Ah, clipart! Or is it clip art? This can be as controversial as how the .gif is pronounced. We’ve looked at over 25 image sites that claim to be awesome and narrowed them down to 15. If you’re looking for free high-definition images and videos, we have an article for that.
The following criteria for free clip art downloads were tested:
- Is it really free?
- How cluttered is it with ads?
- Do they have a lot of choice?
- What types of images do they have? Must be at least .gif or .png.
- What is the quality of the clipart?
- What type of use is allowed?
- Do we need to register to use the site?
- What other features does the site have?
The ranking of sites is subjective, despite the fact that many criteria were required to be checked. Review all of them to determine which one best suits your needs.
Vecteezy
Vecteezy is part of the Eezy group of sites that cater to all types of designers. They claim to have millions of images, but they are a mix of free and paid use. High quality, files are available in .jpg and .eps formats. Each download looks like a zip file with .jpg and .eps versions.
The site is searchable. It is not necessary to register, but you can. You only need to place 2 ads per page. One of these is usually a large Shutterstock ad that looks like it is part of a site, so it’s easy to accidentally click on it.
Clker
Clker seems to be number one on other listings on the internet, and for good reason. This is a huge site with high quality royalty-free images for every occasion.
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It is not necessary to register, but you can if you want. Most of the images are in .png format and you can use their web image editor to customize the clipart. Searching for images is easy too. Clker is not cluttered with two ads per page.
Vector Portal
The name Vector Portal is apt. With thousands of royalty-free .ai and .eps images, you are sure to find high quality free clipart for your next project.
Editing them may require an image editing studio such as the free open source GIMP or standard Adobe Illustrator. On average, we saw 4 ads per page.
Free PNG images
Free PNG Img is exactly what it says. It’s a great place to get free .png pictures for pretty much everything in their 50,000+ collection. Use licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Therefore, the use must be attributed and cannot be used commercially.
The quality of the images is quite high and are available in .png format. However, they can be converted to .jpg and .ico on the site. This is a convenient feature that does not require registration. It is worth seeing only 4 ads per page.
Download all for free
All Free Download proves that many creative sites don’t have creative titles.
Images are free and can be used royalty-free with attribution. We don’t know how many images they have, but it’s a decent choice and high quality.
Images are available in .jpg, .eps and .ai formats. Three ads per page plus a popup on loading make using the site a little annoying.
Always Public i n Clip Art
The superpower of Public Domain Clip Art is that all free downloads are freely available. So you can use it however you like.
There are over 25,000 images, some of which are of high quality and others of not very high quality. But three ads per page don’t add to the chaos too much. All files are in .png format.
MyCuteGraphics
MyCuteGraphics has a specific style for its images. They’re cute. Perfect for scrapbooking, these images are for personal, academic, or non-commercial use only.
All clipart here is original and high quality. You do not need to register to download. File types include .png, .gif, and .jpg. There are no ads either.
SweetClipArt
SweetClipArt presents many free images to download. The quality is high and use is limited to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
You can use clipart for non-commercial projects, provided attribution is provided. The site has only 2 ads per page, so it is not cluttered. File types: .jpg and .png.
Artvex
Artvex provides over 10,000 images, but they are not of the best quality and are only available in .gif format. It’s free, but the link to their terms of use is dead. With 3 secondary ads per page, it can be used.
WPClipart
WPClipart is a product of Paul Sherman, who curates all public domain images. That’s a lot, over 80,000. Style and quality vary, and file types range from .png, .webp and .jpg. Paul maintains a site with 3 small ads per page.
Classroom clip art
Classroom Clip Art offers both free and paid clipart. Free images to download are a scaled down version of images with a watermark.
You can pay around $ 20 a year to get access to all of the larger versions. Perhaps the high quality is worth it. File types include .png, .gif, and .jpg. With a paid subscription, 5 ads per page seems overwhelming.
ClipArt ETC
ClipArt ETC is a project of the University of South Florida. The quality is high, but all images are linear. They come in both smaller .gif files and larger ones like .tiff files. They are free for education and attribution is required.
For commercial use, image fees apply. Each image has academic attribution information, so you can properly credit them in your essay.
Completely Free Clipart
The absolutely free clipart is limited to just over 5,000 images and the clipart is very simple. Images are in the public domain and all .png files. Since there are only 2 ads on the page, navigating the site is very easy.
Free Clip Art
Free images are very simple. It appears to be a carefully curated site with images from publicly available sources. However, instructions for use are not provided. The quality varies widely, as do the file types. Images can be in .gif, .jpg, .eps, .ai or .png formats. There are 4 ads on the page, but they are not too loud.
School Clip Art
School pictures appear to be created by the same person as Free Clip Art. The sites are identical in layout, but the clipart is not. There is a chance of some overlap, however, as the clipart appears to be in the public domain. File types and quality also vary greatly.
Bonus: Wikimedia Commons
Since the last two sites were very similar, we figured we owe you a little more. Wikimedia is not a picture site, but it does have pictures, sounds and videos for you.
Use rights apply to both the public domain and various Creative Commons licenses. It all depends on who sent the resource. The important thing is that they are free and there are many free images to download from. Plus no ads.
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