The demand for free stock videos or free video footage are always increase throughout the years though every one around the globe has the ability to shoot high quality videos with their smartphone. Unlike free stock photos that we can easily find in the ocean of internet, free videos are still far behind in term of numbers and quality.
Fortunately the increase of visual communications life style, be it for commersial or personal interest, such as social medias, contribute to its growth. Also thanks to the advancement in multi-cameras technology in mobile phone industry.
The questions are, can we really find free stock videos (short clip videos or video footage), that will meet our requirement? What is the level of quality they offer? Are they really free to use for personal & commercial? We found out some of it and list it down below.
Get a free 4K video clip every month
Royalty Free Videos VS Free For Personal & Commercial
Free for Personal & Commercial Use Meaning
Really free to be use on personal project, such as own website, blog, presentation, etc. Also for commercial projects, advertising, etc. But bear in mind that some videos owner restrict the use to only one commercial project, some video owners impose the terms & conditions to use the free videos with Attribution to the owner. So make sure you read and understand their terms before you use for commercial project.
Only restriction for all types of Free for personal & commercial is, you CANNOT rent, license, sublicense, sell or redistribute those videos “as-is”. Unless you re-edit the medias to be a new work-of-arts, that’s different story. Still, you need to refer to the terms of use.
Royalty Free Videos Meaning
Stock video clips or footage that are under a Royalty Free license type, normally means you need to pay a one-time fee in exchange for the right to use the medias that was protected by copyright, patent, or trademark. this way you have the right to use for personal & commercial.
It may sound similar to Free for Personal & Commercial, but the advantages are, usually you get better package; higher quality (resolution), extra add on, full support for the medias and no Attribution needed. But still, you CANNOT treat the medias as you own property; to rent, license, sublicense, sell or redistribute those videos “as-is”. Unless you re-edit the media to make it a new work-of-arts or parts of your whole project. Always read and understand their terms, even though you paid for it.
Our priority in this review should consists of; Free to Download and to Use & High Definition (HD) quality at least..
Table of Contents
- Pexels
- Pixabay
- Videezy
- Videvo
- Coverr
- CuteStockFootage
- OpenFootage
- X Stock Video
- Footage Crate
- We Distill
- Mazwai
- Life of Vids
- Motion Places
- Vidsplay
- Mitch Martinez
1. Pexels Free Video
Pexels is one of the famous name in free stock photos. The videos footage they provide simply straight forward. You just need to choose from the thumbnail preview or use search box instead. The thumbnail preview will open a modal box with recommended Similar Videos of the category.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Attribution: Not required
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD, 4K
✅ A lot of ‘Similar Videos’ shown in modal box preview to choose from.
❌ No category link to choose from
2. Pixabay Free Video
Just like Pexels in the list no, 1 above, Pixabay is also a well known for their free stock images. Surely, you can try to find the right video footage you required with Pixabay, when you cannot find one with the list no. 1.
The interface seems similar, but every thumbnail preview has the level of quality (FD, HD, 4K), footage length & owner of the video mentioned. So you may find it helps to choose the right videos before you click to proceed.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Attribution: Not required
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD, 4K
✅ A lot of Categories to choose from, Video types (Animation, Slow motion, Time lapse) & Resolutions to filter out.
❌ ‘Similar Videos’ are shown but limited to 4 thumbnails only.
3. Videezy Free Video
Videezy is consider a younger brother (or maybe sister) of Vecteezy, one of the most popular free vector graphic resources known by many graphic designers. They labeled themselves as ‘Eezy’ and they have 4 networks of freebie resources. Besides Videezy (this video footage) & Vecteezy (vector graphics resources), Brusheezy (Photoshop brushes) and Themezy (Web themes).
Videezy offers free and paid videos in variety of categories, but you cannot see the category list, until you click the ‘Browse By Category’. The main page didn’t show enough info of every video’s thumbnail like Pixabay did, but you can see it in the preview page. The video thumbnails also didn’t play the short preview when your cursor on hover it.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Signup / Login: Not required.
✅ Quality: HD, 4K
✅ A lot of Categories to choose from.
✅ Adobe After Effect (AE) Templates available 👍
❌ Attribution: Required, as mentioned in their ‘License Info’.
❌ No video preview played in thumbnails on mouse over.
4. Videvo Free Video
Videvo consider among young digital contents provider we can say. Though they have been around about 5 years since 2015, they made impressive numbers of digital medias and they promise only the best quality in their collections. Videvo offers more than 7,600 of stock videos, as they claimed. Even more interesting, they also offer free music tracks and sound effects as well. A complete package in one place, yes we agree.
Looking at their main page (home page), you may thought that all medias are free, until you proceed to the preview & download page, then you realize that the media you want to download labeled ‘Premium’, not free.. unlucky you 😅. Unless you browse to the top menu link categories to choose from ‘All Videos’, ‘Footage’, ‘Music’, etc.. then you can see all the medias labeled either ‘Free’ or ‘Premium’.
✅ License: 3 types, but most of it allow Free use for personal & commercial (unless mentioned otherwise).
✅ Attribution: 3 types of Licenses made Attribution is required in some contents.
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD, 4K
✅ A lot of ‘Similar Clips’ shown in the preview page, just like the Pexels ‘Similar Videos’.
✅ Videos, Sound tracks & Sound effects.
❌ The main page may tricked you because it didn’t show you which medias are free & which are paid.
❌ Even though you can see the ‘Free’ & ‘Premium’ labels in the category pages, you may still feel it hard to see the ‘Free’ contents among ‘Premium’, because they didn’t differentiate the Free label & Premium label by colors.
Related article : Best Free Video Editing Software Without Watermark for PC
5. Coverr Free Video
Coverr is a side project created by a filmmaker’s that continues from his successful first project, Veed.me which was acquired by Fiverr (a freelance market place). Built with passion as filmmaker to provide free and beautiful looking videos for personal & commercial as well.
While most of the video footage created by themselves, they also offer video contributions as other sites did. Coverr main page looks simply straight forward, full page video covers the main background with search box ready to load your keyword. Simple and clean layout that suits its name.
Below it are the video categories link buttons. Choose any category you prefer and it will show its category results. Unfortunately, selecting these button’s category didn’t perform the correct results. Don’t know why it keep showing the same results even for other categories.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Signup / Login: Not required.
✅ Videos created for background used, you can also test the selected video to be appear at the main page of it, before you proceed to download.
✅ ‘How To Use’ guide, HTML, CSS & Script codings are provided to help you embed the videos in your website.
❌ Quality videos only optimize for ‘background video’, so consider no HD.
❌ No video information on the thumbnail grid page and at the preview page.
6. CuteStockFootage Free Video
CuteStockFootage offers quite variety of video footage shown in their main page. You can keep on scrolling and scrolling to get the video that you’re looking for. But you may not see the list of video category in their site. Or did I missed it..?
The owner claimed that all the digital medias are created by him alone. So, the positive side is, you don’t have to worry in using it, as long as you follow the terms.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Signup / Login: Not required.
✅ Quality: Up to 4K
✅ They also provide Sound Effect stock medias and Texture stock photos as well.
❌ You must give attribute; credit to the site, link to the license & indicate changes of the media if you edit it. (Creative Common 4.0).
❌ No video information on the main page thumbnail grid.
❌ We think the ads are too many.
7. Open Footage
OpenFootage are group of creative people in filmmakers and 3D artist. Their passion in make videos not just for themselves, but also to share with the rest of the world, made OpenFootage one of the free stock videos available in the internet.
Emphasizing with visual effect videos (VFX), they offer free footage at lower resolution with CC license (to attribute but no commercial) and higher quality with specific
✅ License: Free for personal
✅ Signup / Login: Not required.
✅ A lot of creative Visual Effect type of videos
❌ Commercial use needs license, you can choose price options from HD to 4K. While the Free low resolution option, needs to give Credit as the Creative Commons 4.0 terms.
❌ You cannot see which videos are offering free download at full HD quality in the main page, unless your cursor over it.. but no preview play on cursor over the thumbnail.
8. X Stock Video
X Stock Footage is an another free video footage that you can check out their collections. They offers Free and 2 types of License – Regular & Extended, for commercial purpose. Their Free to use refers to ‘Free to view video project’ (such as promotional, event, educational, client, youtube without ads), as they mentioned.
The website of X Stock Footage show simple & clean interface, but when you look at it, you may notice that the fonts are hard to read. For instance, the category ‘Filter’ in the header, the text not just too small (for me as a normal user), but also dark grey color make it hard to read with black background. Besides that, video playing preview are not available, you need to download the sample.. hmm..
✅ License: Free for personal project.
✅ Attribution: Not required
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD
❌ Commercial use need to buy license, either Regular or Extended.
❌ Video preview is not available in the website, you need to download the sample of every video you want to see.
❌ No 4K or UHD quality videos available (so far).
9. Footage Crate
Footage Crate is VFX or visual effects oriented video maker with thousands of free professional grade media resources. It was stated in the search box, more than 10 thousand of exclusive HD assets avaiable. Besides videos, they offer SFX (sound effects), Music stocks, Graphics and 3D stocks as well. No wonder they have a lot of all digital medias in one place.. free for sure.
Nevertheless, free users still have limit of the digital medias download. Free users can only download up to HD video quality, while pro (paid) users up to 4K video quality. Free users get only 5 downloads per day, while pro users can get up to 200 downloads per day. Fair enough for a free user as beginner, right?
What make us like and recommend you to Footage Crate are, they have Forum community, so you can find help there. Another plus point is, Tutorials for you on how to do, step by step, tips & tricks using mostly video production apps such as Adobe Premier, Final Cut, Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effect, 3D, etc.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Attribution: Not required
✅ Quality: HD (for free)
✅ Visual Effects heaven with Hollywood quality in variety of category.
✅ Videos & After Effect Tutorials provided and Forum community available for support 👍
❌ Signup / Login : Required to download.
❌ On average, most of the search results reveal that paid medias are more than free medias.
10. Distill
Distill which still in beta as stated in their site logo, prefer to receive video contributions from public. They will then carefully choose the videos submitted to be appears in their website. All videos are in HD quality and Free for personal & commercial use.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Attribution: Not required (not even mentioned so far)
✅ Quality: HD
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
❌ Still in beta, or testing mode.. so most probably not much collections available.
11. Mazwai
Mazwai, we don’t really know the meaning of the website name, maybe it’s the owner’s name. Anyway, Mazwai is another resource for free video footage and moving images with their mission mission is to give creators around the world free access to beautiful stock footage, with simple licensing. So you should bookmark this site.
They show the videos category easily seen in the header, so you choose from it. The grid of video thumbnails will show the video’s info; length, quality and will play the video preview. Click on it will go to the download page of the selected video with more detail info related to the video, creator and license info.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD
✅ Most of the videos come with sound or music background, (unlike others with mute videos).
✅ They provide more info; (besides resolution & video length), Frames per second & the Video Aspect Ratio as well
❌ Attribution: Required for free use.
❌ Seeing their social medias, they last active on Facebook in 2016 and last active on Twitter in 2018. If you need support, just email them.
❌ We think that they still lack in number of videos.. hopefully more contribution will be added. Video contribution need to be deal via email.. hmm..
12. Life of Vids
Life of Vids promise of all free videos for any project you may use. They presents their website interesting way with big video thumbnails preview on the main page in one column grid, then 2 column grids. This free video footage site owned by a creative agency based in Canada. No wonder you’ll see elements of creative touch.
On hover cursor to the thumbnail did’t play the preview, but will show you the animated ‘Play’ text in the middle, Download button at bottom right and Infos link on top right corner. The ‘Infos’ link will open the preview page, where I thought it will show more info about the video. Unfortunately not much info shown in the preview page. Except the video’s tag and the download link which will open a modal window (pop up) with option of the video quality you can choose to proceed.
One of the good thing you may found, you can get the source video file with up to 4K quality in the Download options. Despite the fact that you can use it freely, they did mentioned that you’re limited to put up to 10 videos in your website.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Attribution: Not required
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD, 4K
✅ Most of the videos by themselves, a creative (web) agency.
✅ They also provide Free stock image – Life of Pix.
❌ At first the main page seems unorganized with big images stacking in the center slightly off to the left and right.. and you feel hard to navigate.
13. Motion Places
Motion Places is a stock videos provider with focus only place realted videos. You may search or navigate through countries or towns category mostly, geographical & landscape category as well. In short, if you’re looking for video related to ‘places’, Motion Places should be in your list.
Their interface just like others, with grid thumbnail images of the video, but the thumbnail didn’t play the preview when your cursor on hover it. Click on it to go to the preview page with more infos available with the video.
Basically it’s clearly mention, all videos are free to download & use for any project in HD quality. But you need to credit them in your project’s use. Or you may buy the royalty free license, so no attribution will be required and you get 4K video quality.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Quality: 4K
✅ For those who looking for ‘places videos’.
✅ A lot of geographical places categories available to choose from.
❌ Signup & Login are not required, BUT you need to give your email to download the free videos.
❌ Once you give the email and click the Download button, you’ll notice a reminder telling you that ‘3 downloads remaining before (24 hours of your current time)‘.
❌ Attribution is required for free videos.
14. Vidsplay
Vidsplay is similar to most of free stock footage we listed above, with grid of 30 thumbnails preview in a page. The thumbnails however didn’t play the video preview when cursor on hover it, just showing the video name. Click it and you get to the preview page.
In the preview page, it shows more info; video length, video quality, format, frame rate & download link. Video quality is in HD and up to 4K available for some. Others than that, they mentioned, they only require attribution. Video Categories are available as drop down on the top right of page.
✅ License: Free for personal project.
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: HD, 4K
❌ Attribution is required.
❌ We think that they still lack on quantity (so far)
15. Mitch Martinez
Mitch Martinez is a photographer & filmmaker who showcase his works on his website and also provide us free stock videos to download and use. All of his free videos are in 4K quality and I personally cannot see any lower resolution or HD options available when you want to download it.
His works for free videos showing all the categories you can choose for in the free stock footage page. Hovering your cursor on the thumbnails image preview didn’t play the video preview, but video infos will appear with preview link and download link.
When you play to view any of his video, you’ll see the video presents his logo mark at the end of the footage. You can check in the terms of use as free download, whether you can crop the video to delete his logo mark part. And one more thing that I think a bit annoying, to use any video in his (even free) collections, you must get the License Agreement by fill in the form, the link provided in the download page. Wait for the reply to receive the License Agreement via email, it’s free of charge anyway.
✅ License: Free for personal & commercial used.
✅ Signup / Login: Not required
✅ Quality: 4K
✅ Variety of Categories to choose from.
❌ You need to request for License Agreement by fill in the form provided, to use those videos.
❌ Attribution is required where possible.
View Mitch Martinez Free Video
.
There are some more lists worth to list them down here, but we think is better to separate it to part 2, in our next post.. hopefully we manage to do it, soon or later :)
Meanwhile, please share with us your list of collections that you already got. We would love to list it down as well, as long as they meet the criteria of HD quality video and Free to download & use, definitely.
A designer, illustrator, blogger and founder of Vectorise. Have been worked as an interior designer and currently enjoying visual design activities & involved in printing industry. Besides being permanent vectorise logo contributor, he also has passion in blogging about designs related, technology enthusiast, likes to try and review graphic apps, sharing freebies, etc.
Get Web Templates, Graphics, 3D, Video, Audio, Codes
