The Best Free Imgur Alternatives

While many people use Imgur these days, it’s not the only fish in the sea. These 10 Imgur alternatives could prove better for your image hosting needs.

Flickr for Image Editing

Flickr is one of the oldest and most popular photo-sharing platforms, and already houses billions of photos. Powered by Yahoo, Flickr is arguably the first alternative to Imgur that springs to mind, especially when searching for better image quality.

The platform gives every user up to 1 TB of storage space and has no limits on how many photos a user can display. In addition, it supports files up to 200 MB in size and at any resolution.

Features that help set Flickr apart include sophisticated editing tools that enable adjustments, refocusing, annotations, and adding various filters to your pictures.

Flickr enjoys a vast photographer community and offers an interactive mobile app capable of handling uploads and photo editing on the fly.

These distinctions make it an ideal choice for everyone, from casual users to experienced photographers.

To get the most out of Flickr, users can opt for the premium subscription to access more statistics, remove ads, and not worry about software updates.

Imgbox for More Storage

Imgbox is one of the most useful free Imgur alternatives. This platform distinguishes itself by offering unlimited storage capacity and forgoing a time limit on uploaded items.

Imgbox is also user-friendly, which can be a big help to first-time users or anyone who has been through a rough experience on other image-sharing platforms.

Another benefit is that no registration is required if you’re a casual uploader that doesn’t use the service regularly.

Some users might not appreciate its file size limitations. Unlike other platforms, Imgbox sets a lower bar and restricts the upload of any file over 10 MB.

This is somewhat weird, especially considering that the platform supports GIF, PNG, JPEG, and video files. Granted, the free-to-use service and unlimited storage should make up for this minor drawback.

Postimage for Social Media Uploads

If you want to easily share images or embed various links in social media posts, Postimage might be the right platform for the job.

You can use direct links, hot links, and even thumbnail sharing after uploading an image to the platform. This should make attaching photos to forum posts and social media uploads much easier.

One of the great things about Postimage is that it allows you to delete images you no longer want to share using a simple link.

Postimage has a free version and a paid subscription plan. Freemium users can upload pictures of up to 10,000 x 10,000 pixels and 24 MB in size.

The premium account raises the file size limit to 48 MB and lets you upload 1,000 photos simultaneously.

Premium users can also benefit from unlimited hosting and won’t have to contend with advertising, even when using the mobile version of Postimage.

ImageShack for Higher Resolution Photos

If quality is your main concern, ImageShack is one of the most reliable image-sharing platforms. Unlike Imgur, it won’t compress your photos, and stores them in high resolution.

This platform is loaded with features such as API access, dynamic image resizing, and a good support team. You can use ImageShack to create entire albums, set access rules, and easily limit or expand viewership on your photos.

It’s an excellent solution to host images for a personal website or a forum, especially if you want high-resolution photos.

Filters, cropping, resizing, and even third-app syncing are among the perks.

But there is a downside to ImageShack. There’s no free plan. Instead, the platform offers a basic subscription plan for unlimited hosting capacity and direct linking and a pro plan that enables API access, dynamic resizing, and 24/7 support.

ImgPile for Free Hosting

There are plenty of free hosting sites for photos, but few of them can hold a candle to ImgPile. This platform goes above and beyond to balance a free service and features that users generally want.

ImgPile has free hosting and offers unlimited storage. It also allows users to upload up to 100 MB of files and creates permanent links that can be used on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms or forums.

Although the platform is free, creating an account has some additional benefits. Account holders can access their image upload history. This makes it easier to revisit old images without saving the links in a separate file.

Creating an account costs nothing, and uploading via URL and File Browser are both available.

Unsee for Copyright and Privacy Protection

Unsee has an interesting approach to image hosting. Unlike Imgur, it focuses more on privacy than anything else, which is great to see, given it’s free to use.

The service asks users to select an expiration date for their images. There are five options to choose from when uploading a photo.

• A day
• One hour
• 30 minutes
• 10 minutes
• After the first viewing

Therefore, you can share a photo with a single person and know that the platform will immediately delete it from its servers.

But Unsee goes a step further. It watermarks users’ IP addresses and shares them with the uploader. You can see who’s tuning in to see your photos and the likelihood that your images will be shared on other platforms.

Unsee generates QR codes for images, which not many platforms do. The code has an image ID, timestamp, and the uploader’s IP in an encrypted format.

Pixelfed for More Access Control

Pixelfed is a platform that rivals Imgur and battles it out with Unsee for supremacy in the privacy and security-oriented space.

This platform enables users to access a wide range of analytics and control what accounts can view and comment on their shared images.

The platform also offers two-factor authentication, view logs, a blocking feature, and the ability to set an account to private.

You can even report unsavory behavior on the platform if you notice NSFW pictures, bad language, etc.

The service is surprisingly ad-free and heavily favored by content creators. Unlike other similar platforms, it enables users to create albums, timelines, and add various filters to their images.

Registration is mandatory because Pixelfed operates more like a social media network than your average image hosting service. But thanks to this, it offers superior control over your content and privacy settings.

Kek.gg for Basic Unrestricted Image Content Uploads

If you want a platform that doesn’t go overboard with features and just hosts images, Kek.gg is a solid alternative to Imgur.

This is a free-to-use service with a basic drag-and-drop interface. You can alternatively paste a URL or upload files from your device.

No account creation is necessary, and the platform is more than intuitive.

Many users appreciate Kek.gg because it has little to no restrictions when it comes to content. The only requirement is that the content shouldn’t be labeled illegal in the U.S.

There’s not a lot of support for higher resolution photos, as the maximum file upload size is 5 MB.

ImgBB for Easy Plugin Integration

Continuing the free hosting trend, ImgBB is another platform with plenty of users and a nice range of features.

You can use it with a standard File Explorer or a drag-and-drop interface to upload pictures of up to 32 MB. This is a substantial file size given other free alternatives to ImgBB and Imgur.

Each file can be later converted into BBCode, HTML thumbnails, and shareable URLs.

The best part about ImgBB is arguably the upload plugin. You can add it to a blog or website and enable viewers to share photos while hosting them on the ImgBB server. Adding the plugin is as simple as copy-pasting the code into the site’s HTML code.

Publitio for a Complete Professional-Oriented Solution

If you want a more professional alternative to Imgur, Publitio is an excellent solution. This platform is designed for hosting, uploads, file conversions, hot link sharing, and protecting image content.

Publitio enables users to upload via API or dashboard and generate URL-based transformations to convert the uploaded file into different formats.

Watermarking, cropping, quality tweaks, and resizing are available for image and video media files.

The platform gives the uploader total control over access and privacy. For example, you can make your uploads visible on a single domain or keep them private. HLS video encryption is available to prevent downloading media content.

Interestingly, Publitio has a free version with 5 GB of storage and up to 10 GB bandwidth per month. However, only the paid version grants access to advanced features, access control, encryption, and analytics data. Premium access boosts the storage capacity to 50 GB and increases the bandwidth tenfold.

What’s Your Pick?

Everyone has different image-hosting needs. Some people want a free service, others want to protect their content, while some value quality and editing features.

Whatever your needs, you can bet there are at least one or two platforms that cater to your specific requirements.

This article offered the top 10 alternatives to Imgur, but it’s just a small sample of what’s available online.

Let us know in the comments section below how you believe Imgur stacks up to these alternatives, which is your favorite, and what other suggestions you have for reliable image hosting.