Pexels Photo and Video Upload Guidelines: How to Contribute

Hello and welcome to Pexels! We’re so happy you’re here.

Pexels is a free, open community for photographers and videographers to share their work with the world. Millions of users from all over the world use Pexels to source unique content for their creative projects.

You can upload almost anything you want to Pexels (with a few exceptions we’ll cover here). This guide will answer all your questions about uploading requirements and explain what it takes for images to get included in Pexels search results. We can't wait to see your photos!

Photo Upload Guidelines

Our curation team selects the best uploads to be included in Pexels search results, meaning that more people will be able to find and make use of that content. These are some reasons your upload may not be selected to be shown in search results:

Basic Reasons

• Copyright issue (you uploaded photos or videos that you do not own the copyright to or that you did not create yourself)
• Insufficient permission (depicted people or owners of depicted property did not give you the permission to publish the photos or videos)
• Duplicates (you upload copies of photos you already uploaded to Pexels)
• Graphic violence, gore, or nudity
• Offensive content

Technical Reasons

• Unclear photo (blurry, unfocused, or ambiguous)
• Low resolution (4 megapixel minimum)
• Overexposed or underexposed (too dark or too bright)
• Orientation (image is sideways or mis-aligned)

Usage Reasons

• Non-photos (flyers, banners, computer renderings, 3D models, etc.)
• Over-edited (HDR, extreme saturation or vignetting, etc.)
• Added graphic or text overlays
• Added borders
• Watermarks

Video Upload Guidelines

Along with the Basic Reasons mentioned above, videos submitted to Pexels have some additional guidelines:

Requirements

• Minimum resolution of 1920 x 1080
• Footage shouldn’t have graphics, borders, watermarks or branding elements
• Cinemagraphs, vertical videos, stop motion videos, analog film and digital formats are all welcome
• Avoid shaky, overexposed, underexposed, or unclear videos
• While sound may be included in uploads, videos with added music may not be published due to copyright concerns

*In some cases, photos/videos may be be removed from Pexels due to the unsuitable content nature.

Questions?

Get in touch at [email protected] or send us a message on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

Cover photo by Alex Andrews.