So what if you’re on a budget or need something fast? Well, take a look at the list we’ve collated below. These sites all offer high-quality free stock video great for use as your homepage background, on website banners or your client’s latest campaign landing page – review the licencing first.
Check ‘em out and see what you think.
Post updated on 22nd July 2019.
Coverr
Coverr positions itself as a provider of full-screen video best suited for website backgrounds, often called Covers due to the CSS background sizing attribute after which the site is named.
There is a decent amount of videos available and this is growing with 7 new videos added every Monday. Simple categorisation helps you to find what you’re looking for quickly. The quality of the videos are generally good, but there are other libraries with better production values. That said, don’t miss this one as there are definitely a few gems to be found.
Videvo
Videvo, founded in 2012, has a small team based in Oxford and is one of the largest online resources for free stock video in HD. There are three levels of licencing. Each are easy to understand and define what the video clips may be used for and who you might need to credit.
New videos are regularly uploaded with a collection of both live footage and motion graphics. There is a good range of categories and both the Browse filters and text search seem to operate well.
Pixabay
Pixabay is a free stock image library covering the typical staples of photography, illustrations and vector graphics but also includes a set of high-quality free videos. There are currently thousands of videos available in a selection of HD and 4K formats which include animation, slow motion and time-lapse stock.
The videos are all licenced under the Creative Commons Zero licence meaning you can use the footage without needing to attribute the creator.
The library is curated by a community of enthusiastic creatives and is overseen by a team of quality controllers to maintain the highest levels of quality stock footage.
Pond5
Pond5 has a huge repository of over 10,000 free videos for use, the majority of which are completely free for standard usage. It does seem though that there is a lot of historical footage in their Public Domain library so how useful these are for current and future campaigns is anyone’s guess, but the sheer size of this online resource definitely warrants a look.
Pond5 does offer paid footage with over 1 million clips on offer, so if your pockets are a little deeper than it’s worth a look to see what’s on offer and perhaps spending a little to get exactly what you’re after.
Pexels
Pexels is another popular free stock imagery website which offers stock video footage as well. These are all under the Creative Commons Zero licence and are free to use without any attribution and there is no limit to the number of videos you can download.
Pexels and Pixabay do seem to have some overlap in their offering but there is enough unique footage in Pexel’s library to warrant listing it here in its own right.
Pikwizard
These guys now have one of the most comprehensive free video libraries out there and are aiming to be one of the largest by the close of 2019. Thankfully size hasn’t had a detrimental effect on quality, with some fantastic stock clips available.
Covering both image and video libraries there is a large range of categories to choose from and their ‘Most Popular’ section bring up a range of options quickly. The categories scroller along the top of the site does warrant a bit of a UX review, but we found the text search function returned solid and accurate results if lacking a bit of fuzzy logic.
Definitely, one to keep an eye on.
Distill
Distill has some really great videos and their library is regularly updated with 10 new videos added every 10 days. So although not as large as Videvo or Pixabay this library will continue to grow.
They have a subscription which will send you the new videos once they come in which is useful if you’re regularly on the hunt for new, free footage for your projects.
The categorisation and search facilities are fairly basic, but we expect that to improve as the library grows.
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If budget is an issue then the sites above should give you a plentiful bounty of free stock video options for any project.
If you’re looking for free stock imagery, take a gander at 5 Free Stock Photography Websites
Credits:
Photos by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
