Free Math Images

7 Free Math Image Websites for Inspiration & Learning

These are a few of the websites I use to find math images for lectures, homeowrk assignments, and more. I recommend them to teachers for preparing your own math-related content or for students for finding math inspiration. You can see math everywhere in everyday life, but it's true that many stock image websites contain few or no math-related photos.

Students, parents, and other teachers often ask where I find good free math photos. This has in particular been a common question I get from parents who are home-schooling during the covid crisis. These are the top sites I use:

Wunderstock has great math photos-- everything from childhood math learning to calculus!

1. Wunderstock

Wunderstock is a great source for educational images, especially math images, because they allow you to easily search more than 10 million Creative Commons images on Flickr. Thus it's easy to find photos from other educational institutions and sources. The site also has a feature to modify photos directly in your browser. This is handy for students who may not have access to photo editing software at home.

Tip: After searching, go to Source -> Flickr to narrow down your search to Flickr. From there it is easier to find educational content, including content from universities and government libraries.

Photo Credit: MrWoodnz via Wunderstock (license)

2. Pixabay

Pixabay is also one of my favorite places for open-source imagery. They also have a massive selection, but I find many of the photos are the same, so you may run out of images for your lectures quickly. Still it's great for one-off projects or if you need to quickly find a math photo.

Some of the images also look very dated-- think early 2010s content. But hey, I guess textbook images look dated too, right?

3. Pexels

Pexels is a similarly good source for free images. They have a strong focus on diversity and high quality standards, which I appreciate. But like Pixabay the selection can sometimes feel repetitive. It's not possible to find images on advanced topics like fractals or differential equations. But it has a good body of architecture works-- I recently found some good triangular architecture photos here for example.

4. FreeImages

FreeImages.com has a good diverse range of math and numbers photos. But keep in mind that you can extend your search on any of these sites beyond math! I often use this photo of Stonehenge to start off geometry lectures, for example.

5. Compfight

Compfight is a Flickr search engine similar to Wunderstock, but without the fancy bells and whistles. has a good diverse range of math and numbers photos. It's also a great place to find science and history photos. They have a pretty good algorithm for showcasing interesting content like the image above.

Photo Credit: fdecomite on Flickr (CC)

6. EveryPixel

EveryPixel is an all-in-one image search engine that searches free and paid stock sites at once. It can be a good tool if you have a budget for stock photos but want to check free options before pulling out your wallet. Sometimes the interface feels too complicated. Other times I have the feeling Everypixel isn't fully searching each site.

One cool feature of this site is the "Isolation" feature-- it filters for photos that have empty white space. This is perfect for finding presentation backgrounds!

7. PicJumbo

PicJumbo is a good general-purpose stock library with some math photos. Amazingly all the images are taken by the site owner himself-- Viktor Hanacek. I always find his content inspiring. I like this site if I need an eye-catching image to start off a lecture, but use other sites for math-specific photos. Sometimes downloading can be a bit slow. I also find the ads overly intrusive, but understand these free sites have to support themselves in some way.

Honorable Mentions

Here are other very useful resources for free math photos that for whatever reason did not make the list:

Archive.org: The Internet Archive has millions of photos and images dating back hundreds of years--- including full scans of math textbooks with images and diagrams you can copy since they are now in the public domain. But most of the content is historical and often difficult to search through.
Wikimedia Commons: Wikipedia's media arm has thousands of math and science photos. I didn't mention it earlier since it is such an obvious source.
Pinterest: To be clear, all photos on Pinterest are copyright-protected and you should not assume it is a source of free photos. But it has a lot of engaging math and learning content created by educators who are happy to grant permission to use if you ask. That's the key here-- you always need to ask permission. I also neglect recommending it to students because it requires registration and has the tendency to "suck you in" with repetitive content.

Closing Thoughts

I hope this guide can help you find better images to illustrate math concepts to your students, learn more about math, or even provide some entertainment on a rainy day. Please get in touch if you email me and have others! And of course, you can always take your own pictures! I know many of my students these days have smartphones and am currently considering doing a photography contest to show my students how math can be applied to photography and other visual disciplines.

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