Do you need free video footage to use in your travel vlog? Here's my curated list of the best free video sites that offer royalty free videos for commercial use with no attribution required.
As much fun as it would be to travel to every corner of the Earth and capture every second of footage I need for my videos, I can't be everywhere at once, so I often rely on stock videos to fill in the gaps. And whenever possible, I gravitate towards using free video footage that's offered under the Creative Commons Zero, or a similar license, that allows me to copy, modify, and use the footage without asking for permission or providing attribution — including for commercial use.
A fellow vlogger in our Travel is Life Creators community recently asked me where I get this CC0 footage, so I've put together a list of my favorite sites.
The list is small, and I'd love to add more sites to it, so if you've got any other sites you'd like to add, drop a comment below this post or e-mail [email protected]. For the sake of keeping this list easy to navigate for other vloggers, I'll only be adding websites that offer CC0 or similarly licensed footage that can be used for commercial purposes without attribution.
The reason I prefer “no attribution” is because it makes things easier to keep up with in the future. I'll often pull from old stock footage I've got downloaded on my laptop that I've used in other videos (as opposed to going back to the websites), and trying to remember where I got it all from for the sake of attribution would be a challenge, so I gravitate towards stock videos that do not require it.
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1) Pexels
Pexels is my favorite free video footage website and the one that I use the most. They offer a great selection of high quality videos and I'm thankful for the community of videographers who share their work on the platform. All photos and videos on Pexels are free to use without attribution (although credit is always appreciated by the artists) via the CC0 license or Pexels license which is similar.
2) Pixabay
I've always loved Pixabay for their free commercial use photos, but over the past few years, they've also grown their library of free videos as well. They offer a wide selection free video footage from all over the world under their own Pixabay license which allows for commercial use of their videos without attribution, similar to Pexels above.
3) Coverr
Coverr started as a side project in 2015 by the developers behind Veed.me — and they've continued to grow it after they sold Veed.me to Fiverr. Their selection is smaller than the sites above, but sometimes it's more about finding the RIGHT video than finding MILLIONS of videos, so it's one more place to look. Their license allows for commercial use without attribution, and only restricts uploading their videos to competing sites.
4) Vimeo
You've heard of Vimeo by now, right? At one time they were gearing up to be a YouTube competitor, but then they decided to go a different more premium / curated route. Well did you know that thousands of publishers make their videos available for free to the public under the CC0 public domain license? The videos are hit or miss depending on what you search, but there are some diamonds in the ruff within their library, especially if you need some random b-roll footage. Just keep in mind that many of the videos are home video quality because there's no curation involved.
5) ISO Republic
ISO Republic has a relatively limited selection of footage, but their videos are CC0 licensed. They won't have many (or any) results for destination specific searches like “Ecuador” or “North Carolina” but offer a small selection for searches like “Coffee” or “Buses”.
6) FOCA Stock
FOCA Stock has a small selection of CC0 licensed videos, and like ISO Republic above, does not have a wide variety of destination specific videos. However no complaints because it's basically spearheaded by one generous photographer named Jeffrey Betts who launched FOCA in 2014 to share his work for free with the world. He's got a significantly larger selection of photos (tens of thousands) than videos (of which there are only 24 at the time of writing this), however, I'm including FOCA on the list because I love supporting solopreneur projects.
7) Footage123
I don't know much about Footage123, and they don't offer much information on their site about who's behind the project, but they've got some great drone footage! And if you make travel vlogs, I'd imagine that some quality drone shots for your b-roll would come in handy. Everything on their site is under a CC0 license.
8) RoyaltyFree YouTube Channel
RoyaltyFree is a YouTube Channel that regularly uploads clips that you can use for commercial use without attribution. I can't tell how many videos they've uploaded (hundreds I believe), but all the clips I viewed were good quality. You would need to use a 3rd party YouTube video download tool to access these videos for your vlog.
9) Videvo
Vivedo is my newest edition to the list. This platform offers over 2 million videos to download, of which just under 15,000 are Free / Royalty Free — which means no cost and no attribution required. Vivedo offers various license types, some which are paid and require attribution, so just be sure to filter their selection by “Free” and “Royalty Free” if that's what you're looking for.
What'd I miss?
If you know of any other great places to get free stock video footage that allows for commercial use without attribution, please drop a comment below or e-mail [email protected].
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