Pexels API
Free API for searching and downloading high-quality, royalty-free stock photos and videos from Pexels' curated library of millions of assets.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Single API key. No scope granularity. Free for commercial use with attribution. Rate limits enforced per key. Images are royalty-free but proper attribution may be required.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
An agent needs to automatically source free, high-quality images or videos for content without managing licensing.
Avoid When
You need editorial, niche, or brand-specific imagery, or require guaranteed content for specific subjects.
Use Cases
- • Automatically sourcing images for blog posts or content generation agents
- • Finding relevant photos for presentation or document generation
- • Building image search features without licensing complexity
- • Downloading stock video B-roll for video production workflows
- • Generating illustrated reports or visual content with contextual imagery
Not For
- • Editorial photography (Pexels is generic stock, not news photography)
- • Very specific niche imagery that stock photos don't cover
- • High-volume downloads without attribution (check license per use)
Interface
Authentication
API key in Authorization header. Free plan requires application approval. Single key per application.
Pricing
Completely free for most uses. Must provide attribution to Pexels/photographer unless on enterprise plan. Application approval required (usually auto-approved).
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Attribution to Pexels and photographer is legally required for free tier use in most contexts
- ⚠ Search results are curated and may not return results for very specific or niche queries
- ⚠ Photo download URLs are direct CDN links that expire - agents should download immediately, not cache URLs long-term
- ⚠ 200 requests/hour limit can be hit quickly if searching many topics in a content generation pipeline
- ⚠ Videos require separate endpoint from photos despite similar search syntax
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
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Package Brief
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.