Comparison

Pexels vs Pixabay

Pexels lands on Worth it, and Pixabay lands on Depends.

Pexels

Worth it

Confidence: Medium

Use it if you need free, high-quality stock photos or videos . there is no purchase decision or paid tier at all.

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Use it for zero-budget blogs, mockups, and background imagery where a copyright scare is survivable.

Pexels versus Pixabay
Compare	Pexels	Pixabay
Verdict	Worth it	Depends
Best for	Bloggers and marketers needing free images	Bloggers needing free images
Who it's not for	Anyone reselling stock images as-is	Book or album cover designers
Privacy	No public vulnerabilities found for itself; severe CVEs affect its third-party WordPress plugin, and no public security page was found.¹²	Main site shows no security page; the Pixabay Images WordPress plugin carries multiple CVEs including a 2025 RCE.
Support quality	App Store reviewer says company doesn't care	No support-specific evidence found
Public sentiment	Reviewers largely praise Pexels as a dependable, easy, high-quality free stock source, with occasional complaints about curation and support.^⁵	Users love the free commercial-use model but repeatedly report copyright claims and demand letters from third-party uploads.¹⁶
Biggest gotcha	WordPress plugin users must patch: SSRF CVE-2024-25915 (CVSS 8.8) and RCE CVE-2024-6132¹²	Contributor uploads you don't own can produce demand letters; you carry the legal risk