Openverse Free Images Search

2D Graphics, Search

Free
No Download/Install required
No registration

Openverse is an open-source search engine that aggregates over 700 million Creative Commons-licensed and public domain media files, including images and audio.

Managed by the WordPress project, it indexes content from diverse repositories such as Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, and specialized museum collections. The platform provides a unified interface to filter results by specific license types, file formats, and source origins, facilitating the discovery of reusable assets while ensuring compliance with attribution requirements through automated metadata generation.

The full code (bot engine, the database management, and the frontend) was created by the Creative Commons team and is available on Github.

Tip: see the other entry in our database for the list of all images repositories used by Openverse; these can also be accessed directly for special uses.

Disciplines: Graphic design, Publishing, Education, Journalism, Content marketing.

Free alternative to Shutterstock, Adobe Stock.

Openverse Free Images Search compared with Shutterstock and Adobe Stock
Openverse Free Images Search	Shutterstock	Adobe Stock
Media covered: Images and audio are indexed. Video appears only through links to external sources, and open texts and 3D models are announced as planned.	Media covered: Images, and on the higher plans video, music and sound effects. Generated images are also included in the subscriptions.	Media covered: Photos, vectors, illustrations, templates, 3D assets, music, and HD and 4K video.
Catalogue size: More than 700 million images and audio files, drawn from selected open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset.	Catalogue size: The Unlimited Images plan cites more than 83 million images. The Unlimited Plus plan cites more than 100 million assets.	Catalogue size: Adobe describes over 900 million artist-created assets.
Licence and reuse checks: Only Creative Commons and public domain works are indexed. Openverse does not verify licensing or attribution accuracy, so the reuser must check both before publication.	Licence and reuse checks: A Standard licence is included in the image plans. An Enhanced licence also exists, and the pricing page does not detail the differences.	Licence and reuse checks: Standard, Enhanced and Extended licences exist. Standard caps print runs at 500,000 and excludes use in items you sell, while Extended covers large print runs or resale.
Cost model: No fee is charged for searching. Attribution duties depend on the Creative Commons licence of each work.	Cost model: The Image downloads plan and Unlimited Images are paid subscriptions, both with a single seat. One-off image packs are also offered.	Cost model: The 10 stock credits plan and Unlimited Stock are paid subscriptions. Credit packs without subscription last one year.
Openness: All code is open source and hosted on GitHub, and the project accepts community contributions. The project moved to WordPress in 2021 after starting as CC Search at Creative Commons in 2019.	Openness: Commercial service with team and enterprise plans that mention SSO and API integrations on request.	Openness: Commercial service. Team and enterprise pricing is available only by contacting Adobe.

Topics covered: Openverse, Creative Commons, public domain, media files, search engine, metadata generation, attribution requirements, image repositories, database management, frontend, unified interface, license types, file formats, automated, WordPress, Wikimedia Commons, and Github..