stock video.
Videvo has a great collection of free stock video. You can browse or search and both work quite well. Resolution and overall quality are high and the experience of using their site and downloading clips is good.
Many of the clips are user created, which helps bring a wide variety of options for you to choose from. Some of the best footage on the site is created by Videvo themselves and they are constantly adding to their collection.
Videvo is a great free stock footage resource that is worthy of being one of the first places you should visit when searching for that perfect clip to help complete your video.
Pixabay and Pexels share similar DNA. They both focus heavily on user submitted content, and the scope of both sites goes well beyond just stock footage.
Many creators have uploaded their stock footage to both Pixabay and Pexels, so it's not uncommon to find the same clip on both sites. Having said that, Pixabay does have many great clips that you will not find on any other stock site, and the resolution and quality of those clips can be very high. Finding great clips is easy and new content is constantly being added.
Pixabay is simply one of the very best sites online to find free stock footage. Anytime you're looking for footage, you should take the time to look here.
Videezy is a part of the Eezy network of websites. In addition to free stock video, they offer Photoshop brushes, website templates, and vectors.
Videezy has a large library of high quality stock video clips. Some of the footage is available to download in very high quality 4K. This means that you get a great file to work with, downloads may take longer to complete if your internet connection is slow or average.
You can browse by category, browse most recent clips, or search Videezy. I found that I spent a bit more time searching on Videezy and was regularly rewarded for that extra effort.
All in all, Videezy is a great resource with a solid library and some of the highest quality files around.
MixKit hasn't been around for as long as others, but they are another great resource for free clips. I only see them getting better with time as they continue to add high quality stock footage to their site.
Their clips are limited to 1080p, but resolution is only one aspect to consider. A much more important quality to look for is the actual polish of the footage. Their production quality is high and the Full HD files are not overly compressed. If you can find the clip you need from MixKit, then chances are you will be happy with everything else.
They have a very good collection of lifestyle footage featuring models in various locations. You can browse the listed categories or search for the right clip.
Overall my experience with MixKit has been good. If they keep adding to the collection then I suspect they will become one of the best free stock footage sites online.
Motion Places has a large collection of city and nature stock footage. If you're looking for clips of New York or Los Angeles or many other places, try browsing there. It's easy to navigate the collection by location or theme, but search also works fine. Free clips are limited to Full HD with a paid 4K option. The quality of the clips is quite high.
Motion Places is an easy site to recommend if you need a clip of Paris, London, or New York, or if you are looking for nature stock footage. Quality is high and the experience is great.
Mitch Martinez offers a collection of high quality footage shot on RED. The site is divided by category to make browsing easy. Some of the categories include aerial, abstract, nature, animals, time-lapse, and slow motion along with many more. His collection of stock fire elements is stunning.
It seems like many of Mitch's clips are also represented at Videezy. Whether you download from his site or Videezy, be sure to give him credit when you're able to and thank him for sharing such great footage with the community for free.
Nature Stock Videos is a solid but small collection of nature stock footage by an individual creator. Most of the clips are drone footage and feature categories like waterfalls, rivers, mountains, forests, lakes, and beaches. The footage is available in 4K and you can download with a single click from the website. The video quality is very good.
There are many things you should consider if you decide that free stock footage is right for your project. Here are the things we think are worth considering.
By downloading and using clips from a free stock footage site, you are agreeing to their license. The license describes the terms of your usage. Each site has a different license, and some sites may even have different licenses depending on the clip you are using. Make sure you read and understand the license so that you know how to use the footage properly.
Attribution is the act of giving proper credit to the creator of the work you use. It can be as simple as adding a link back to the creator in the final work, or it can be more demanding. Some licenses require that you attribute the creator while others do not.
Attribution is a fair trade for use of someone else's creative work and it can be quite easy. You'll often find specific directions from the creator or stock footage site about how best to attribute.
In cases where it's difficult or impossible to give proper credit, many sites have options for a paid license that doesn't require it. If a paid option with no attribution isn't available, then reach out to the creator or site owner to ask for the license you require. Tell them what you need and ask for or offer a fair price.
If the license doesn't require attribution, consider giving credit anyway. This will not only help the creator of the clip, but it will also help others who see your finished project know where they can find the same footage if they wish to use it themselves.
A model or property release is something that the creator of the stock media sometimes obtains. It is a signed document that allows the footage to be used in various ways. It's not necessary for every stock clip or every usage case, but it's a nice thing to have when the footage includes recognizable people or was filmed on privately owned property. If you're promoting a product with stock footage that includes models, then you're going to want to make sure that the footage has been properly released.
Much of the footage you will find for free does not include model or property releases. Some sites will indicate this by listing the footage as "Editorial Use Only". This means that the footage cannot be used for commercial purposes, but it may be used for education or to document something that is newsworthy.
Footage may sometimes contain trademarks such as the Nike swoosh or a logo like Coca-Cola. With companies spending billions of dollars to display their trademarks around the world, it's inevitable that some of them will end up in photos and videos. If you plan to use stock footage for your project, be careful to avoid these trademarks whenever you can.
Most licenses are clear that it is your responsibility as a stock footage user to make sure that you are using the footage in an appropriate way. Contact the creator or site if you are uncertain whether there is a model release for a particular clip. If the clip you wish to use includes a brand logo that's protected or trademarked, make sure that you know the laws and are following them. It may be fine to use a clip of a can of Coke if you're documenting something newsworthy about Coca-Cola. It would not be ok to use the same clip to promote a beverage holder that you are selling. You may want to consider using a clip that has no obvious usage restrictions and doesn't require a release to keep things simple.
CC licenses are common in the free stock footage world. These licenses are clear and easy to understand. We avoid linking to footage that is "CC BY NC" because it does not allow commercial usage. While that may be ok for your particular usage we feel that it isn't relevant to the many creators doing commercial work of one type or another. Instead, look for "CC BY" and "CC 0" licenses for attribution and no attribution usage.
There are some great quality free clips available online, but if you can't find what you're looking for, the technical quality is lower than you expect, or it's impossible to provide the attribution that the license requires, then it makes sense to purchase a clip. As more and more people contribute their work to free stock footage sites, this will become less of an obstacle. Free stock allows more people to communicate their ideas through video regardless of their budget, but sometimes the best option for your project is a paid one.
You've found the perfect clip, but low resolution, compression artifacts, or other technical issues are keeping you from using it. These tools might help. They are tools that I've used and really stood out to me.
Video Enhance AI by Topaz Labs is software designed to upscale and enhance video. It can remove banding and compression artifacts and its cutting edge AI engine can add perceivable detail to video clips. It actually works quite well, especially for clips that fall just below your quality threshold. Don't expect it to work miracles, but it can sometimes save footage that would otherwise have to be left out of your edit for quality reasons. Video Enhance AI does a terrific job of removing banding and compression artifacts like blocking.
If you haven't experienced something like Video Enhance AI before then you'll probably be surprised by just how well it actually works. The hardware requirements to run it are pretty intense though. Unless you have a very powerful computer, expect any operation to take a long time to complete. This is surely something that will get better with time, but for now keep this in mind.
I am genuinely impressed with Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI and I'm sure this is just the beginning of what can be done. This application really opens the doors to using low quality and archival footage in modern HD or 4K timelines.
Topaz Labs has a paid cloud version for people like me who don't have a powerful enough computer to quickly upscale footage locally. You can try it for free using the "Free Proof" option. Upload a clip (up to 60 seconds) and they'll send you back a split screen comparison of the original and the enhanced version.
Optical flow is what makes it possible to slow footage in post to look as if it was shot with a slow-mo camera. Most video software has optical flow built-in.
Slowing down or speeding up your footage is an important part of creating a finished video that's just right. Unfortunately, optical flow doesn't often work well for slowing down footage. Strange looking artifacts can appear that make the footage unusable. Luckily, this is another area where more powerful hardware and better algorithms are making it possible to do more than what's previously been possible.
The first step to try is the built in tools of your video editor. If you find that the results are great, then you're done. If you find unacceptable artifacts, you're going to have to do something more.
One of the very best tools to slow down your footage is inside of Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve. It's called Speed Warp and it's amazing! It is also extremely slow to process unless you have a very powerful graphics card. Still, it sets a new bar for retiming footage in post. It might be exactly what you need to retime your selected clip so it fits perfectly in your edit.
High-quality optical flow can be a very powerful video editing tool. I'm looking forward to further improvements in this area!
Maybe you've used free stock footage before and now you want to give back to the community or maybe you just enjoy filming and like the idea of allowing other people to communicate their ideas with your video clips. You need a place to upload.
Pexels.com, Videvo.net, Pixabay.com, Videezy.com, and Mixkit.co all allow for community contributions. After creating a user profile and agreeing to the site's terms, you'll be able to upload your own footage.
Tagging your footage with appropriate keywords will help it show up in search results and categories so others can find your work. Uploading to multiple sites also helps your footage reach a broader audience.
If you are more of the DIY type, then you might consider creating your own free stock footage website. Mitchmartinez.com and Naturestockvideos.com are both excellent examples you could emulate.
Hosting your own website and footage means having full control. It also means making sure everything works yourself. For most people who just want to share their footage online, uploading to one of the sites mentioned above probably makes more sense. However, if you love creating web projects in addition to footage, then consider building your own site. Each site brings something completely unique to the table and the free stock footage community benefits anytime a creator chooses to share their work.