Comparison

Pixabay vs Pexels

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

Pixabay

Depends

Confidence: Medium

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

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.

Pixabay versus Pexels
Compare	Pixabay	Pexels
Verdict	Depends	Worth it
Best for	Bloggers needing free images	Bloggers and marketers needing free images
Who it's not for	Book or album cover designers	Anyone reselling stock images as-is
Privacy	Main site shows no security page; the Pixabay Images WordPress plugin carries multiple CVEs including a 2025 RCE.¹⁰	No public vulnerabilities found for itself; severe CVEs affect its third-party WordPress plugin, and no public security page was found.
Support quality	No support-specific evidence found	App Store reviewer says company doesn't care
Public sentiment	Users love the free commercial-use model but repeatedly report copyright claims and demand letters from third-party uploads.^¹	Reviewers largely praise Pexels as a dependable, easy, high-quality free stock source, with occasional complaints about curation and support.
Biggest gotcha	Contributor uploads you don't own can produce demand letters; you carry the legal risk^³	WordPress plugin users must patch: SSRF CVE-2024-25915 (CVSS 8.8) and RCE CVE-2024-6132