Every day, people watch over a billion hours of video on YouTube. More than a billion individual videos are viewed on TikTok every day.
Even Instagram – the world’s most popular photo-sharing app – has announced that it is shifting its focus to video … probably because Instagram videos get twice as much engagement as Instagram photos.
Overall, the average person spends around 100 minutes a day watching online videos.
The final result? People using the internet are obsessed with videos.
That means videos should be an important part of your marketing or social media campaign. (Wait a minute, should this have been a video instead of an article? Excuse us while we have a fast spiral.)
However, you don’t need a professional videographer to create professional video content for your marketing or social media accounts. All you need is a good list of free stock video resources.
That’s exactly what we have here for you. Read on for a list of stock footage sites that you can repurpose, shuffle, or re-introduce without worrying about copyright infringement.
(Also looking for great stock photo options? Again, we’ve got you covered with our list of free stock photo websites.)
So grab the clips you need and then add text, graphics, or music to create high-profile videos for your next marketing campaign … all for a cute, cute zero dollar budget.
Let’s get to filmmaking, okay?
Bonus: Download the. down free 10-day role challenge, a daily workbook of creative prompts to help you get started with Instagram Reels, track your growth, and see the results across your Instagram profile.
Pixabay offers over 2.3 million images and videos, all published under a simplified Pixabay license. All contents of the website can be used free of charge, be it for commercial or non-commercial purposes, for print or digital. (Though certain downloads may make it explicitly “what is not allowed”.) You don’t need to seek permission or credit the artist to use or change the content (but it’s still best practice to always use the Specify owner).
Pixabay has a great collection of HD stock footage, whether you’re looking for a quick 12-second clip of someone typing something or a minute-long shot of the future Earth from space.
Videvo offers thousands of free stock videos, as well as animated graphics, music, and sound effects created by their user community.
The clips you download from Videvo are licensed in several ways: some you may not be able to use for certain types of projects. Here’s a full breakdown of all the different license types, but here’s a quick summary:
- The Videvo Attribution License allows you to use a clip for free, but you must credit the original author.
- Clips with a Creative Commons 3.0 can also be used for free with credits and may be reshuffled or adapted.
- Public domain licenses mean you can use them however you want!
For more information, see the individual usage rights for each video.
Pexels started out as a free photo site, but has since added a large library of free HD and 4K stock videos.
With the license from Pexels, all photos and videos can be used for free and without attribution (although it is certainly desirable to mention the videographer). Videos can be edited and modified at will.
Explore their daily “trending free stock videos” to find the most sought after stock videos … like these soothing shots of braided hair.
Videezy has a large collection of video clips that are royalty free for personal and commercial use. However, always check the specific licensing information of each clip to make sure your favorite material is available.
Most require you to credit Videezy.com when using their footage. However, you can also buy credits that allow you to use footage without attribution.
There is a large selection of high quality video clips in HD and 4K resolution to choose from. When searching for videos, all results marked “Pro” are premium clips that are only available against payment with credits.
Life of Vids is a collection of free stock videos, clips, and loops from Leeroy, an advertising agency based in Montreal, Canada. There are no copyright restrictions, but redistribution on other websites is limited to 10 videos. (If you feel like it, they’ll give you a warm welcome to buy them a beer or give them a call on your website.)
New videos are added weekly, and there is a nice collection of free images for you to check out too.
Coverr was founded by entrepreneurs and filmmakers who needed good-looking videos for their products, and it’s designed to fill the same need for other emerging brands: a little gift to the world, if you will.
Now it has thousands of free videos that have been downloaded more than five million times. All videos are in HD and can be downloaded in MP4 format.
No registration required, no attribution required, just instant downloads of free video footage. Use these cute clips in commercial or home video projects and copy or modify them to your heart’s content.
Splitshire was created by web designer Daniel Nanescu who wanted to make his photos and videos available for free for personal and commercial use. The fact that these photos and videos were all created by one person makes them more unique than content from other stock sites.
The videos are primarily drone footage of beautiful outdoor footage that you can download by clicking the title under each video. You are free to use them on all of your social media channels, but you cannot sell them or use them in projects with inappropriate content such as violence, racism or discrimination.
Every month Clipstill makes a handful of its “cinemagraphs” available in web quality for free download. You never know when you might need footage of a hot air balloon on the street, do you?
If you don’t want to wait for the right footage (and have a few dollars to spare), you can also sign up for unlimited downloads for a one-time fee of $ 49.
Okay, it’s not a collection of thousands or millions of clips, but maybe there is something among the hundreds of royalty-free, open source 4K stock video clips that will spark your imagination.
Dareful, formerly known as free stock footage, features stock footage that is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0.
It was all shot by a videographer named Joel Holland. Why is he giving everything away? We may never know, but we can check out these time-lapse footage of ominous clouds while we think about it.
New videos are added to the Vidsplay collection every few weeks, which makes it a great resource for keeping your social video content up to date. And since it has been around since 2010, there is also a large backlog of older content to be followed.
You can download and use any video without paying royalties, although you will be required to provide attribution.
What can you use to top up your content registers at Mixkit? We’re talking about stock video clips, sound effects, music, and even video templates. It’s a resource library provided by a company called Envato, a creative asset subscription service, but this batch is free, free, free, with new content added every week with no mapping required.
Mazwai describes its free archive material and moving images as “handpicked”, although it does not specify exactly by whom. But whatever mysterious forces choose the videos available for download here, you get HD content either licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 license (for whatever use, just mention the author) or under the Mazwai – License (for whatever use, no credit required).
Once you have your free stock footage ready to go, check out our 10-step guide to making great social media videos. And then don’t forget to track your social video stats to see how they are received by your audience.
Publish, schedule, and track the performance of your social media video posts in Hootsuite along with all of your other social media activities. Try it for free today.
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