Top 10 Websites to Get Free Stock Videos Without Copyright [Updated for 2021]

Are you looking for high definition stock video footage to use as part of your movie, on your website, or to create videos for your brand on YouTube or Facebook? If you have a high budget (hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a few minutes of footage), you can hire a professional videographer or buy stock footage.

These options are not realistic if you are an independent artist just starting out, an entrepreneur, or a business in the early stages of growth. At Typito, we believe in democratizing video storytelling. So we got into research mode and identified the top 10 websites that offer HD stock video footage for free. Not “royalty-free”- just free!

Let’s look at the count down list:

10. YouTube

Yes, the world's largest video hosting site and 2nd most popular search engine can help you with free footage without standard copyrights. Did you know that there are two powerful search filters with which you can find high definition videos under the Creative Commons license? These filters are as shown below:

Search Creative Commons Videos on YouTube

When selecting the right video, make sure you check out the particular license and abide by its conditions. For more information on Creative Commons licenses click here.

Caution: The collection is not curated or certified. You will need to dig deep to find footage that is truly copyright free. And yeah, please ignore the videos that claim to be under Creative Commons but are actually from National Geographic, History Channel, and other such channels.

9. Vimeo

Unlike YouTube's massive audience, Vimeo's is a smaller, niche community of filmmakers and enthusiasts. So when you use their search functionality to find Creative Commons licensed videos, you know that the content is through one round of quality filtering.

Videos under Creative Commons License

On the downside due to lack of editorial curation and poor tagging, you may still have to spend time identifying the right footage.

8. The Public Domain Project by Pond5

Next in our line up is The Public Domain Project by Pond5. The team at Pond5 has searched through government and public archives around the globe to build this useful repository of media files with historical value. We found footage from NASA, the International Space Station, and even the 1952 Olympic games! All of the content is aptly tagged, shareable, and embeddable.

Neil Armstrong before Apollo 11 launch

7. Vidlery

If you are looking for simple animated videos to use as a background on your website or for simple explainer videos, you should check out Vidlery. It is a limited but beautiful collection of cute animated videos. They are simply named across tags like space-station, golfer, meeting, and more.

Animated space station clip

These videos are under the CC0 1.0 Universal license which means the creator has waived all of their rights to the work worldwide. No permission or attribution needed.

6. Videvo

Videvo is a huge collection of 4000+ HD quality clips that are free to use. The videos are carefully curated by their editorial team and linked with respective creators. The tagging on every clip makes the search easier.

Video details page

Do note that almost 75% of the footages requires visible attribution on the video you create. The rest of the 25% videos are under Creative Commons 3.0 license which means you need to credit the creator by adding a link back to your website/YouTube or wherever you use the video.

5. Coverr

Coverr offers copyright-free videos that are ideal for beautiful video backgrounds for websites. You can use these videos for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the Videographer or Coverr.co

Preview any video as a cover for homepage

We love the live preview option that allows you to see how the video will look like as a header on a website. The videos are categorized into broad tags like Animals, Artsy, Urban, Nature, etc.

4. Mazwai

Next up, is a very unique collection called Mazwai. Each video is carefully sourced, has an exotic shot composition, and is credited to a professional cinematographer. If it is footage of wildlife, nature or landscape that you are looking for, don’t look further.

Stunning clip from Mazwai

These videos are filed under Creative Commons 3.0 License (this means that you need to credit the author). Their download tool is very functional. You can choose the start and end time and download it from a specific section.

3. Life of Vids

Life of Vids is a stock footage project by Leeroy, an advertising agency in Montreal, Canada. We loved their ‘collections’ which has video categories like Food, Drone Footage, Nature, etc. The blue lakes, green farmland, night cityscapes, each video is stunning in its own right. On the plus side, new videos are added weekly.

Beautiful Collections on Life of Vids

2. Pixabay

Pixabay is a huge aggregator of stock videos from different sources. Their tagging is super specific which lets you find videos for use cases like ‘people playing chess’, or ‘red flower blooming in summer’.

Beautifully tagged videos

The collection has thousands of videos and all of them are under the Pixabay license - no attribution or permission required to use it for personal or commercial purposes.

Time to unveil the best site for free stock footage. Drum roll, please.

1. Pexels

Last quarter Pexels surpassed Shutterstock w.r.t to photo downloads (the incumbent leader in stock photography). They have now integrated their free stock video collection to the main site and it’s exquisite.

You have access to thousands of copyright-free videos, full HD stunningly shot and tagged appropriately. We couldn’t have asked for more from a growing community that is contributing their videos for free use. Our favorite is the slow-motion close-ups.

Close up videos on Pexels

We hope you liked this blog on Top 10 Websites to Get Free Stock Videos. We also created a quick video that covers the sources. Check it out and tell us what you like.

So what are you waiting for! Explore these beautiful collections and tell us which site you loved the most. Did we miss a website? Drop a comment below with your suggestion!

This list has been carefully curated by our team at Typito. Typito is a web-based drag-and-drop video editor, to easily stunning social media videos with beautiful typography, video clips, and images. It’s like Canva but for videos!

Get started for free here.