10 Free Image Hosting Sites for Your Photos

https://www.lifewire.com/free-image-hosting-sites-3486329

Wondering if there are there any good sites out there made purely for free image hosting? Well, you're in luck!

We spend a lot of our time pushing information around online and sharing stuff with our friends, and with an evolving web that's increasingly becoming more visual thanks to mobile browsing, free image hosting is basically a must-have these days. Sometimes, however, a Facebook album or an Instagram post isn't exactly the best solution.

Here are 11 of the best sites that offer free image hosting and make the process of uploading and sharing your images easier than ever.

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Imgur

Screenshot of Imgur.com

If you’ve spent any time at all on Reddit, you probably already know that Imgur is the social news community's favorite free image hosting site for Redditors. You don’t even need to sign up for a free account if you'd rather not, and you can still upload photos in stunning quality within a blink of an eye.

Images from your computer can be uploaded to Imgur to be shared on your favorite social network via a unique URL, or within the Imgur community itself. You'll want to use the official Imgur app to use it from a mobile device too.

Best for: Uploading photos (plus animated GIFs generated from videos) as quick and painlessly as possible without losing their quality, to be shared anywhere online – especially social networking sites.

Max image size/storage: 20 MB for all non-animated GIF images and 200 MB for animated GIF images. More »

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Google Photos

Screenshot of Photos.Google.com

Google Photos is probably one of the most useful photo resources you can use, mainly for its powerful automatic backup feature. And since you probably already have a Google account, getting set up will be easy.

You can access it on the web at photos.google.com or simply download one of the free Google Photos apps to automatically upload all photos you take with your devices. They'll all be synced up right across your account and accessible from anywhere.

You can also use Google Photos to edit your photos, organize them according to people/places/things and share them online even with non-Google Photos users. The more you use Google Photos, the more it learns about your photo habits so that it can take some of the manual work off your back by automatically organizing your photos for you.

Best for: Automatically backing up photos that you take, uploading large quantities, uploading high-quality photos, editing them, organizing them, and finding them again later using visual search.

Max image size/storage: Unlimited free storage for photos taken by smartphones and point-and-shoot cameras (16 megapixels or less) plus the option to alternatively use your limited storage space from your Google account for photos taken by DSLR cameras. You can also upload videos in 1080p HD. More »

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Flickr

Screenshot of Flickr.com

Flickr is one of the oldest and most widely known photo sharing social networks currently out there and still going strong today. Besides being great for free image hosting, it also has editing tools you can use to perfect your photos before organizing them into albums so you can shown them off to the rest of the Flickr community.

You can configure your privacy options if you want to share your photos with a selected audience and you have opportunity to easily upload from a variety of platforms including via the web, your mobile device, email or other photo applications. The official Flickr mobile app is stunning and actually one of the best features of the platform. You may also want to take advantage of the Flickr Uploader tool that allows you to seamlessly backup your photos from your computer, Apple iPhoto, Dropbox and other places.

Best for: Editing your photos to look their best, creating albums and social networking. You can also choose to publish your photos under Creative Commons licensing to allow others to use your photos with attribution.

Max image size/storage: 1 TB (1,000 GB) of free storage space. More »

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500px

Screenshot of 500px.com

Like Flickr, 500px is a popular social network for photographers looking to share their best photos. It doesn't exactly compare to some of the alternatives discussed above because unfortunately, you can't directly link to photos if you want to share them elsewhere, but it's a fantastic option for photographers looking to show off their work and maybe make a little money from it.

500px users can create a profile to share their photos and premium users get the option to create a completely separate portfolio for a place to display their best work without the ratings and comments from the community. If you want to display a photo on a website, you can do so by copying the embed code from the photo page.

Best for: Social networking with other photographers and licensing or selling your photos.

Max image size/storage: Since 500px is more of a social network and photography portfolio site than a simple image hosting platform, it doesn't specify any file size or storage restrictions, but you can upload very large JPEG files. As a free member, you only get to upload 20 photos per week. A $25 annual membership gives you unlimited uploads and more features. More »

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Dropbox

Screenshot of Dropbox.com

Dropbox is a free cloud storage provider that you can use to store all sorts of different file formats, in addition to photos. You can get a shareable link to a single photo file or even an entire folder containing multiple photos to share with other people.

Dropbox also has a variety of extremely powerful mobile apps that you can use to upload, manage and share all of your photo files right from your device. You can even tap the arrow beside any file name to make it available for offline viewing when you don't have internet access.

Best for: Sending or sharing individual photos or folders of photos with others.

Max image size/storage: 2 GB of free storage with the opportunity to earn extra free storage by inviting other people to join Dropbox. More »

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Free Image Hosting

Screenshot of FreeImageHosting.net

Another top site for easily sharing photos, Free Image Hosting is similar to Imgur but without the trendy layout and or the convenient hyperlink shortener. As long as you don't mind the ads all over the site, you can upload images without needing to create a free account first and Free Image Hosting provides you with the HTML code to a direct link to your photo so you can share it easily.

Your images are stored on the site forever (even as an anonymous user without an account) as long as they adhere to the terms of service. You can also upload animated GIFs, although some may look distorted if they're too large in size.

Best for: Uploading individual photos fast and directly linking to them so they can be displayed elsewhere on the web (social networks, websites, forums, etc.)

Max image size/storage: 3,000 KB per photo file size. More »

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TinyPic

Screenshot of TinyPic.com

Similar to Imgur and Free Image Hosting, Tinypic (a product of Photobucket) gives users a fast and simple way to upload and share photos without having to create or log into an account. Just choose the file you want to upload, add some optional tags, set the size you want and you're done.

Tinypic provides you with a simple link you can use to share your photo anywhere. Adding tags will help users who use Tinypic's search function to find relevant photos. Photos (and videos) that are not associated with a user account will remain on the site for at least 90 days, after which they may be removed if they haven't been viewed.

Best for: Uploading photos fast and sharing them anywhere online–especially forum message boards.

Max image size/storage: No larger than 1600px for both the width and height with file size limits of 100 MB. You can also upload videos up to five minutes in length.More »

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PostImage

Screenshot of PostImage.com

PostImage is a very simple site that gives you free image hosting for life with or with creating an account first. When you upload, you can choose to have your photo resized for you using the selections from the given dropdown menu and even choose to have the photo expire so that it's deleted after one day, seven days, 31 days or never.

This site is primarily used for hosting images for forums and comes with a simple image upload mod forum users can install and use. You can upload multiple images at a time and choose to resize them for avatar use, message boards, web, email or computer monitors.

Best for: Uploading individual photos to be shared on forum message boards.

Max image size/storage: No specified file size or storage restrictions. More »

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ImageShack

Screenshot of ImageShack.com

ImageShack has a non-premium account option and free 30-day trial to check out the premium features. This image hosting alternative has a great looking interface, somewhat similar to how Pinterest showcases its images in a pinboard-style layout. You can use it to upload as many high-res photos as you want, create albums, organize everything with tags and discover featured photos from other users for inspiration.

Privacy options are available if you don't want your photos to be viewed publicly, and you can easily share a single photo or an entire album with anyone you like. ImageShack also hosts photos for businesses and has several applications (both for mobile and the web) that you can take advantage of to make managing and sharing your photos even easier.

Best for: Using it for business purposes, uploading large quantities of photos, organizing them and sharing single photos or entire albums.

Max image size/storage: 10 GB per month for free trial/non-premium users. More »

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ImageVenue

ImageVenue holds your JPEG images up to 3 MB in size, and it can resize big pictures to reasonable dimensions at upload time, too. Image quality and aspect ratio are preserved when resizing.

Best for: Bloggers, message board users and eBay sellers using it to uploading and organizing large quantities of photos to share them with others through single photos or entire albums.

Max image size/storage: 3 GB per month. More »