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Pexels

Pexels

Overview

What is Pexels?

Pexels, headquartered in Berlin, offers stock photos and video under the Creative Commons Zero license, from a global network of creators.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Pexels is a trusted resource for users in need of diverse and modern photography for their websites and content. Users, ranging from …
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High quality images

9 out of 10
July 14, 2022
Incentivized
I use Pexels for finding free images, artwork, illustrations, and videos. They are mostly for our publications such as blog posts, …
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Awards

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Pricing

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What is Pexels?

Pexels, headquartered in Berlin, offers stock photos and video under the Creative Commons Zero license, from a global network of creators.

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  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

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Pexels Technical Details

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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(65)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Pexels is a trusted resource for users in need of diverse and modern photography for their websites and content. Users, ranging from startups with limited marketing budgets to full-service marketing agencies, rely on Pexels to find high-quality stock videos and photos for a wide range of purposes. This includes marketing campaigns, pitch deck visuals, social media posts, presentations, ads, blog images, and more. The platform's ease of use and intuitive interface make it simple for users to obtain images, videos, and backgrounds for articles and illustrations. Pexels also enhances the design process by providing a wide selection of royalty-free stock photos and videos in various sizes and orientations. Its valuable collection of high-quality images helps clients visualize designs, improving overall communication and understanding of design concepts. With its vast library of diverse imagery, Pexels is a go-to resource for finding custom and business-related images for various needs such as blog headers and social media posts. Whether it's for commercial use in social media marketing or print materials, or personal use in newsletters or PowerPoint presentations, Pexels remains a reliable source for quality stock imagery that meets a variety of user requirements.

Users commonly recommend Pexels for its wide range of categories and content, making it a valuable source for finding stock photos and videos. They highly recommend Pexels as a free platform with a great selection of high-quality images and footages. Users suggest trying Pexels at least once as it offers a plethora of great footage at no cost. Additionally, users appreciate that Pexels provides massive stock images in high definition, making it a good resource for designers and anyone looking for free high-definition images and videos.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 34)
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August 07, 2022

Great media database

Luiz Alexandre Viana Magno | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With Pexels I found a simple and pure way to obtain images, videos, and backgrounds that I need to keep my articles well illustrated. It offers a better experience than many other similar platforms. I usually use it while I am writing articles and when I am about to finish the text I go to the site to obtain the images that are related to the main text.
  • Media download
  • Large database
  • Search accuracy
  • Improved detailed search
  • Search for tiny objects or landscapes
  • Including new AI capabilities
Pexels is well suited for those writing reports, blogs, articles, and social media. I cannot cite any field where Pexels is not suitable. However, if you do not have the necessity of illustrating your writing material I see that Pexels will not help that much. I also cite that even in these situations you can go to Pexels to search for images that can inspire your content and writing style, with emotion or description accuracy.
Osama Khan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Finding spectacular images of mountains, landscapes, and waterfalls can be a little time-consuming. We use them in our flyers to give a sense of awe. Pexels has a nice collection of images that is improving. The pictures have improved in quality over the last two years. We wanted to save money, and get clear breath-taking images. Pexels has a huge collection of photographs. We also wanted to download videos to make openers for live streaming. The videos are usually good, and the best ones are shown first. There is a large variety in the quality.
  • Search by color
  • Create collections
  • Contests
  • Filter out pictures
  • More options in Search
  • Delete single searches
Downloading free photographs and videos is easy with Pexels. The variety and quality are above average. There are mobile apps for the Pexels. You can upload your own pictures, and compete on the leaderboard. If saving money is a top priority, then all the pictures are free at Pexels. Searches are fast and the previews on hover save time.
Ashley Schwartau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels has always been one of my go-to sources for stock assets. Stock assets can be SO cheesy and expensive, but Pexels is neither. The models are diverse and modern, and the photography styles are more realistic and photojournalistic and not that awful studio-bright-light-fake look that so many stock companies have used for years. Plus, the search functionality continues to improve all the time.
  • Realistic, non-cheesy photos and videos.
  • Easy to filter results based on orientation.
  • Search by hex code and color! GAME CHANGER!
  • Simple explanation of license terms.
  • FREE!
  • To be honest, I can't think of anything.
  • The search functionality and explore options are robust!
1. Small businesses with small or non-existent budgets still need assets to create content 2. Individual content makers or freelancers who need stock assets 3. Corporate eLearning wants to modernize and replace all old-fashioned, outdated, brightly lit studio photos with more realistic and relevant imagery that will resonate with modern audiences and learners.
Amy Highland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've used Pexels for many different purposes over the years. One of the main areas was in helping clients imagine how their designs would look with different photographic styles and depicting different ideas. Before this, we would have issues with clients disliking designs because they couldn't envision them within the context of seeing photography that was relevant to them. Pexels really helped be able to visually describe ideas.
  • Search returns are accurate to what I'm looking for
  • Collections of images are very helpful for finding inspiration
  • Images are varied in style and can be well adapted
  • Making ads less prominent
  • Having collections based on industry
  • Being able to export with different presets and styles
Pexels is great for being able to quickly find and test how images work within a design or brand and using them as visual references for clients. It's great when you need more natural-looking images which have nuance and depth to them. The ideas behind photos are less literal and more evocative of lifestyle and feeling so are well suited to a lot of brands that champion those values. It's not so great when you need something super specific or more 'stock image' looking. So, more corporate companies may find less helpful results.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels has been a very reliable resource in our organization for high-quality stock images and videos. We use these resources commercially for social media marketing, paid advertising banners, and on our clients' websites for blog images and more. Pexels provides a vast library to choose from and has authentic imagery and videos from contributors.
  • High-quality videos and images
  • Easy of use
  • Copyright-free images
  • Rich in resources
  • Sometimes its difficult to find resources for particular search terms.
  • Does not contain much vectors.
We were doing social media marketing for one of our clients and the niche was culinary. We could not find good-quality videos for them and most of them were copyrighted. But then we came across Pexels and they had beautiful videos in 4K and they were free. Even after downloading the quality of the videos was not compromised.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Pexels to create an internal Marketing video for our CX department. We were in need of video materials that were generic, but specific enough. We were mostly looking for material with people in it. The scope was a one minute video, that was meant to inspire people. Pexels solved our need for materials, since it has a large library of content.
  • Preview mode while hovering
  • Suggestions in search
  • Download CTA
  • Website speed
  • Sometimes the search functionality didn't work, needed to refresh my page
  • More filter possibilities
I think it's really suited when you need generic video content to create video's. Sometimes it misses series of the same sort, but it's perfect for unique shots. Since we did not use licensed material, I cannot advice anything around account / payments. But I do recommend this platform to at least get inspired. When going commercial it can be your go to place.
July 14, 2022

High quality images

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels for finding free images, artwork, illustrations, and videos. They are mostly for our publications such as blog posts, brochures, and white papers.
  • You can create collections with the photos you save.
  • You can filter by orientation, size or even colour code.
  • And you can download it in custom size (it doesn't corrupt the original ratio which is a great feature).
  • More content for translation or language sector would be great.
  • It would be better if the download count is more visible, instead of in the `more info` section.
  • Categorisation system could be improved.
It's a great tool for free images as well as videos if you don't want to spend any money. It's especially good for publications as they are very high quality. And the filtering is great as well which means you won't spend too much time finding the right image. But if your sector is very niche, maybe you won't be able to find so many options.
David Mynář | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a full-service marketing agency, we produce marketing and web content, which needs a lot of variable photos on a tight budget set by our clients. We use Pexels as a source of high-quality stock photos for illustration purposes. The majority of the photos are completely free of charge and fully sufficient for our purpose.
  • Quantity of photos
  • Quality and variety
  • User interface and search engine
  • Limited database for expert topics (e.g. dermatology).
  • No option to pay for premium content - affiliates to iStock.
It is very useful for general topics and natural-looking photos, on the other hand for very specific topics or local photography you will have to pay for overpriced photos from iStock, here Pexels is not sufficient. Overall, I can highly recommend for every topic to at least try the Pexels options.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Clients supply content for publication on my website. While from time to time, the client supplies images, I usually have to source photography to match the content. This is where Pexels comes in, as one of the leading free stock photo libraries on the Internet. Pexels allows me to search the library quickly and easily to find the most suitable photos, and download them. Each photo contains additional metadata (such as keywords, camera make & model) which helps to better identify the context of the image. Once downloaded, Pexels' images can be safely published on my website.
  • One-click downloading from search results
  • High resolution photo quality
  • Peace of mind with image licensing
  • Allow multiple image downloads at the same time (multiple selections).
  • Provide downloads in several preset dimensions.
  • Additional filtering tools to narrow down the search for the right image.
I source royalty-free images from several libraries, and Pexels is one of my key sources. There's no one library that has everything, so if I can't find what I'm looking for in one library, I'll try another one. I may find the right image on Pexels if I didn't find it on Pixabay or Unsplash. If you need a highly specific image, then a paid stock library might be the only option, but it's worth giving a free library a shot first. The other scenario where it won't be as useful is if you're looking for a unique image that isn't used elsewhere.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Pexels for pictures, videos, gifs - all forms of digital images. It is easy to find what you need, download or collect and implement how you need to use it. Content is available for most uses, blogs, social media, and campaigns. You cannot use it as an endorsement of a product or sell the Pixels media content to another service.
  • images
  • video
  • gifs
  • website-based collections
  • multi-word specific searches
We use it for our outreach campaigns, and we need to reach specific populations that often are not represented in stock photography. Pexels is inexpensive and many things are free to use! We are able to find a diverse group of images that represent our users better. We have also used it for social media and our website.
Shelby Bass | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my company, we use Pexels for high-res, low-cost comps (composite images created in Photoshop) that we use in client presentations. Alternative image and video sites like Getty can be prohibitively expensive, especially for composites that require many separate images to be combined into a final composite. Pexel's advantage is that it's free, which means we can use unlimited images to create the best possible representation of an idea.
  • High-resolution images – Pexels is full of images that are high enough in resolution to look beautiful on their own, but also high quality enough to be combined with other images without distracting pixelization
  • Stock videos – other free stock sites are often limited to just images, but Pexels has a wide range of videos available as well, which we use to plus up decks
  • Good search functions – while not as robust as some paid sites, Pexels' search functions make it pretty easy to track down what you need
  • Licensing – it's very straightforward to know what you can and can't do with a Pexels photo, which protects my company and our clients
  • People search function – Some other sites allow you to refine your search results based on if there are people in them, how many people are in the image, and the people's gender, age, etc. A similar search function would be very helpful!
  • Collection search – Browsing image collections is a great way to find more photos in a theme, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to search for collections.
  • Isolated search – It'd be useful to be able to search for isolated objects (where they're on a white or plain background, intended to be used in composites)
Pexels is great for finding images for comps in the advertising and marketing industries plus images for decks, mockups, and websites. It has an excellent library of high-res images and videos that are relatively easy to search through. Pexels is less suitable for finding very specific images—especially images that contain a person of a particular age or gender—as their search system is not as sophisticated as some more expensive competitors. That said, Pexels provides an enormous amount of free images with very straightforward licensing rules.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels for stock images in graphic design work. I like that they look like more natural snapshots versus photos. We mostly use paid stock images but if we can't find what we are looking for or need more of a natural style, Pexels is a great option to explore.
  • Natural-looking stock photos
  • Free stock photos
  • Creative stock photos
  • I feel that the food and product stock photography options are a little lacking
I had a project where I needed a lot of snapshot-like photos that were fun, different and creative, and Pexels was a great option for those. Pexels seems to excel in lifestyle photography. For a lot of our other work we need food-related photography, and Pexels doesn't seem as good for this - not as many options, however sometimes we do find some food images to use on Pexels. All in all for natural and lifestyle photography, Pexels is a good source for that.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Pexels for high-quality and varied images for social media and to support content pieces like blogs and eMagazines. We like to quick and easy way we can search for select images at no cost, and our journalists credit photographers at the end of their pieces when used.
  • Quick to search for relevant images
  • Quick to download and put images to use
  • Good variety of free to use images
  • More variety in images would always be appreciated, especially in niche B2B search terms.
  • A saved media area for images you have already downloaded - to save duplication.
Pexels is ideal if you have a social post or written piece of content which you need to publish quickly and need a supporting image. You can credit the photographers, but do not usually need to pay to use the images. It may not be suitable for creating long-lasting branding/ backgrounds where you wish to have more ownership over the image/ not have competition or other web users with the same image.
Winona Harrod | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use Pexels for more natural, energetic, and vibrant shots for my design material. Also, as you can obtain free stock, it is a great tool for last-minute jobs, especially social posts.
  • Natural shots
  • Energetic shots
  • Diversity within imagery
  • To have more corporate imagery in your library
  • To have a more elaborate searching system - can be a bit basic, so it can be hard to find images on certain topics
Pexels is great for more natural shots, daily life shots, still life, and props when used in my corporate and charitable design projects. I use them heavily when designing charity designs as these charities do not tend to have a budget for stock imagery. Pexel allows me access to professional and dynamic imagery making their work look professional and trustworthy. Pexels is great for events and daily things like weddings, fairs, shopping, and young people but not as good for very specific topics imagery in any industry, especially corporate.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels as a stock photo/image bank tool when searching for references for my design team. My designers also use Pexels to search for royalties free images and videos and use them in our marketing. This tool has been helping our business to visually communicate our ideas for free in the last few years.
  • Free videos
  • Stock Images
  • Stock Videos
  • Free images
  • Royalty free images
  • More pictures
  • More videos
  • More free options
Pexels is well suited if you are a creative professional or a manager who searches for visual references to feed your team with ideas for posts, ads, websites, and videos. In my experience, it might not be appropriate as your only source of images if you are a professional designer. In this case, you might want to have a few more stock image banks on your toolbox and probably add some premium / paid services to get more options.
Jewell Shaw | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels to research different images needed for personal needs or for client use. I love this stock photo and video website because you can find high-quality images at no cost. I find it very useful if you're looking to design with great content but looking to save money.
  • High Quality Photos
  • High Quality Videos
  • No strings attached on a membership
  • UI enhancements
  • More suggestions for photo descriptions
  • Make the design a little more simple
Pexels is perfect for a designer that is trying to work on sample websites and looking to increase skills.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels forms an integral part of our design process by providing us with an expansive selection of royalty-free, high-quality stock photos and video content which allows us to enhance and complement our content and presentations. Their stock photos and videos are available in various sizes and orientations out of the box, which further streamlines the overall design process on our side.
  • Top quality stock images and videos
  • High-res content
  • Landscape & portrait versions
  • Various sizes out of the box
  • Offering more niche-specific content
  • Expand their offering by linking to other stock providers
  • Show a selection of top collections on the home page
Pexels is ideal for individual users and organisations that need access to top-quality stock photos or videos, without the need for licensing hurdles. Generic images for websites and presentations are plentiful and can easily meet the requirements of any user looking for such. Pexels relies on user-generated content, which does limit their catalogue somewhat if you need specific types of images and detailed variations of these.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels to find stock imagery for marketing such as our website, blog, and social media as well as for internal presentation decks. We need a selection of imagery and have a subscription with another stock photo provider but find it's important to have the variety that Pexels offers in addition to the other subscription. We like that Pexels has more variety and more creative imagery than other stock services. We also like how it constantly updates and allows us to support new photographers and artists. We find the diversity to be strong within Pexels' library which is very important to us.
  • Search is very easy
  • Variety of results
  • Support lesser-known or newer photographers and artists
  • Constant fresh content added regularly
  • Diverse results and diverse artists and photographers
  • Different from other stock services
  • The ability to request specific photos or commission projects from photographers would be interesting
  • Image compression with the cropping and resizing options would be great (optimize file size for web)
  • More metadata would be great
Pexels is great for creative and non-typical stock imagery for marketing and social media. As a B2B company we use imagery to convey emotion, aesthetics, and trust (rather than to showcase a particular product) so having a variety of imagery and constantly fresh imagery to choose from to help us stand out is important to us. Pexels is an excellent resource in addition to other stock photo services to keep our content engaging and different from our competition.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pexels is my go-to source for free copyright-free images to use for content creation, customer-facing newsletters and emails, and more. The amount of content available means that I always find photos that meet my needs, and because of the nature of my work, I sometimes need niche images and Pexels does an incredible job of having user-generated content that means I can get the right image no matter the situation (and it will be unique).
  • Amount of images
  • Wide array of types of images
  • Great search tool
  • Highlight specific users images or recently-added/recently highly-rated images
  • More new content for most commonly-searched terms
  • Clarity on how often images are being used to avoid over-saturation
- Perfect for anyone who uses images as part of their work and wants to create unique experiences for their consumer - Easy to use the search feature and amount of options for those new to content creation - Transparency on where images are coming from and the user who created them.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Pexels to find aspiring images that help us illustrate our presentations and improve the quality of our proposals. Sometimes we use the images as examples for creative pieces, as to make them the most accurate to what the final piece will look like. It is great to be able to download free images that do not come with watermarks on them.
  • Free Images
  • Aspiring images
  • No watermark
  • More range of images
  • Search engine
  • Bunch download
It is great to use images for presentations, proposals, mood boards, and getting inspiration. As they are artistic photos, they are nicer than traditional stock ones, but sometimes there are no series of the same images, so you might not get the perspective you are looking for and just get one point of view.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels is an excellent platform for royalty-free stock images and videos. Very helpful if you need to quickly find quality images. We mainly use them to find relevant and less corporate-looking images for mockups.
  • Image Search
  • High quality image downloads
  • Very clear usage rights
  • Bundle Pricing
  • Additional ways they can highlight the Photographers
  • Build a Mockup tool
Pexels is really a solid choice if you are looking for images that shine with personality and feel less staged. If you're looking for cold corporate stock imagery, this is not the best option for you.
July 12, 2022

A life savior

Abdellah Ouardirhi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pexels provides a generous free stock of photos and videos with great quality that is often in use in commercial and ad posts. It may appear easy but this website is a time and money saver all the contributors are gifted and help us to document our posts and presentations also.
  • Perfect landscapes
  • Good situational photos
  • 4K videos
  • More slomo
  • Longer videos
  • Longer videos
When you are under pressure of an urgent ad campaign you need useable yet quality content, when you are trying to compose an ad and maybe you don’t have enough. The content you just open Pexels and you will find your happiness it provides you with big stock of artwork
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels is a wonderful resource for free stock photography to use for internal campaigns as well as promotional materials for marketing. I highly recommend it for PowerPoint presentations as well as social media posts. Print projects can also benefit from their high-quality photography. A definite must as a free photo source.
  • Inclusion
  • Variety
  • Large prints
  • Recommended based on search feature
  • Homepage feature images from your favorite users
  • Seasonal or holiday feature imagery
The Pexels library is constantly changing and growing. For the most consistent variety, I would suggest paid stock photography as a backup. Videos and vectors are not available on Pexels. Definitely keep Pexels favorite users and images bookmarked for easy access for projects. Supporting the artists is a wonderful bonus.
Allen Eshmoili | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels on a regular basis. I have it integrated with my Canva account and use it regularly for blog headers and social media posts. It's quick to use, easy to find the pictures I need, and best of all, it's free! There are so many other free picture apps, I just find Pexels to have great quality, and variety, pics are tagged well and they have different sizes/orientations.
  • Graphics
  • Tagging
  • Attribute free
  • Nothing!
I like how it integrates with Canva and allows me to find a picture in-app and seamlessly add it to my design. The variety of photos can be overwhelming. I like to use it for blogs, social media posts, graphic design, posters, and many other applications where high-quality, attribute-free photos are required.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels provides a diverse range of high-quality, free stock photos. The scope of our use case is mostly for internal documents, as we use professional photography and models with signed releases for public materials. The business problems this addresses help illustrate ideas and concepts in internal presentations to stakeholders more effectively and in a way that will make more of an impact.
  • Search function
  • Budget friendly
  • Diverse selection
  • Support independent creators
  • Surface photographers new to the platform.
  • Better compensation of content creators.
  • More business-friendly photos (less lifestyle/aesthetic).
It's perfect for internal documents - it helps illustrate the points you're trying to make and helps make things like user personas feel real. I would stay away from using Pexels for any materials that are meant for public/external use since the photographers are not compensated for the usage of their photos.
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