Burst by Shopify: Free Stock Photos That Actually Look Professional

Burst is Shopify's free stock photography platform, and it solves a problem that other free stock sites often create: looking like a stock photo site. While Unsplash and Pixabay images are beautiful, their extreme popularity means the same images appear across thousands of websites. Burst's smaller, more curated library means its images are less likely to be recognized as stock photography on your website, marketing materials, or social media—a genuine competitive advantage for businesses that want to look unique.

Launched in 2017, Burst was created specifically to support entrepreneurs, small businesses, and marketers who need professional imagery for e-commerce stores, blog posts, social media campaigns, and marketing materials. The images are curated with business use cases in mind—product-style photography, lifestyle imagery, workspace shots, and industry-specific collections that align with how businesses actually use stock photography.

The Business Photography Advantage

Model Releases Included

Unlike many free stock platforms where model release status is unclear, Burst's photographs of identifiable people generally include proper model releases. This is critical for commercial applications—using a stock photo of a person in advertising without a model release creates genuine legal liability. Burst's attention to this detail makes its images safer for business use than images from platforms with less rigorous vetting.

Curated Business Collections

Burst organizes images into business-relevant collections—"Home Office," "Coffee Shop," "Fitness," "Technology," "Cooking"—that align with the categories most commonly needed by e-commerce stores and digital marketers. This curation saves time compared to searching through millions of generalist images on larger platforms.

The Licensing Advantage

Burst images are released under either Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or Shopify's own free license, both of which allow free use in personal and commercial projects without attribution. The CC0 license places images in the public domain, meaning there are literally no restrictions on use. The Shopify license is similarly permissive, allowing use in websites, marketing materials, social media, print, and products without licensing fees or attribution requirements.

This clear, permissive licensing eliminates the legal uncertainty that sometimes accompanies free stock imagery from less carefully managed platforms. For businesses and freelancers, knowing that every image on Burst is cleared for commercial use without attribution provides confidence that using these images won't create legal complications.

Photography Quality and Style

Burst's photography reflects a modern, editorial aesthetic that aligns with contemporary design trends. Images feature natural lighting, authentic-feeling compositions, and diverse representation—qualities that make them suitable for businesses that want their visual communications to feel current, inclusive, and professional rather than staged and artificial.

The platform commissions original photography shoots specifically for its library, which means many Burst images are exclusive to the platform and unavailable elsewhere. This exclusivity is a significant advantage for businesses concerned about visual distinctiveness—the images haven't been downloaded millions of times from Unsplash and won't be recognized as the same stock photos appearing on competing websites.

Use Cases Beyond E-Commerce

Blog and Content Marketing

Burst's photography collections align well with the visual needs of content marketing—blog header images, article illustrations, and social media posts that accompany written content. The business-relevant categories make it easy to find images that complement specific topics without extensive searching.

Social Media Marketing

The platform's images are sized and composed with social media use in mind. Many images work well as Instagram posts, Facebook covers, Twitter headers, and Pinterest pins without requiring significant cropping or resizing. For small businesses managing their own social media presence, this ready-to-use quality saves significant time.

Print and Physical Marketing

High-resolution images suitable for print applications—brochures, flyers, business cards, and signage—are available throughout the library. The model-released photography is particularly valuable for print marketing materials where images of people are used in commercial contexts.

Presentations and Pitch Decks

Burst's clean, professional imagery serves well in business presentations and investor pitch decks where visual quality signals professionalism. The business-focused categories align naturally with the topics that presentations typically cover.

Burst for Artists and Designers

While Burst is primarily positioned as a business tool, artists and designers find value in its photography for several purposes. The images serve as reference material for illustration and design projects, as background elements in composite designs, and as placeholder imagery during the design development process. The consistent quality and clear licensing make Burst a reliable resource in professional design workflows.

The Shopify Ecosystem

Burst integrates naturally with the Shopify e-commerce platform, but it is not restricted to Shopify users. Anyone can access and download images from Burst regardless of whether they use Shopify for their online store. However, Shopify merchants benefit from direct integration that makes it easy to add Burst images to product pages, blog posts, and store themes without leaving the Shopify admin interface.

Burst vs. Other Free Stock Platforms

Compared to Unsplash, Burst offers a smaller but more business-focused collection with less image repetition across the web. Compared to Pexels, Burst provides more confident model release coverage for commercial use. Compared to Pixabay, Burst offers higher consistent quality without the mixed-quality results that larger platforms sometimes surface. The trade-off is collection size—Burst has fewer total images than any of these competitors, which means it may not have imagery for every conceivable need.

The Bottom Line

Burst is the best free stock photography platform for business and commercial use. Its combination of model-released images safe for commercial applications, business-focused curation that saves search time, original commissioned photography unavailable elsewhere, lower recognition factor that helps businesses look unique, clear and permissive licensing, modern editorial aesthetic, and practical integration with e-commerce workflows makes it a smart choice for entrepreneurs, marketers, and designers who need professional imagery that doesn't look like everyone else's.