Mixkit — free stock assets, and the licence label that decides if you can use them

• Mixkit

  This page

  PricingRoughly even

  • Everything in the library is free, with no account, no watermark and no subscription
  • The commercial model is elsewhere: the site is published by a marketplace and carries a prominent pitch for its paid unlimited-assets subscription
  • No feature is withheld behind a paid tier on the free library itself
  • No attribution obligation on the free licence, which is a real cost saving on a client project

• Pexels

  PricingRoughly even

  • Free to use and download, with an account for the full experience
  • No paid tier for the media itself
  • Funded by advertising and by the wider business rather than by selling assets
  • No attribution required, which removes a step from every project

• Pixabay

  PricingRoughly even

  • Free to download, with an account
  • No paid media tier; a small number of items carry sponsor or partner branding
  • Advertising-funded, with content types well beyond video
  • No attribution required under the standard licence

• Videezy

  PricingRoughly even

  • Free clips alongside a paid Pro tier, so the library is genuinely split by price as well as by licence
  • Free downloads are available without paying, and the paid tier removes limits and ads
  • Some free clips carry attribution expectations, so read the item before you use it
  • The paid tier is the reason the free tier exists, which is worth knowing when judging curation

1. Mixkit — official site
2. Mixkit — licence
3. Mixkit — user terms
4. Mixkit — official information
5. Mixkit — free stock video
6. Pexels — official site
7. Pixabay — official site
8. Mixkit — video templates

Free tier

Yes

Pricing summary

Every asset on Mixkit is free to download, with no subscription, no account and no watermark, and the free licence does not require attribution — you can use covered assets in monetised video, advertising, broadcast and client work without crediting anyone. That is genuinely unusual and it is the reason the library gets recommended so often. The cost that is worth understanding is not financial. A labelled subset of the library carries a second, restricted licence that limits use to personal, non-commercial and educational projects, which rules out advertising, company social channels and monetised video. Those items are marked, and the marking is easy to walk past when you are downloading in a hurry, which is the failure that produces the story this category is full of: a paid campaign built on footage that was never cleared for it. Treat the licence label as part of the asset — the same way you would treat the resolution or the frame rate — and check it before the download rather than after the edit. The other costs are the ones every free library carries. The grant is non-exclusive and limited: you are receiving a licence to use an item, not ownership of it, and the terms prohibit reselling or redistributing assets as they are, prohibit collecting them and offering them on a stock basis, and prohibit registering the music with rights-management services. Assets must be incorporated with human skill and other elements rather than passed through unchanged. If that sounds like more paperwork than a paid library, it is — and there is no indemnity here, which is precisely what a commercial licence buys you. The business model is worth knowing too: the library is published by a large creative marketplace and sits beside a pitch for its unlimited-assets subscription, so the free tier is both a genuine gift and a funnel. None of that makes the assets worse, and it does explain the curation. Licence terms, the label system and the exact scope of each licence belong on the official pages; they are the only thing on this page that genuinely must be read at the source.

Reviewed on 19 September 2026 · Mixkit — licence

• Free stock video in HD and 4K

  The core of the library, with filters for resolution and orientation so you can find vertical and square footage for social formats rather than cropping a landscape clip and losing the composition. Editorially curated, which means a smaller catalogue than the upload-driven libraries and noticeably less time spent filtering out filler.

• Production music with a clear commercial grant

  A substantial royalty-free music library, cleared for monetised video, advertising and client work under the free licence, with no attribution required. The clause that matters most is the prohibition on registering tracks with rights-management services — the mistake that turns a clean music cue into a claim against your own channel.

• A large sound-effects library

  Thousands of effects covering the ordinary needs of editing — transitions, impacts, ambience, interface sounds, foley — which is the content type most often missing from libraries that present themselves as video-first. For anyone assembling a project from free sources, having effects in the same licence as the footage removes a whole separate compliance step.

• Editing project templates for several editors

  Templates for the major editing applications, which is a genuinely unusual thing for a free library to offer: most stock sites sell footage and leave the structure to you. Starting from a working project file is the shortcut that matters when a deadline is close, and it is the clearest difference between this library and one built around photography.

• Icons and graphics alongside the media

  An icon set within a video-first library is an odd-sounding inclusion that makes practical sense: the thumbnail, the lower third and the social card all need graphics, and pulling them from the same licence as the footage keeps a project legally simple.

• A two-licence system applied per asset

  The Free Licence permits commercial use with no attribution; the Restricted Licence limits an asset to personal, non-commercial and educational work. Which applies is shown on the item. This is the feature that most needs to be understood before the library is adopted into a workflow, because a restricted clip used in an advertisement is a real problem and the label does not announce itself.

• No account, no watermark, no attribution

  Downloads need no sign-up and arrive clean, and covered assets require no credit. On a busy production day that is several minutes and one administrative obligation removed from every single asset, which is a larger practical difference than the feature list suggests.

• A commercial marketplace behind it

  The library is published by a large creative-asset marketplace and sits beside a prominent pitch for its paid unlimited-assets subscription. The free catalogue is editorially curated rather than community-uploaded, and the paid offering is where exclusivity, indemnity and volume live — worth knowing before you assume the free tier will eventually cover everything you need.

1. 1

   Check the licence label before the download, not after the edit

   This is the single habit that makes the library safe to use. The label is attached to the item and tells you whether you are looking at a Free Licence asset or a Restricted one, and the difference is not a nuance — one permits paid advertising, the other forbids it. Making it a step in the workflow rather than a personal virtue is what stops a restricted clip reaching a client deliverable six weeks later.

2. 2

   Record what you downloaded and where it came from

   A free licence gives you no indemnity, which means the only protection available is being able to demonstrate the licence you relied on. A shot list or an asset note with the item, the date, the licence type and the item URL costs almost nothing at the time and is the entire defence if a question is asked months later. Paid libraries sell you this trail; with free ones you keep your own.

3. 3

   Match the licence to the distribution, not to the project

   The restricted licence turns on how the work is published rather than on how large the project is: a company social post or a monetised channel is commercial even when the video is small and unpaid, while a personal project stays personal even if a contractor edits it. Decide based on where the finished piece will appear, and if it might appear somewhere commercial later, treat the asset as commercial now.

4. 4

   Do not pass assets through unchanged

   The terms require human skill and other elements to be applied before an asset is incorporated into something you distribute, and prohibit reselling or redistributing items as they are. In practice this is not restrictive — it describes normal editing — and it does rule out the two things people try: repackaging downloads as a product, and uploading a clip unchanged with a new title. Cut it, grade it, compose it with something else, and the requirement is satisfied.

5. 5

   Keep music out of rights-management systems

   Registering a library track with a rights-management or content-identification service is explicitly prohibited, and it is the most common way people create a problem for themselves: the track gets claimed, the claim comes back at your own channel, and unwinding it is slower than the original edit. If a piece of music is going to be central to your brand, commission or licence something exclusive instead.

6. 6

   For anything central to a campaign, use a paid licence

   Free libraries are widely used, which means the clip you have chosen may also appear in a competitor's launch film — a real problem when the asset is doing the work of communicating your product. Exclusivity, an indemnity and a documented clearance trail are what a paid licence buys, and the point at which those matter is exactly the point at which a free library stops being the right answer.

• Solo editors and small production teams

  The clearest fit is one person or a small team cutting on a deadline, where the friction of an account, a watermark or an attribution line in the description is a real cost paid on every asset. No sign-up and no credit obligation, across footage, music, effects and templates, is precisely the shape of convenience this kind of work needs.

• Social and content teams producing at volume

  Vertical and square footage, sound effects, music and editor templates in one licence is a good match for teams shipping short-form video regularly, where the constraint is throughput rather than craft. The discipline that makes it work is the licence check, because company social channels are exactly what the restricted licence rules out.

• Marketers making ads, promos and product films

  The free licence covers advertising explicitly, including paid campaigns and client work, which is more than several free libraries permit. What it does not provide is exclusivity or indemnity, so this is the right tool for the supporting material around a campaign — the explainer, the background music, the b-roll — and the wrong one for the hero asset that carries the launch.

• Learners and educators

  The restricted licence exists precisely for this audience: personal projects, coursework and educational use are permitted on items that would otherwise be off limits for commercial work. It makes the library usable at every level of a course without a school licence, which is a genuinely thoughtful piece of licensing design rather than an oversight.

• Anyone assembling a project from free sources

  Working across several free libraries means reconciling several licences, and this one covers enough content types that a project can lean on it for most things and go elsewhere only for the shots it cannot find. Reducing the number of licences in a production to two or three is a meaningful administrative win on any project with a compliance question attached.

A free library published by a commercial marketplace

Mixkit is operated by Envato, the company behind a large creative-asset marketplace and an unlimited-subscription service, and the free catalogue sits beside a prominent pitch for that paid product. The assets are editorially curated rather than community-uploaded, which is the practical consequence for a user: a smaller catalogue and less noise than an upload-driven library.

Two licences, applied per item, with different commercial rights

The Free Licence permits commercial and non-commercial use including monetised video, advertising, client work and broadcast, with no attribution required. The Restricted Licence limits the item to personal, non-commercial and educational use. The applicable licence is shown on the item and is the thing to check before downloading. This is the single most important fact about the library and the one most likely to be skimmed.

A non-exclusive, limited, non-transferable grant

Downloading gives you a licence to use an item, not ownership of it, and the licence is non-exclusive — the same asset is available to everyone. The terms also prohibit renting, sublicensing, reselling or redistributing items, prohibit collating them for use on a stock or inventory basis, and require human skill and other elements to be applied before incorporation into something distributed. Music in particular may not be registered with rights-management or content-identification services.

No account, no watermark, no attribution on covered assets

Downloads do not require registration and arrive without a watermark, and assets under the free licence carry no credit obligation. That is unusually frictionless for the category and it is a genuine part of the value — but it also means there is no account record of what you downloaded, so the asset trail is yours to keep if you ever need to demonstrate which licence you relied on.

No indemnity, which is what a paid licence actually buys

No free library warrants that an asset is clear of third-party claims, and this one is no exception. An indemnity — a contractual promise to stand behind the licence if a claim arises — is one of the main things a commercial licence provides and the main thing missing here. If the work is going to a broadcaster, a large client or a regulated campaign, that gap is a real procurement question rather than a formality.

What it does not do

It does not provide exclusive or exclusive-looking assets, it does not provide an indemnity or a clearance certificate, it does not guarantee that a clip is unavailable to your competitors, and it does not offer the depth of a subscription library for a specific shot list. For any project where one of those matters, the correct answer is a paid library — and for everything else, this one is genuinely free.