This is a list of 5 best free websites to download free royalty free GIFs. Using these websites, you will be able to download tons of royalty free GIFs. These websites allow different types of uses for animated gifs, like, personal, educational, and commercial purposes. You can use the downloaded GIFs on your websites, blogs, presentations, emails, etc. The best part about most of these websites is that you don’t need to pay anything or give credit to the websites for downloading royalty free GIFs. Some of these websites offer modern and great looking GIFs and some of them only contain old royalty free GIFs. These websites also don’t imprint any watermark on the GIFs.
There are many websites available for downloading royalty free stock photos and sound effects. But, when it comes to free royalty free GIFs, there are a very few websites which allow you to download royalty free GIFs. So, after spending a lot of time on the web I have dug up 5 websites which can help you do the same. Among these websites, two of them named “Best Animations” and “Animate It” only allow you to use the downloaded GIFs for personal use.
Note: Before you start downloading and using the royalty free GIFs from these websites, please make sure that you have read the terms and conditions for usage on each website. I will give the link for the terms and conditions page of each website below. We are not responsible for any disputes arising out of licensing or any other issues.
Also, gif format in itself comes with its own set of complexity related to licensing. Here is an interesting article on Forbes which gives some insights into that.
So, let us get started with these websites and see what they have to offer.
Motion Elements:
Motion Elements is definitely one of the best websites for downloading royalty free GIFs. The database of this website is full of thousands of GIFs among which it makes some of the GIFs absolutely free for you to download. The link above will directly take you to the page that has free GIFs. You would need to become a free member of Motion Elements to be able to download up to 30 free GIFs per week. What I like about the website is that the GIFs are modern and good liking, as compared to most of the other websites on this list in which the GIFs looks pretty old (because, they are!).
To download a royalty free GIF, the first thing you need to do is browse the “Free GIFs” page and then click on any of the GIFs to preview it. After that, you can choose any of supported resolutions and then hit the “Download” button to get the GIF. In terms of usage, the downloaded GIFs are royalty free and can be used commercially as well. However, there are some restrictions on their usage, like, GIFs can’t be used as a part of a logo, trademark, etc.
You can read the complete terms and conditions here.
Sevenoaks Art:
Sevenoaks Art is another amazing website which can be used to download royalty free GIFs. It offers tons of GIFs scattered across 25+ categories like Angels, Animals, Entertainment, Flowers, Food, Political, Sports, and so on. You can download these GIFs for free and use them on your emails, social sites, blogs, presentations, and also on commercial websites without giving any attribution. One of the interesting things about this website is that almost all the GIFs are three dimensional, which makes them look visually appealing. Unlike Motion Elements, it doesn’t offer modern GIFs and instead contains high-quality old GIFs.
For downloading the royalty free GIFs from this website, simply browse the GIF categories by clicking on the “Animations By Categories” option on the right. After that, you can select any of the categories and then all the GIFs on that category will appear. Now, you can simply right-click on the GIFs and download them to your PC. Even though the website doesn’t charge you anything or has any limitations for downloading GIFs, it is always a good practice to read the terms and conditions before using any website.
Read the terms and conditions from here.
GIFGIFs:
GIFGIFs also offers hundreds of royalty free GIFs which you can download without giving any credit to the website or paying anything. Similar to “Sevenoaks Art”, all the royalty free GIFs are listed in various categories including Animals, Anime, Clothing, Food, Holidays, Creatures, Nature, Science, Sports, and more. You can download and use the GIFs from these categories for various purposes like personal, governmental, educational, commercial, etc. The GIFs offered by this website are of low quality and pretty old.
When you visit this website, you can browse all the GIF categories on the left side. Then you can click on the GIFs to view and download them for free. It also provides the direct link, HTML code, and BBCode for every GIF file. After downloading the GIFs, you can use them on your websites, presentations, emails, and more. The website doesn’t ask you for credit or money to download and use the royalty free GIFs.
You can know more about the GIF usage terms from here.
Now, let us talk about the websites that allow you to download royalty free GIFs but for personal use only.
Best Animations:
Best Animations also offers tons of royalty free GIFs which you can download from more than 20 categories. Some of the categories are Games, Food, Flags, Sci-Fi, People, Earth, Music, Cartoons, and so on. The website offers a variety of GIFs like smaller to larger GIFs, low-quality to high-quality GIFs, older to newer GIFs, etc. Even though you can download all the GIFs for free and without giving credit to the website, the GIFs can only be used for personal use.
You can browse the website and then click on any of the categories to see all the associated royalty free GIFs. After that, you can directly share the GIFs via social networks or download them to your PC for personal use. That also means you cannot use the GIFs for any kind of commercial use as the copyright remains with the original author of the GIFs. The usage information is visible at the bottom of the website and I wasn’t able to find any specific page for terms and conditions.
Animate It:
Animate It is another website that contains thousands of royalty free GIFs which you can get for free. But, similar to the “Best Animations” website, you can use the downloaded GIFs for personal use only. The GIFs are listed in more than 50 categories such as Action, Art, Celebrities, Blinkies, Culture, Dark Humor, Disney, Fantasy, Gaming, and more. All the royalty free GIFs in this website are actually a mixture of old and modern GIFs with good and bad resolutions.
When you open up the website, you will see all the GIF categories on the left panel. You can click on any category you want to browse the GIFs. After that, you will see a “Download” button at the top of each GIF that can be used to download the royalty free GIFs. You can use the GIFs for personal use and not commercially. There is no page for terms and conditions on this website, but this information is written at the top of the homepage.
Closing Words:
These are some of the best websites to download royalty free GIFs. You can use the downloaded GIFs from the first 3 websites for personal as well as commercial use. Whereas, the GIFs downloaded from the other two websites can only be used for personal use. Personally, I like Motion Elements as the GIFs are modern and look stunning.
Do let me know if there are other websites which may have made it to the list. Also, as I mentioned in the beginning, do make sure you go through terms and conditions of each website, before you decide to download and use a gif.
