Free and Stock Images for Covers, Ads, and Social Media
Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay have become the default first stop for authors needing a cover image, an ad graphic, or social media content, and for good reason: all three permit commercial use, all three are free, and the catalogs are genuinely enormous. But there's a real, specific risk these platforms don't fully protect you from, and it has nothing to do with the license terms themselves.
The Licenses Are Genuinely Fine — Here's the Actual Risk
Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay all grant broad commercial-use rights, free of charge, with no attribution legally required on any of the three. That part is straightforward and not where authors get into trouble. The real risk is that none of these platforms verify what gets uploaded. Anyone can submit a photo, and the platform doesn't confirm the uploader actually holds the rights to it, or that any recognizable people in the photo gave consent (a model release) for their image to be used commercially. If a photo on one of these sites is later found to lack proper rights, you, not the platform, bear the legal exposure of having used it commercially. None of the three platforms indemnify you against that risk on their free tiers.
⚠ If a stock image shows a recognizable person, a trademarked product, or a distinctive, recognizable building or location, treat it with real caution before using it commercially. A model release for the person, or a property release for the location or trademarked item, is generally required for commercial use, and free stock platforms don't verify or guarantee either one exists for the images they host.
Where to Look
Practical Steps to Reduce Risk
Favor images without recognizable people for cover use specifically, since this single choice eliminates the model-release question entirely and is the simplest way to avoid the platforms' biggest blind spot
Avoid images featuring branded products, distinctive trademarked architecture, or other recognizable intellectual property, even when they appear incidentally in the background of an otherwise generic photo
Credit the photographer in your book's copyright or acknowledgements page even when not legally required — none of these three platforms require attribution, but a simple line crediting the photographer and platform costs nothing and provides a documented paper trail if a licensing dispute ever arises
For especially high-stakes use, a cover that will anchor your entire brand and marketing for years, consider a paid stock platform with genuine indemnification, or commission original photography or illustration, rather than relying solely on free platforms for your single most important visual asset
Keep a simple record of where each image came from and when you downloaded it — a basic spreadsheet noting the source URL and date is enough, and it's the kind of lightweight documentation that matters only if a question ever comes up, but is nearly impossible to reconstruct after the fact if it does
Beyond the Big Three
If Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay don't have the right image, a longer tail of similar free platforms exists, including StockSnap and Pikwizard, generally operating under comparable commercial-use terms and carrying the same model-release and property-release caveats described above. The underlying caution applies regardless of which specific free platform you're pulling from.
Conclusion
Free stock photography is a genuinely useful, legitimate resource for cover images, ad creative, and social content, and the licenses themselves are rarely the problem. The real risk is the gap these platforms leave open around model and property releases, since nobody is verifying that on your behalf. A little caution around recognizable people, brands, and locations, plus a simple habit of crediting the source, closes that gap for the overwhelming majority of everyday author use.
- Randall