[March 17, 2016] Update: Due to the changing nature of this topic, this post has been updated with new content.
Looking for free stock photos? Once you’ve exhausted your regular spots to find high quality photos, you might resort to Google Images once more. Well, in truth, you have a lot more options than just Google. There are many types of search engines out there that run on varied formulated algorithms and hence they might be able to turn up results that Google’s engine couldn’t or wouldn’t.
Regardless of the restrictions, variety, as we all know, is the spice of life. It’s time to change things up a little. So here are 11 search engines for specific searches of icons and icon packs, both free and premium types, as well as 25 more places to look for images and pictures, some of them in the public domain or released by the creators for commercial and non-commercial use. If you know of more, share!
Read more: 30 Websites To Download Stock Photos & Royalty-Free Images
Icon Seeker
Icon Seeker is specifically an icon search engine that lets you filter the icons based on size and resolution. The results are displayed fluidly and it allows downloading of images in PNG, ICO and ICNS formats.
Flaticon
Flaticon, the largest database of more than 100K+ free icons, has icons in PNG, SVG, PSD, EPS and BASE-64 formats. The icons are part of icon packs and are organized under categories as well.
Icons-Land
Icons-Land is a free icon search engine for premium icons ($5 each). The icons are available in various sizes and formats and their quality is better than a few other sites.
Open Icon Library
Open Icon Library is a free icon gallery, which allows downloading icons in ICON and PNG formats. The site provides standard quality icons and one can even upload self-designed icons to the site.
WebToolHub
WebToolHub contains a beautiful collection of desktop and web icons of high quality. Each icon pack in this hub is unique in its own style, designed by professional icon designers.
Mr. Icons
Mr. Icons hosts exclusive sets of icon packs made by designers, and even allows to submit your own logos and images. The site also host few rare images, which look extremely simple but are crafted beautifully.
Find Icons
Find Icons is a major icon search engine that lists most popular icons in over 2600 icon packs. No matter it’s social media icons or emoticons, you can download them for free and can even upload your own icon sets.
Very Icon
Very Icon is another site offering various professional-looking icon packs. You can download the icons in high quality as ICO, PNG and ICNS and can even upload your own icon pack.
IconArchive
IconArchive includes fresh sets of 2400 icons from over 4000 designers, and similar to most icon search engines, you can download the images in ICO, PNG and ICNS formats. Users can also upload their own icons.
Iconspedia
Iconspedia brings you the latest and best icons of all time, and you can also submit your own icons. This site is specifically used by designers to showcase their work and let users download them for free.
IconFinder
IconFinder offers more than 840,000 icons at your disposal. You will find the most exclusive icon sets from this site, and one can also order unique icons designed by its excellent designers.
Lycos
Lycos displays accurate search results based on the given keyword. The site has a standard interface. To download an image, just go to the image page.
Exalead
Exalead is a leading image search engine with advanced search options for more power. The images can be filtered according to orientation, color, format, size, content and realism.
Ixquick
Ixquick lets you search images from various sources and display them using its built-in proxy server. Though most images are watermarked, yet you will find most of them useful because of their high quality.
Behold
Behold filters images per your requirements, based on category, image type and purpose of use (personal or commercial). These advanced options allows easy and accurate image searches.
Veezzle
Veezle offers premium as well as royalty-free stock photos. You can also search for images with keywords. Veezle, however, tends to work very lavishly in comparison to various other sites.
RISE
RISE, Relevant Image Search Engine finds out the most related images based on the given keyword or query and even lets one filter the images by numbers, meta info, tags cloud and more.
Giphy
Giphy lets you search for GIF images based on image category, and even allow uploading of your own GIF pictures. It also offers cool stickers and emoticons to express your feelings and reactions.
Lookseek
Lookseek displays relevant search results with large thumbnails for easy selection. It also lets you search for other information on the web like most other search engines out there.
Every Stock Photo
Every Stock Photo finds out relevant stock photos of varied resolutions per your search query. You can also sort images by license, date, popularity, image shape and more.
PicFinder
PicFinder sorts out images based on given keywords and uses Adobe Flash Player to show images from different sites. It also lists stock photos in public domains, which can be used for commercial purpose.
Karma Decay
Karma Decay does a reverse image search of Reddit, which allows you to use an image to search for a thread in which that image appeared. The search engine also can locate duplicates of the image you are searching with.
Fagan Finder
Fagan Finder is an image search engine that fetches pictures from multiple search engines. The site finds images in various categories and channels and allows you to filter them easily.
Entireweb
Entireweb fetches images from… the entire web to help you get the best images available on the Internet. You can also filter images by color, orientation and image size.
FreeFoto
FreeFoto offers you beautiful images and posters based on each category. The images are clicked by superb photographers and displays even different locations of the world.
Incogna
Incogna offers free and high-quality images that can be used for commercial purpose. The home page of the site displays few random images and lets you search for your preferred images easily.
Picsearch
Picsearch includes more than 3 billion images in its database. You can easily find wallpapers of great quality, which fits well on your desktop. You can filter them according to color, size and orientation.
Compfight
Compfight efficiently locates images per given keywords or search query. You can also search images by license to check out images per required usage permissions.
Photogen
Photogen offers free stock photos, which can be used commercially in your projects. Its gallery is regularly updated with new and beautiful images that catches browser’s attention every now and then.
TinEye Labs
TinEye Labs is a multi-color image search engine, which searches from more than 20 million Flickr images. You can adjust the color combination and even add tags to filter your results per requirements.
PD Photo
PD Photo is a free public-domain image search engine powered by Jon Sullivan who takes his own photos and release them for commercial use.
Freeimages
Freeimages contains a huge database of images in different categories. The only thing lacking on this site is no filtering options, however, the images are of high quality with good clarity.
Kidzsearch
Kidzsearch is an image search engine, which is developed specifically with kid safety and safe browsing in mind. It’s powered by Google SafeSearch and prevents the occurrence of any offensive materials.
ImageFinder
Image Finder consists high quality and free stock images, which can be used for personal as well as professional purposes. The site provides images in various categories and also includes rare pictures.
Mamma
Mamma is a simple but slow image search engine that works like others, showing relevant images based on your search requirements. Though slow, it shows quite satisfying results.
Dogpile
Dogpile is a simple image search engine that sorts out the best results based on your search query. You can set your own search preferences by customizing its moderate or heavy filters.
Which image or icon search engine do you use regularly? Did we missed your favourite image or icon search engine? Don’t forget to write to us via the comments section below.
