There are plenty of image hosting sites available. They all offer different features, so it can be hard to choose the right image hosting site for you.
Here is a rundown of the 12 best free image hosting sites. Compare what they offer and decide on the best one to suit your needs.
What Is the Best Free Image Hosting Site?
For a genuinely free tier, Flickr is the best all-round pick, storing 1,000 photos at no cost. Want unlimited storage with portfolio and selling tools instead? SmugMug (below) is our top pick, after a 14-day free trial.
Why You Need to Consider Free Image Hosting Sites
Image hosting is vital for all photographers. Whether you’re a professional photographer or an enthusiastic hobbyist.
There’s a saying that it’s not a matter if your hard drive will fail but when. Data loss because of a hardware malfunction is painful and frustrating.
The solution to this is image hosting. Having your photos stored in a cloud service will give you that extra assurance. If something happens to your computer, you won’t lose your photographs.
Uploading your images to the cloud allows you to free up space on your computer, allowing it to work faster.
Finally, your images will be available across devices. You can share them with family and friends and access them anywhere, at any time.
500px
Created with pro photographers in mind, 500px offers a platform that will display your images. The free Basic plan currently allows 21 uploads every 7 days (verified on 500px’s own Support Center; it previously ran a lower 7-per-week limit for years, so older reviews still quote that figure).
If you buy any of the membership options, you can upload an unlimited number of photos. And you’ll receive priority customer support.
The primary function of 500px is showcasing images, not social media sharing. And you can’t link to other sites.
The most significant benefits are display and networking. You can share your pictures and make comments on other photos. You can also follow your favourite photographers.
You can build a profile on 500px, and license your photos as stock photography. You’ll get paid up to a 60% commission for any sales.
Flickr
Do you remember Flickr? A lot of photographers have forgotten about Flickr, but it’s still trendy. Flickr has been around a long time.
One of the main draws of Flickr is social networking. You can share your photos with the community and join groups for genres of photography.
Photographers can mark their favourite images and also leave comments. However, you can edit your privacy settings to control who sees your photos.
Flickr offers free image hosting. You can organize your images into albums or even edit them from within the app.
Flickr offers a large amount of storage and simple to use interface. You can upload up to 1,000 high-resolution images on their “Free” plan (200 MB per photo, 1 GB per video). Since 2025, free accounts can no longer download the original or large-size file — only medium-size and smaller, so treat Flickr as a share/backup layer, not your only copy.
If you upgrade to the Pro plan ($11/month, or $82/year per Flickr’s own Pricing FAQ), you get unlimited storage, ad-free browsing, full-size downloads and partner discounts, currently SmugMug, Blurb, PHLEARN and Priime.
Google Photos
Google Photos is an excellent service for uploading high-quality images, and it syncs automatically across every device signed into your Google account.
Google ended unlimited free photo storage back in June 2021. Every photo and video you upload now counts against the same 15 GB of storage your Google account shares across Gmail, Drive and Photos — there is no separate, unlimited free tier anymore, no matter what resolution you upload at.
Once you fill the free 15 GB, you need a paid Google One plan: 100 GB is $1.99/month, and 2 TB is $9.99/month (per Google’s own pricing page). A Google Workspace plan can raise this, but the free allowance itself stays at 15 GB.
The platform still offers automatic backup and photo/video sync from a smartphone or a point-and-shoot camera. To get started, download the Google Photos app or go to photos.google.com.
For photos from a DSLR camera, you can use your storage space from your Google account. Note that you can upload PNGs, JPGs, and GIF images, as well as some other file formats.
ImageShack
ImageShack gives you an attractive way to lay out your best photos. Every new account starts on a 30-day free trial of the paid plan (unlimited bandwidth, direct linking, image stats and watermarking). Once the trial ends, your account drops to ImageShack’s free tier — your images stay hosted and accessible, but hot-linked/embedded images are capped at 10 GB of bandwidth per month, and every image is limited to 25 MB, confirmed on ImageShack’s current FAQ page.
Signing up means you can organize and tag your photos. Other users can discover your work, or you may choose to keep your images private or limit who you share them with.
You might still want to upgrade to a paid plan for more monthly bandwidth (BASIC, PRO and PREMIUM tiers run from 100 GB to 4,000 GB/month).
ImageShack provides a large selection of mobile and web apps. Uploading and sharing your pictures is a simple process.
The ImageShack Resize application allows you to edit your images, as well as crop and resize them.
Imgur
With Imgur, your photos won’t expire — as long as they’re tied to a registered account. Since May 2023, Imgur has deleted images that were uploaded without an account, so “free” now means free-with-sign-up rather than the fully anonymous hosting it used to offer.
A free account also gets you extras like adding captions to your photos or uploading your images through email.
Unlike some of the other image hosting options, Imgur allows direct linking. Each image can have a link that can be posted in forums or embedded in HTML.
You can upload many different file formats to Imgur besides the standard JPG. These include APNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PDF, and XCF. Non-animated files up to 20 MB are supported, GIFs up to 200 MB, and uploads are capped at roughly 50 images an hour.
You can share your images on most social networking sites, and it’s still commonly used for uploads to Reddit. One caveat for a UK audience: since 30 September 2025, Imgur has blocked visitors connecting from UK IP addresses (a response to Online Safety Act/ICO scrutiny), so an Imgur link shared with UK readers may just show “content not available in your region.”
Free Image Hosting
One bonus with Free Image Hosting is that you don’t need an account to upload photos. Your photographs will also be permanently stored.
You can upload JPEG, GIF, PNG, and even BMP files, up to 3,000 KB (about 3 MB) per image — confirmed live on the site’s own upload page today.
With Free Image Hosting, you can upload your images quickly and easily. It doesn’t have the hyperlink shortener, but you can still share your photos on other sites.
You can also get an HTML code to a link to your pictures for easy sharing.
The site’s homepage is very dated looking — its footer copyright still reads “2003–2021” — but the upload tool itself still works today. Treat it as a bare-bones backup option rather than your main host.
Free Image Hosting also has a cool feature for US-based photographers. You can list your business in their Commercial Photographers directory. It’s listed by state and then selectable by city.
ImgBB
ImgShare, which used to hold this spot, has shut down — its domain no longer resolves. We’ve swapped it for ImgBB, a live, well-regarded free host.
You don’t need an account to upload — drag and drop straight onto the homepage. Images are capped at 32 MB on the free tier (64 MB if you upgrade), and storage itself is unlimited.
An account is only required if you want to save uploads to an album or edit them later. You also get to choose an auto-delete window per image, from 5 minutes to 6 months — or “don’t auto-delete” to keep it indefinitely, which is the default.
ImgBB gives you quick access to direct links and ready-made HTML/BBCode embed codes, which makes it a solid drop-in for forums and marketplace listings.
ImgBox
Imgbox is a free, easy-to-use platform for sharing your images. It normally stores your photos permanently, with unlimited storage space and a 10 MB per-image cap. JPG, GIFs, and PNGs are all supported. The platform offers several features. These include image galleries, drag and drop upload, and direct links.
Status check, late July 2026: ImgBox is currently down. The site has been intermittently returning a server error for about a week with no official update from ImgBox. If it’s still down when you read this, treat it as unreliable for anything you can’t afford to lose, and consider ImgBB or PostImages (below) instead.
You don’t even need to create an account to upload your images. But, having an account gives you the ability to access your photos later.
Having an account also gives you the bonus of being able to upload your images all the more quickly with preset settings.
You can share your photos via social media and allow comments from others through imgBox.
Go here to learn more about the current social media image dimensions.
PostImages
Uploads.im, which used to hold this spot, has also shut down — the domain is now just a parked registrar page. We’ve swapped it for PostImages, another live, no-nonsense free host.
You can upload a variety of image file types via the main page, either from your computer or by pasting a remote URL. No account is required to upload, though registering lets you manage and re-visit your images later. Each image is capped at 32 MB, confirmed on the site’s own upload page today.
Before you upload, PostImages lets you resize the image and set an expiry date, or choose no expiration to keep it up permanently. There are no restrictions on the number of images you can upload.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a simple and efficient way to store your photos. The best way to understand this platform as a virtual box where you can “drop” your photos. They’re saved in the Cloud, available for you to access at any time.
You can also upload images from your computer to Dropbox as you would with any other files, or with its Android and iOS apps.
You can also sync your photos to a folder on your desktop. Once photos are in the Cloud, you can share the files directly with other Dropbox users. It also backs up automatically, so you don’t have to worry about losing data.
You can organize your folders and sub-galleries and share links to individual files or folders.
To share a photo, right-click on the images and then copy and paste the link to your desired sharing location. You can also share this link via email.
Your contacts or visitors can also download your photos if you provide them with access.
Dropbox doesn’t provide specialized tools for photographers. However, it’s an excellent option for storing original or edited versions of your photos for different purposes.
Dropbox Basic is free for up to 2 GB of storage, confirmed on Dropbox’s own Help Center today (this dropped from a higher figure years ago and is now a hard, unchanging number).
Amazon Prime Photos
Prime Photos is Amazon’s photo-storage solution available to their Prime members. You can store and share unlimited high-resolution photos on your desktop, smartphone or tablet. 5 GB of storage for video is also included.
The service also lets you order photo prints, cards, custom wall decor and other products. It includes free shipping.
With Prime membership, you can invite up to 5 people to receive unlimited photo storage. With “Groups”, you can share images with anyone, even if they’re not a Prime member.
Use iOS or Android mobile apps to auto-save your photos. Then safely delete them from your phone to free up space on your device.
As with the other options, you can pay to upgrade to receive a fuller suite of services.
SmugMug
Smug Mug is free for a 14-day trial. It’s one of the most popular platforms for photographers.
It doesn’t have a completely free option beyond this period. It’s worth mentioning here because it’s a great site to not only display your photography but also sell prints and other products.
No one who takes photographs is left behind. There are features meant for everyone, whether you are a pro, an “enthusiast” or “memory maker”.
SmugMug dropped its old cheap “Basic” plan. Current pricing (confirmed on SmugMug’s own pricing page today) is Direct at $20/month, Portfolio at $23.50/month, and Pro at $37/month — all billed annually; paying monthly instead costs more. There’s also a custom-priced Enterprise tier for studios.
Every plan includes secure photo storage plus the ability to create a customizable portfolio site with your own domain, editing tools to tweak the templates, and — on the higher tiers — dedicated RAW file storage from $10/month for up to 1 TB.
One bonus of SmugMug is that you can set up an e-commerce store to sell prints or photos.
Sharing to social media is also an option.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Google Photos still free and unlimited?
No. Google ended unlimited free Google Photos storage in June 2021. Every upload now counts against the 15 GB your Google account shares across Gmail, Drive and Photos — after that, you need a paid Google One plan.
Which site on this list has no storage cap on the free plan?
ImgBB, PostImages and Imgur all offer unlimited storage for free, with per-image file-size limits instead of a total cap. Amazon Prime Photos also offers unlimited photo storage, but only while you keep an active Prime membership.
Do free image hosting sites delete inactive photos?
Some do. Imgur has deleted images uploaded without a registered account since May 2023, and several ImgShare-style hosts on this list have shut down entirely. Check the specific host’s retention policy before treating any free tier as permanent storage — and keep a local backup regardless.
Conclusion
These image hosting websites are free and offer some great features. The file size and type of files that you can upload will determine the level of ease you’ll experience.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution that is perfect for everyone. You may need to use a couple of services that complement each other to meet all your image-hosting needs. You can also try paid sites such as ShootProof.
If you’re looking for more options for free image hosting, why not check out our ImgBB review, too!
Ever wondered where to showcase your astrophotography images at full resolution? Check our review on AstroBin!
