13 FREE STOCK VIDEO WEBSITES TO SOURCE GREAT FOOTAGE IN 2021
In this post, I want to
show you my top favorite places online to get FREE stock footage videos.
Whether you need B-roll for a YouTube video or need an aerial establishing shot
for your short film, there are plenty of times when you could use some free stock
footage. Free videos are awesome, Most
of the websites in this list will have a Creative Commons 0 license, which
means the videos are part of the public domain, so you can pretty much do
whatever you want with them, even use them for commercial projects. But to be
on the safe side, be sure to read the license page of each one to make sure you
understand exactly what you can and cannot do. It’s also nice to give out
credit to the authors in the description of your video or film, even if the
license doesn’t require you to do so. So, with that out of the way, let’s get
started!
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| Pixabay TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Pixabay
Free assets online were with Pixabay, which has more than 2 million assets. Most of them are photos, but it definitely has an incredible selection of free videos too. Because pretty much anyone can upload on Pixabay, not all footage is amazing. But hey, the videos are free, so you can’t really complain. To get the best ones when you search for a topic, make sure to filter them either by Popular, to show you the ones with the most downloads; or even better, select “Editor’s Choice”, to show you a curated list of the best footage on the site. As you can see, there are plenty of 4K options which is great. When you download, you can also download a lower resolution version, in case you need it, but I always recommend you use a 4K version while editing, even if your timeline is only 1080p, as the final result, will be nicer. As for the license, make sure to read the page, but in a nutshell, you can use the videos in both personal and commercial projects, attribution is not required but is always appreciated and you just can’t redistribute the videos on other stock platforms.
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| Pexels TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Pexels
Is pexels.com - which I discovered fairly recently and is slowly becoming my absolute favorite. At its core, it’s a platform to share free stock photos, but the video collection is pretty impressive as well. What I love about Pexels is that the quality is much higher than on other websites, as they probably manually curate and approve only the best footage, which definitely shows in their catalog. The license is again pretty simple, you can use the videos for free and you don’t need to provide any attribution.
Videovo
Videvo is another massive platform with a lot of high-quality stock footage. Most of it is free, but you will also notice some videos that say Premium, which you have to pay for. The license is a tiny bit more complicated though, as they have 3 different licensing models: Royalty-Free License, Videvo Attribution License, and Creative Commons 3.0. They all allow you to use the video for commercial projects, the only difference being if you have to provide attribution or not. Some of the footage will only be available for Editorial use, which means no commercial projects or YouTube monetized videos.
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| Videezy TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Videezy
Videezy is part of the Eazy network of websites, where they also have vectors and Photoshop brushes on Vecteezy and Brusheezy. They offer a large collection of free videos, but you will also notice the Pro tag on some of them. There are a few different licenses here, which you can see when searching for some footage. Standard one allows you to use the video for free, but you need to provide attribution. You can also remove the attribution requirement by paying for the video. Pro license means you have to pay for the video; Creative Commons means you need to provide attribution and you cannot pay to remove the attribution requirement; and Editorial Use Only means you cannot use the videos in commercial projects.
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| Dareful TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Dareful
Dareful, which is definitely a bit of an interesting one. Dareful is the work of Joel Holland, the founder of VideoBlocks, and all the videos on the website are shot by him. So this is definitely a place where they focus on quality, not quantity, and where you will find some amazing 4K videos. As you will see, a lot of the footage here is aerial drone shots of beautiful nature landscapes The license here is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, which means you can use the footage in both personal and commercial projects, but you have to provide attribution.
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| Mazwai TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Mazwai
Mazwai is another one of those websites that focus on quality, not quantity. What makes it different is also that most of the footage here is quite unique, as the main focus is to provide free cinematic-looking footage, so that definitely makes this platform stands out and is worth checking out.
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| Mixkit TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Mixkit
Mixkit is definitely worth checking out as well, a platform where they focus on quality, so all the footage you find here will be absolutely wonderful. There aren’t that many videos as on other platforms, but that’s not a problem, given the quality. The license is incredibly simple, free to use and no attribution is required.
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| Life of Vids TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Life of Vids
Life of Vids is the brother of Life of Pix, where they offer free photos. It’s one that stands out with a unique style to the website and the videos, as this is the creation of Leeroy, a creative agency from Canada, definitely makes this worth looking at.
Coverr.co
Coverr.co has an interesting concept, as it focuses on website cover videos, but of course, you can use those videos for anything else, not just websites. What I don’t like about it is that you can’t preview videos when you move your mouse over them, but that’s something you can easily forget about because some of the footage is just awesome!
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| VideoPlasty TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
I want to introduce you to VideoPlasty.com Full disclosure, I own VideoPlasty and it’s not exactly a platform for free stock videos shot with a camera, but for stock animation and animated stock GIFs, that you won’t find anywhere else online. We have various assets such as character animations and icon animations and quite a few free ones as well as to test them out. Our goal is to help you with your creative videos and provide ready-to-use professional stock animation or stock GIFs that you can just drag & drop into your project, without wasting any more time creating those animations from scratch yourself, so we think it might be worth checking it out. I hope you enjoyed this list of stock video websites and with so many options, I’m sure you can find some great footage for your video project.
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| TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Vidsplay
Vidsplay's searchable and categorized stock video footage can be used for both personal and commercial projects for free. The only requirement is that you visibly add a credit link to Vidsplay.com somewhere on your website, ending credits of your video production, or in the description for online media channels such as Youtube, Vimeo, etc
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| TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Stock Footage 4 Free
Stock
Footage 4 Free says "There are never any fees for using our footage. Our the footage comes with a 100% royalty-free license allowing you to use the footage
in all types of productions, for worldwide distribution, forever." There
are hundreds of clips available, but no search or categorization, so you'll
have to browse through until you find a clip you like.
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| TOP 13 FREE Stock Video Websites for Royalty Free Footage 2021 |
Cute Stock Footage is the work of two friends, offering lots of free stock footage for free - categorized by type. "You are allowed to use this material in your commercial or non-commercial projects such as video games, films, videos, documentaries, presentations, animations, music, stage plays, radio plays, audiobooks, apps," they say.