Multimedia

19 Best Free Stock Video Websites for Stunning Visual Content

Best free stock video websites

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but videos are even better than stock photos for selling products.

So, if you’re looking for a selection of the best free stock video websites, you’ve come to the right place.

Videos are proven to work—8 out of 10 people have purchased a product based on a video they saw. Most customers also say they like to see video content from brands. 

People are watching more online video content than a decade ago, and recently, online video consumption has significantly increased in a single year. You have to give the customers what they want to make sales. While marketing without video might work, you can increase your revenue significantly if you add stock video content.

Still, video content can be expensive and time-consuming to create. How can you use video to sell your products if you don’t have much of a content creation budget?

One of the best ways to produce engaging video content for your creative project quickly without much of a budget is to use stock video footage. If you combine a simple voice-over with free stock video footage, you can create content without investing much time or money.

What Are the Best Free Stock Video Websites?

If you want to know where to get free stock video, let me tell you that it’s hard to know where to start, as there’s an abundance of sites offering free footage. While many free stock video websites have limited selections and poor image and video quality, there are plenty of good ones out there. 

1. Videvo 

Popular HD&4K stock video and audio.

Videvo

Videvo should be one of your first choices. It offers many high-quality video clips in crystal clear 4K resolution. You won’t have to worry about finding a clip you really like and then being disappointed by the visual quality. 

Videvo has a lot of HD stock video clips available and offers excellent audio content as well. There is plenty of filmed HD footage and computer-animated motion graphics content available on the site, with excellent image quality and top-end resolution. The site stands out as a place to get high-quality motion graphics content for free as well.

Licensing on Videvo is simple and easy to understand:

  • The first license type is royalty-free, allowing you to use the content as you want, including not crediting the artist if you choose not to.
  • The second type is the Videvo Attribution license, which requires you to give credit. Still, it lets you use the content however and as often as you want.

If you really like Videvo, there is also a premium plan. While the free content on Videvo is excellent, a premium account gets you a more extensive selection. You can tell the difference between premium clips and free clips, as the former has a thunder icon, while the latter has “FREE” written on the video’s thumbnail.

Videvo stands out for its quality. It adds new videos every day. The content is completely free, from high-definition to 4K, and can be used for commercial purposes.

2. Motion Elements

Free stock footage and free stock video.

Motion Elements Free Stock Videos

Motion Elements offers a wide selection of free full HD stock videos and After Effects Templates for people who want to create advertisements, games, software, films, TV shows, and YouTube videos.

If you plan to use Motion Elements’ free stock videos on commercial projects, rest assured they’re all safe for personal and commercial purposes.

Motion Elements includes 3D models, royalty-free music, video, and images. You can also get templates for video creation software such as DaVinci Resolve and Adobe After Effects. 

If you decide to purchase a subscription plan, you’ll get access to unlimited downloads.

While Motion Elements offers a bit of everything, the focus is on video content. You can find over 2 million videos, clips, and animated backgrounds, many of them in superb 4K resolution. If you want a site that tries to offer everything, check out Motion Elements.

3. Vecteezy

Vecteezy free stock videos

Vecteezy is another one of the best stock video sites offering thousands of free clips.

From lifestyle and animals to landscapes and marketing videos, you can find many curated selections to accommodate the missing piece of your video creations.

I like that Vecteezy offers other types of assets for free, like Photoshop PSD files with templates, vectors, and illustrations, which are hard to find on these types of sites.

And yes, like most sites offering free videos, the content must be attributed to the author on your work.

4. Freepik

Free high-quality videos, photos, icons, and more.

Freepik

Freepik is a comprehensive resource for creative professionals, offering a vast library of high-quality stock content updated daily. Whether looking for videos, designs, or photographs, you’ll find the perfect asset on Freepik.

With guaranteed search results, you can find a video for every project, whatever your needs. You may also access thousands of images, photos, icons, and PDF files ready to publish to complete your project quickly.

The website is highly optimized and offers fresh content daily, making it one of the smartest choices for creatives. You can get the inspiration you need with carefully selected collections to boost your project’s engagement.

5. Videezy

Free HD stock footage & 4K videos.

Videezy

Videezy is also a great website for finding a great variety of clips in HD and 4K resolutions.

One great thing to add to your online video content is aerial drone footage. People have been using aerial footage in movies and advertisements since the first half of the 20th century.

Videezy is the best place to get high-quality aerial drone footage. Many of the clips are for premium users, and many others are of lower quality. However, there is still a lot of excellent stuff available for free.

While Videezy stands out for its aerial footage, it offers all sorts of video clips, backgrounds, and images. It is also an excellent place to find free vector graphics, which can scale to any size and are great for content creators.

6. Pixabay

Stunning free images & royalty-free stock.

Pixabay

Pixabay is a community where people can upload content they want to give away for free. It has many generous contributors who appreciate credit even though it is not required. 

Everything you can find on Pixabay’s extensive library is free to use commercially, and you don’t even have to give the author any credit. All the assets use the Creative Commons zero license (CC0), meaning the publisher releases their work into the public domain for everyone to use.

The site has a vast amount of content, including nearly two million videos and photos. The videos tend to be short, usually less than a minute. 

Quality varies, but a lot of it is high-definition, and a reasonable amount is 4K.

7. Mixkit

Free assets for your next video project.

Mixkit

Mixkit offers everything you need to create a multimedia project. The site has a great collection of free stock video footage about business, ordinary life, nature, and more. 

There is also a great selection of music and even sound effects, which many stock media sites don’t offer. This platform was created by Envato Elements, which also provides a separate service for premium video templates.

Mixkit also offers templates for creating videos in Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and DaVinci Resolve. These templates can help you with titles, transitions, slideshows, and promotions. 

You can build an entire video using content you find on Mixkit.

8. Pexels

The best free stock photos & videos shared by talented creators.

Pexels

Pexels started as a site for stock photos, not videos, and it is still a stock photo site. However, it has a wide range of good video content these days, so it is worth mentioning here.

Their high-quality stock videos are all released under the Creative Commons Zero (CCO) license, meaning you can use them with no credit or restrictions.

One of the best things the site offers is time-lapse video clips. You can see great accelerated footage of traffic, clouds moving, the stars, sunrises, flowers blooming, and sunsets. There is also slow-motion footage of fire, waves, and objects falling into the water.

Pexels makes its content available under the Pexels license. While the license lets you use everything commercially, it is not quite as unrestrictive as a Creative Commons Zero license. 

9. Dareful

4K royalty-free stock video clips at no cost.

Dareful

Unlike larger video collections, Dareful is the work of a single person. Joel Holland created Dareful to make more stock footage available to the public in 4K quality. He shoots all of the footage himself.

While the number of videos is small compared to the larger sites, there is still a lot of footage, much of it excellent. There is drone footage, fireworks, holiday content, and many great nature video clips.

All of the content is free for commercial purposes but requires attribution.

10. Coverr

Free stock video footage and royalty-free videos for download.

Coverr

Coverr has a great search function that quickly helps you find what you want. The videos are handpicked and always useful and well shot. They don’t accept poorly created or low-quality videos. 

Coverr also offers the option of signing up for an email list—they will send you special offers every week and give you access to an amazing collection of unique videos.

There are videos about health and fitness, business, love and relationships, working from home, pets, and more. 

You can use Coverr videos freely as long as you do not upload them on other sites.

11. Life of Vids

Free videos, clips, and loops.

Life of Vids

Life of Vids offers an excellent but not very large selection of free video content in HD and 4K. A Canadian advertising company hosts the site, and they know how to pick out videos that marketers will use.

You can find footage of cities, clouds, food, work, water, and people—everything is free for personal and commercial use.

12. Vidsplay 

Download free stock video footage.

Vidsplay

While Vidsplay offers a relatively tiny library, nearly everything you find is high-quality and relevant content. 

There are short, well-shot clips of technology, famous places and monuments, people, time-lapses, buildings, and industry. As long as you are looking for a relatively narrow range of content, Vidsplay is an excellent site.

Everything on this site is free for personal and commercial use. 

13. Mazwai

Hand-picked stock video footage.

Mazwai

Everything on Mazwai is handpicked by experts. It is a quality-over-quantity website where everything is excellent, not a site with as many clips as possible.

Mazwai works directly with specific cinematographers to produce excellent stock footage that creators will likely use—only high-quality content is accepted. 

Mazwai guarantees that everything you find is royalty-free and entirely legal for personal or commercial use.

14. Motion Places

A large selection of stock footage from around the world.

Motion Places

Motion Places stands out for offering video clips of different locations worldwide. You can see video clips of cities and nature throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.

They offer footage of Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall seasons. You also get footage of air travel, buses, cars, and other transportation.

While the free content available at Motion Places looks great in HD, you have to pay if you want 4K resolution. If HD is good enough, you can get everything on the site for free. 

However, it costs $99 for 4K versions of the same video.

15. Free Nature Stock

Royalty-free CC0 nature stock photos and videos.

Free Nature Stock

Free Nature Stock is a free stock video website specifically crafted for nature footage. All videos are released under the Creative Commons Zero license (CC0), so you have virtually unlimited rights to use it however you want. 

There are plenty of high-quality videos and even more still pictures. New clips are added almost daily, so it might be the first site to look at if you want nature stock footage. 

Besides footage of animals, plants, and landscapes, there are also excellent clips of the sun, stars, and natural landscapes.

16. Splitshire

Private collection of free stock photos and videos.

Splitshire

Splitshire is a relatively small but popular library created by photographer Daniel Nanescu in 2014. He created the library to give away photographs he didn’t publish for free. 

Since then, Splitshire has expanded into a popular website with millions of downloads. The images have appeared in print and on physical merchandise, not only online. 

You can use the images and videos to create games, YouTube videos, templates, album covers, television shows, documentaries, and more. Everything is entirely free—you do not have to give credit. 

17. PikWizard

Over 1 million high-quality, free stock images and videos.

Pikwizard

PikWizard is huge—there are more than a million photos and videos, so you can find things you won’t find on smaller stock video sites. The search option is extremely good, so a quick search can pull up footage of exactly what you need. Also, there is no need to give credit to the author.

You can browse videos by category, sorted by most popular first. The image quality varies, but there is a lot of high-resolution content.  All their assets are premium, contemporary, and also copyright-free. 

But what really makes PikWizard unique is that they have a video editing tool attached called Design Wizard. It has thousands of pre-made templates, allowing you to create impressive videos in just a few minutes.

18. YouTube Creative Commons

Although not a stock website, YouTube is another great place to find free video footage. When creators upload videos to YouTube, they can use a Creative Commons license, allowing others to use their work. 

A Creative Commons license is not the same as giving up your copyright—the creator retains certain rights to their work. No one can release anything with a Creative Commons license unless they have the legal right to all of the content in their video.

The YouTube Creative Commons library is enormous—more than four million videos exist. The content is free and not only for those with a YouTube premium account. 

After you make a search, click on Filters and select Creative Commons. All the videos you see now have a Creative Commons license.

how to search Creative Commons videos on YouTube

19. Vimeo Creative Commons

Vimeo Creative Commons is similar—it is free, huge, and for everyone. You can find a considerable number of different videos on countless subjects.

There are several different licenses a creator can pick when they release something into the Creative Commons. Some licenses do not allow commercial use, so you should be careful.

Some people release their content into the public domain and do not keep any rights. Others require attribution, do not allow commercial use, or require you to release anything you create with their content with the same Creative Commons license.

After you make a search on Vimeo, click on More Filters and then scroll down to License. Now, you can choose what type of Creative Commons you want.

how to search Creative Commons videos on Vimeo
how to search Creative Commons videos on Vimeo

What is Stock Media?

Stock media includes video footage, sound effects, music, photographs, and images not explicitly made for any project.

There is plenty of completely free stock media out there. You can use it however you want, even commercially, and not owe anything to its creator, no matter how much money you make from its use.

Creative Commons Videos

Content creators have different standards about how other people can use their content. A “Creative Commons video” with a “CC license” does not always have the same standards for use as every other Creative Commons video. Most videos you find on free stock video sites have lenient licenses, but not all of them. 

They might publish the content themselves and not allow anyone else to use it. Not every content creator is so strict, but they have the power to control how their content is used, whether they make a lot of money from it or not. 

By default, you cannot use another person’s work. They hold the copyright, and you must get their permission to use it. They can charge as much money as they want for permission to use their intellectual property and sell a restricted right to use their work.

Some content creators are more lenient about how others can use their content. They can place their work entirely in the public domain—releasing all rights—and let anyone use it without giving them credit. 

Other creators let people use their work if they give them credit. Anything between no use and unlimited use is possible. A content creator might insist on payment for commercial use but let people use their work freely if they aren’t making any money from it. 

Not every “Creative Commons” license is made equal. Some of these licenses are much more restrictive than others.

Creative Commons Licenses

Thankfully, not much of what you find on free video sites is distributed on a share-alike license. The licenses are more generous and let you use the content freely or with attribution.

Royalty-Free Licenses

Some royalty-free licenses are genuinely free. For example, Videvo’s royalty-free videos are free for anyone to use without credit. However, “royalty-free” does not usually mean “free for everyone”; instead, it usually means paying a single upfront fee for the content. 

Most royalty-free licenses require you to purchase or pay a monthly fee. There may also be limitations on how you can use the image, such as a limit on how many physical copies of anything containing the image you can print. 

The work’s creator maintains more control with royalty-free licenses than with Creative Commons licenses. However, they still intend to profit from their work with such a license, just like I do with the music tracks I sell on various platforms.

On the plus side, royalty-free licenses do not require you to pay royalties. You will not owe a cut of your profits to whoever owns the image. You will usually only have to pay a fixed amount for the picture or video clip.

Are free stock videos really free?

Depending on the license, they often are. You can make as much money as possible from a free clip without paying anyone. However, read the license before using the clip, as some clips are less free than others.

How do free stock video sites make their money?

Like many other online businesses, they offer a free version to attract users and make money from a paid version. These sites also use affiliate marketing, as they usually have ads that redirect you to another site (most often Shutterstock or iStock), and if you buy something there, they earn a cut of the profits.

Can you make free stock video clips available to other people online?

A lot of the time, you cannot do this. Check the licenses, and ask questions if you still aren’t sure. Sometimes, even if you can use the clip commercially for free, you still cannot upload it to a website and let everyone else use it. 

Do you have to register an account to download free stock videos?

Usually, you can download clips without a sign-up needed. Videvo, for example, lets you download clips right away without an account. 

Many other sites are the same—they want to make their sites as easy to use as possible, so they don’t require an account. Even if they require one, you don’t need to enter your credit card number, only your email address.

Is old movies’ footage legal to use?

Yes, you can use clips from very old movies for free. Any film released in the United States before 1926 is legal for everyone in the US to use, including commercially. 

This is because films only remain under copyright for 95 years from the year of their first publication. However, different countries have different laws for film copyrights.

Many films less than 95 years old can also be in the public domain for other reasons. For example, a film enters the public domain if no one renews the copyright. 

Can I use free stock videos on YouTube?

Yes, you can. You can also download YouTube stock videos from individual creators who make them available online. Often, these videos are royalty-free, so you can use them however you want, including commercially. 

Always double-check how legal using the YouTube video you are considering is.

What’s the best software to edit stock videos for free?

One of the best things about creating content online is that most tools are free. Not only can you get stock video footage for free, but there is also plenty of free video editing software.

While professionals use paid software, sometimes there is not always a huge difference between the free and paid versions for the general user. Free video editing software works properly and has plenty of features. 

1. DaVinci Resolve

If you’re looking for free and open-source software that covers all your video editing needs, stop searching and settle on DaVinci Resolve.

Despite being a pro-grade beast, it’s admirably accessible to beginners, too. There are payware-level features to tweak a Hollywood blockbuster or a home movie, but reasonable care has been taken so that a lone user can still make a movie the way paid workstations permit.

The features include image stabilization, facial recognition, object tracing, creating 3D objects, and handling special effects. It’s not a demo version—it’s actually free.

2. LightWorks

LightWorks is swift, intuitive, and free without watermarks and ticks off many boxes for video editing needs. Its free-forever version is feature-rich—offering advanced color correction, varying frame rate support, and special effects, suitable for a crisp 720p finish.

Its treasure trove is the vast library of royalty-free audio and video content. Although slightly trailing behind DaVinci Resolve in feature count, it is a robust professional software available on Mac OS, Linus, and Windows.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a budding filmmaker, seasoned editor, or content creator, finding the right visuals enhances your projects immensely.

From HD to 4K resolution, the best free stock video websites introduce a wealth of resources.

Remember, each site offers something unique, so explore your options and let your creativity run wild.

Vaslou is a passionate digital creator and blogger who loves to explore unique paths to generate online income. He’s also a musician, always looking for exciting paths to articulate his inventive spirit in the musical realm. When he’s not at work on his online endeavors, Vasco loves to delve into spiritual realms to become a better version of himself.

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