Are you a web designer or do you work with many content creation projects? Have you already searched for free icons for your productions?
There are websites that offer a lot of free icons that you can download for personal and commercial projects. Free icons can be used in a fun and creative way to improve the aesthetics of your work, and they have professional quality!
Icons are small images that attract attention because they represent an idea and have the power of recognition among millions of viewers. They have the function of presenting an idea as a symbol in little space. Icons give popular recognition to a brand, company, websites and much more!
In this post you will discover the best sites that offer free icons that can make your work much more attractive. On those sites you will have access to beautiful icons.
Let’s see where to download icons for free.
Flaticon
The first great site of free icons is Flaticon, it has a large database with collections of icons with quick access for beginners and professionals to benefit from in their graphic projects. There are icons in multiple formats: PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and BASE 64.
From the home page of Flaticon, when you search for a keyword on the search bar (by typing something and completing the search) when the results appear, you will notice a button “Filter” in the upper left corner of the screen, where you can filter by “Free” to see the free content. Flaticon offers a wide catalog with tens of thousands of free icons!
When icons aren’t free they have a crown symbol below it, meaning it’s for Premium Members only.
If you download icons as a free member, you must give credit to the icon author, even if it’s for personal use. You can read the com
plete explanation about how to credit the author of any free icon by reading the article Attribution: How, when and where? written by Flaticon Support.
Also, remember to read the Flaticon License Agreement to understand all the rules of use of Flaticon content for all types of projects. You will notice that Flaticon is part of Freepik, a site to download other types of free media, such as vectors and PSD files.
You can also upload your own icons to Flaticon to make them available to the community. As a non-registered user (with no account), you can only download 10 free icons per day, plus you can’t download icon packs. Registering to Flaticon is free, so now let’s see the details about the benefits that Flaticon offers when you create a free account.
Benefits that Flaticon Offers to Registered Users
When you’re on Flaticon, you will notice the button “Register” on the upper right corner of the screen. That is where you click to create a free account on Flaticon. If you already have an account on Freepik, you can login with it because Flaticon is part of Freepil. If not, you can sign up using your Google account, your Facebook account or any email account.
- You become a Registered User when you create a free account. And here is why you definitely should do that:
- You can download 3 icon collections per day, with 50 icons for each collection
- Your download limit will be raised to 100 icons per day
- You can edit the free icons before downloading them by using Flaticon editing tools (author attribution is still required for free accounts)
- You can use the tool Wepik to create designs with free editable templates
- You can use Flaticon Icon Pattern tool to create your own designs
- You can upload your own content to Flaticon to store, publish and make it available to other users
Even though this post is about free content, it’s worth it to know that Flaticon offers very cool features for Premium Members:
- Unlimited downloads (2,000 per day)
- Unlimited collections
- No attribution requirements
- Full access to Flaticon editor
- Access to exclusive Premium icons
- No ads
Prices were in Euros and were all under € 10.00 when this post was published. You can see all the details on Flaticon Pricing.
Freeicons
With a wide variety of icons, Freeicons is a site that brings designers and content creators endless possibilities of free icons to download and to develop design ideas for commercial and personal projects.
Freeicons offers icons in SVG, PNG, AI, EPS, BASE 64 and PSD formats. The graphic resources are developed by a community of creators. The home page of the website shows the latest icon packs uploaded and available for download. You can open each pack individually.
You can also be part of the Freeicons community by sharing your own icons. To do this, simply register on the site as a user (which is free) then you adhere to the Freeicons Terms of Service.
You can use the search bar of Freeicons to look for specific icon types based on keywords, and also use the search filters. You must always attribute the author of free icons. When you click on the download button of any icon, you will see a pop up window on the lower right corner of screen showing you how to give attribution to the icon’s author.
How to Find the License of Icons Available on Freeicons
Each icon that you download from Freeicons will have its specific type of license and rules of use. When you choose what icon you want to download, in order to check what its license is you must click on the icon (from the home page of the website or from the search page in case you searched for a keyword).
On the page where the icon is displayed bigger than in its thumbnail, you will see the license information and other information about it on the right side of the screen, such as the author name, the icon category and tags. You can also choose the icon size that you want to download.
So remember that if you download an icon from a page where it’s being displayed next to other icons, such as the icon search page, you won’t see any license information. You need to open each icon individually to see its license.
Many icons on Freeicons are under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which allows you to copy and redistribute material in any medium or format. You can remix, transform and build on the material for any purpose, even commercially, under the following terms:
- The name of the creator and the attribution parts must be provided
- A disclaimer
- A link to the material
You can read the complete explanation by reading the article Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) on Creative Commons official website.
Pngtree
You can download thousands of free icons on Pngtree, which is a website that has free files in the PNG format, such as icons, vectors and cliparts. You will notice that there are other formats available for download, such as EPS, but those are for Premium members only.
You can either visit the icons section of Pngtree that is under “PNG IMAGES” on the top menu, or you can use the search bar to type specific keywords, just don’t forget to use the word “icon” with any other keyword, like “bird icon” or “social media icon”, otherwise the site will filter all types of files.
Now you will see a summary of Pngtree rules to use its free icons. You can get the complete explanation by reading the Pngtree License and by reading the Pngtree Terms of Service.
Rules of Usage of Pngtree Free Icons
Pngtree has rules of usage for its free icons, that also apply to all its free content:
- Other file formats that aren’t PNG are for Premium members only
- You must create a free account on Pngtree in order to download free icons
- You have a limit of 2 download per day
- All files require attribution. After you click on the “Download PNG” button on the download page (where you preview the icon individually before downloading it) or after you click on the button “PNG” on the search page (where all icons are put together side by side) you will see the details of how to attribute when you click on a yellow exclamation mark that appears next to the text line “Attribution required” above the button “Free download”.
- Print sales are not allowed
- A user is not allowed to impersonate another user
- The user agrees not to take any action that could damage, overload, deteriorate or prevent the normal use of the website or its Services
- It is prohibited to use robots or any other application to control any part of the website
Conclusion
Great! Now you know the best sites to download hundreds of thousands of free icons to use in your projects! Don’t hesitate to check them out to start your next design.
You can also share your thoughts in the comments below!
