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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 Demos

Livrare Shaorma (demo) pexels rodnae productions

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burning fire demo| amazing background video from pexels

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Pexels Videos 2711145

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Pexels Videos 1943483

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pexels tima miroshnichenko 6196269

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pexels office demo video

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Product Details

What is Pexels?

Pexels Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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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

(1-17 of 17)
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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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Typically we use this brand as a company when we require any stock images to help when we are creating PowerPoint decks that we are presenting to clients; to make them look more aesthetically pleasing. If I needed an image I would browse the website to see if there was anything suitable that met my needs and is the correct sizing.
  • A very wide range of images available
  • High quality images
  • Clearly demonstrates which are free and which need to be paid for
  • Increasing the relevancy for certain phrases. I will sometimes need to search numerous times with different phrases to find something suitable that I am looking for
I have largely used them in our creative projects. In my remit as I do a lot of PowerPoint presentations for clients, I will often use Pexels to find a suitable image that will compliment my existing content. I will also sometimes use the website as inspiration for image ideas; that I will then send to our design / photography team.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it for almost all of our stock images. Many of our social media posts contain an image from Pexels. We use their images often in our print marketing material too from brochures to flyers to postcards. There are always so many great license-free images for any topic we search in Pexels.
  • All license-free images, don't have to search through anywhere else
  • High quality images easy to download
  • Many options for whatever we search
  • I do think that the library should grow. For example, I was looking for an image of a living room with a fireplace and there were only a few options
  • I get tricked sometimes because I see images I want to use but they are from some other company and they are paid
  • Improve search understanding for multi-word searches
If you are making a social post, and need a background image, go to Pexels search it, and find it. I was surprised that there are even many images of the city I live in, Minneapolis. Cool to use those in posts and have lots of high-quality professional photographs to use. Lots of good generic house images.
Stephen Jothiraj | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Pexels to create content for marketing, promotions, and other videos for social media channels. Pexels is so handy when it comes to providing stunning pictures or video montages.

Pexels is easy to use and very intuitive.
  • I like the high quality pictures and videos available at different resolution.
  • I like the categorization of content that's easy to browse through.
  • Attributing and licensing is very straightforward and easy.
  • Categorization can be further refined.
I love the site and the content it offers amateur creators like me. The curated content categories on offer in the 'Discover' tab are a great place to draw inspiration for your project. The challenges run periodically to keep us engaged and want to improve our skills.
Fred Xorla Adzoyi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a relatively early-stage startup with huge marketing needs but a significantly limited marketing budget, we relied on Pexels for most of the free stock videos and photos we used to develop and produce our campaigns. We have been able to source great quality materials for pitch deck visuals, social media posts, presentations, ads and promos, etc.
  • High definition photographs
  • High definition videos
  • Easily searchable library
  • Exposure for creatives
  • More (racially) diverse content.
  • More videos with sound
  • more community-building platform features.
The success of social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter depends significantly on the quality of the content used. Pexels maintains the highest quality standards for all content hosted on the platform... with High Definition, excellent composition materials only. Another great thing is that they provide you with an assortment of filtered content suggestions related to the selections. This helps save time.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pexels offers a great solution for collaboration on storyboarding concepts on campaigns. As a team leader, I would mark my selection as the base concept per campaign, and then the team will make their selections based on the team leader's baseline. Since we started using Pexels and due to the collaboration, we managed to double our rate of completion on our storyboards.
  • Pexels offer a great content calendar.
  • Pexels challenge ensures great content.
  • Pexels' user interface is particularly user-friendly.
  • I would like to see more video's on Pexels.
  • Easier category search functions would be helpful.
  • I would like to see more places photos/images.
The Pexels platform is extremely helpful for creating people-centric content, or as I like to put it, content that relates to us humans, but when it comes to scenic environments, I would say Pexels has limitations. Pexels content typically offers a wide range of similar pictures, which is particularly useful when conveying a particular message.
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