Pexels Review: Free Stock Photos and Video for the Modern Creator

For years, free stock photography meant low-resolution, awkwardly staged images of people shaking hands in suits or pointing at whiteboards with exaggerated enthusiasm. Pexels helped change that perception entirely. Founded in 2014 in Berlin by Bruno Joseph and Ingo Joseph, Pexels built a community-driven platform where talented photographers and videographers contribute high-quality content that anyone can use for free.

In 2019, Canva acquired Pexels along with sister platform Pixabay, integrating both libraries into Canva's design ecosystem while maintaining Pexels as an independent, freely accessible platform. Today, Pexels hosts over 3 million photos and videos, attracts more than 100 million monthly visitors, and has become one of the most important free creative resources on the internet—particularly for video content, where it arguably surpasses every other free platform.

The Video Advantage

While Unsplash dominates free stock photography, Pexels has carved out a distinctive niche as the leading source of free stock video. The platform's video library is remarkably comprehensive for a free service, covering categories that video creators actually need.

The collection includes 4K and HD footage across a wide range of subjects: nature and landscapes, urban environments, technology and business, food and cooking, fitness and wellness, abstract textures, and seasonal content. Crucially, Pexels also offers a growing selection of vertical video optimized for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts—formats that have become essential for social media marketing but are underserved by most stock platforms.

For YouTubers, podcast producers, and social media managers, the availability of free B-roll footage is transformative. A travel vlogger can supplement their own footage with aerial drone shots of destinations they could not film themselves. A tech reviewer can use clean footage of devices and workspaces to fill gaps in their edits. A small business can produce professional-looking promotional videos without allocating budget to expensive stock footage subscriptions.

The video content on Pexels tends toward a modern, cinematic aesthetic. Contributors favor natural lighting, shallow depth of field, and smooth camera movements that give the footage a polished, contemporary feel. This stands in contrast to the sterile, overly produced look that characterizes much of the footage on paid platforms.

The Pexels License

The Pexels License is straightforward and permissive. All photos and videos on the platform are free to use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. You can download, modify, crop, filter, and incorporate content into any project without paying a fee or obtaining special permission.

Attribution is not required, though the platform encourages users to credit photographers when possible. This is a meaningful distinction for professionals working on high-volume projects where tracking and displaying attribution for dozens of images would create significant administrative overhead.

The license does include sensible restrictions. You cannot sell unmodified Pexels content as standalone prints, posters, or digital downloads. You cannot use identifiable people in content that implies endorsement of products or services without appropriate model releases. And you cannot redistribute Pexels content on competing stock photography platforms.

For the vast majority of use cases—websites, blogs, social media, presentations, marketing materials, app interfaces—the Pexels License provides all the freedom you need.

Search and Discovery

Pexels offers several tools for finding the right content quickly. The standard keyword search is effective for common queries, and the platform supports filtering by orientation, size, and color. The color search feature is particularly useful for designers working within specific brand palettes—you can search for images dominated by a particular hue, which helps maintain visual consistency across a project.

The platform also curates collections organized by theme, season, and trending topics. These collections are updated regularly and provide a useful starting point when you need inspiration rather than a specific image. The Leaderboard highlights the most popular contributors, whose portfolios often contain consistently high-quality work across multiple categories.

For developers, the Pexels API provides programmatic access to the entire photo and video library. The API is free for most applications, well-documented, and supports search, curated collections, and popular content endpoints. It powers image and video search features in numerous third-party applications, content management systems, and design tools.

The Canva Connection

Canva's acquisition of Pexels in 2019 brought additional resources and visibility to the platform without fundamentally changing its free model. Pexels content is now directly accessible within Canva's design editor, allowing millions of Canva users to search and insert free photos and videos without leaving their design workflow.

This integration has significantly expanded the reach of Pexels contributors, whose work now appears in presentations, social media graphics, and marketing materials created by Canva's user base of over 100 million people. For contributors, this exposure can lead to recognition, followers, and opportunities that extend beyond the Pexels platform itself.

The acquisition also improved the platform's infrastructure, with faster load times, better search algorithms, and more reliable uptime. Canva's investment in Pexels suggests a long-term commitment to maintaining the free model as a complement to Canva's own premium content offerings.

Content Quality and Curation

Pexels maintains quality standards through a combination of community curation and editorial review. Not every submitted photo or video is accepted—the platform evaluates submissions for technical quality, composition, and relevance. This curation process helps maintain a higher average quality than platforms that accept all submissions indiscriminately.

That said, quality does vary. The best content on Pexels rivals what you would find on paid platforms, with professional-grade photography and cinematic video footage. But the library also contains images that are competent but unremarkable—adequate for blog posts and presentations but not distinctive enough for premium brand campaigns.

The platform's strength lies in lifestyle, nature, technology, and urban photography. Categories like medical imagery, industrial photography, and highly specific business scenarios are less well-represented, which is where paid platforms with larger contributor networks maintain an advantage.

Who Should Use Pexels?

Video creators and YouTubers will find Pexels indispensable for B-roll footage. The combination of free 4K video, vertical formats, and a cinematic aesthetic makes it the best free resource for supplementing original video content.

Social media managers benefit from the endless supply of fresh, modern imagery and video clips suitable for Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook posts. The ability to download and use content immediately, without licensing negotiations, keeps content calendars on schedule.

Web designers and developers can source hero images, background textures, and placeholder content quickly. The API integration makes it easy to build Pexels search directly into custom content management systems.

Small businesses and startups with limited marketing budgets can produce professional-looking websites, brochures, and advertisements using Pexels content, reserving their budget for custom photography only where it is truly necessary.

Students and educators can freely use Pexels content in academic presentations, research materials, and educational projects without navigating complex licensing requirements.

The Limitations

Like all free platforms, Pexels has trade-offs. The most significant is the absence of guaranteed model releases for images featuring identifiable people. While Pexels encourages contributors to obtain releases, the platform cannot verify compliance for every submission. For major commercial campaigns—national advertising, product packaging, billboards—this creates legal risk that paid platforms mitigate through systematic vetting.

The library, while large, is smaller than paid competitors like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. Highly specific or niche search queries may return limited results, and the most popular images are used widely enough that visual distinctiveness can be a concern for brands.

Search filtering is less granular than on paid platforms. You cannot filter by model release status, number of people, specific demographics, or detailed compositional characteristics. For creative briefs that require very precise imagery, paid platforms offer more targeted results.

The Bottom Line

Pexels occupies a unique and valuable position in the stock media landscape. Its combination of free high-quality photography, an industry-leading free video library, a permissive license, and deep integration with Canva and other tools makes it an essential resource for creators at every level.

For video content in particular, no other free platform comes close to matching Pexels in terms of quality, variety, and usability. Whether you are a solo content creator building a YouTube channel or a small business producing social media campaigns, Pexels provides the visual assets you need without the financial barrier that paid platforms impose.