13 Best FREE Websites for Icons, Illustrations & Backgrounds

A good design can fall apart because of the wrong icon, a messy illustration, or a flat background. But the free assets you download come with licenses, and they are not all the same. In this video, I will show you 13 free sites for icons, illustrations, and backgrounds, exactly what each license asks of you, and 4 tips to keep your designs consistent. Let's start with icons. Number one, Iconify. It brings together more than 200 open source icon sets in one place, and you can search them all at once. The key detail is that every set lists its own license, like MIT, Apache, or Creative Commons. So pick the set first, then check its license. One set on the list is marked non-commercial, so skip that one for client or monetized work. Number two, Lucide. Search the icon set, click any icon, and customize the stroke width, size, and color right in the sidebar. Lucite is released under the ISC license, which lets you use the icons for any purpose as long as you keep the license notice with the code you ship. A small group of icons that came from Feather carry the MIT license, with the same notice rule. 3. Hero Icons Made by the team behind Tailwind CSS, you get outlining solid mini and micro styles, and the search is instant. The license is MIT, so it is free for personal and commercial work, and the only condition is keeping the copyright notice in copies of the software. Number four, Phosphor. It calls itself a flexible icon family, and the top bar lets you change the size and color before you copy an icon. There are over 9000 icons to download. The license is MIT, free and open source. And the only rule is keeping the copyright notice. Number five, Font Awesome. Search the icon library, then switch to the free icons because the pro icons need a paid plan. The free icons are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so credit is required. The downloaded files already carry the attribution comment, so just do not delete it. Number 6 Tabler Icons, more than 6000 free vector icons with sliders for size and stroke. Click an icon to see its SVG code. The site says it is free for personal and commercial use under the MIT license with no attribution required. Number seven, unDraw illustrations you can recolor to match your brand. Click one and you can download it as SVG or PNG. The license says you do not need to credit unDraw and you can use the illustrations commercially. You cannot repackage them into a pack, Build a competing library or use them to train AI models. Number 8, Storyset. A big library of illustrations in different styles like Rafiki, Bro, Amico and Pana. And you can customize, animate and download them. This one has a condition. The site says you must always include attribution to Storyset every time you use its free illustrations. So add the credit. Number 9, OpenPeeps, a hand-drawn illustration library by Pablo Stanley, where you mix and match clothing, hairstyles, and poses to build your own characters. It is released under CC0, free for commercial and personal use, with no permission needed. Number 10. Haikei, our first background tool. Pick a generator like Wave, Blurry Gradient, Layered Waves or Low Polygrid, adjust the colors and export as SVG or PNG. The homepage says it is free with no signups. But I could not find license terms for the assets you generate. So check with the site before using them in client work. Number 11, Hero Patterns, a collection of repeatable SVG background patterns. Click a pattern, change the foreground color, background color and opacity and copy the CSS. It uses the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. So give credit to the creator. Number 12. Mesh a simple way to create beautiful unique gradients using shaders. Place your color points and the gradient updates in front of you. There is an export button in the corner. The page does not state any license term, so treat it as unclear and check before commercial use. Number 13. Cool backgrounds. Switch between styles like Trianglify, Particles, CSS Gradient and Gradient Topography. Change the palette and download the result. The site does not say what license applies to the backgrounds. So, if the background is for a business, ask first. 4 tips to keep your designs consistent. 1. Stick to one icon set per project. So the line width and corner style match. 2. Match the stroke width and size your icons on a grid. 3. Use SVG when you want sharp, scalable graphics and PNG only when you need a flat image. And 4. Keep a license log, with the site, the link, the license, and any credit you owe. That is 13 free sites for icons, illustrations, and backgrounds. Remember, green means free to use, and yellow means check the license or give credit. Save this video for your next project and tell me in the comments which asset site I should cover next. See you in the next one.