News · 22 October 2026

Thank you to the Pexels creators whose free photos and videos help millions of people

A small thank-you to the photographers and videographers who share their work on Pexels, with a look at the top 50 of all time and some rising creators.

By George Morina

Every day, people use free photos and videos from Pexels on their websites, in their social media posts and in their own projects. Pexels says that millions of people, from small start-ups to global brands, use the photos and videos shared there.

Behind every one of those images is a real person who went out, took the picture or filmed the clip, and chose to share it for free. I wanted to say thank you to them, and to look at the numbers to get a sense of how much they have given.

By the numbers

Figures from the Pexels leaderboards on 22 October 2026.

• The top 50 creators of all time have had 134.4 billion views between them (134,421,605,940).
• That’s an average of about 2.7 billion views each. The middle figure (the median) is about 2.1 billion.
• The top 10 account for 42% of those views (56.1 billion). The other 40 account for 58% (78.4 billion).
• Between them, the top 50 have shared 314,234 photos and videos: 257,345 photos and about 56,889 videos.
• Spread over the time since each of them first uploaded, that works out at roughly 41.4 million views a day for the 50 together.
• The 15 rising creators below had 21.2 million views in the last 30 days on their new uploads, or about 706,000 a day.
• The all-time leaderboard lists 858,193 contributors, and Pexels says that hundreds of thousands of photographers and videographers share their work there.

Top 50 of all time

These are the 50 creators with the most views on Pexels of all time.

Rising creators to watch

These creators first uploaded to Pexels within the last year and are already near the top of the 30-day leaderboard. It’s lovely to see new people sharing their work.

How the figures were worked out

• Sources. The all-time figures come from the Pexels all-time leaderboard and the rising creators from the Pexels 30-day leaderboard, both read on 22 October 2026 at about 00:30 (UK time). Statements about Pexels come from its About page and the Pexels help page on the leaderboard, read the same day.
• Views are the totals Pexels shows for each creator. “Uploads” is the number of photos and videos the leaderboard data shows for each creator; the number of videos is worked out as uploads minus photos, so treat it as approximate. Pexels doesn’t show downloads on the leaderboard, so there are no download figures here.
• Averages. The average is the total divided by 50; the median is the middle value. The “views a day” figure divides each creator’s total views by the number of days since their first upload, then adds those together. It’s a rough guide, not a daily count.
• Rising creators are the highest-placed people on the 30-day leaderboard, which counts only views of photos and videos uploaded in the last 30 days, who first uploaded to Pexels on or after 22 October 2025 and aren’t in the all-time top 50. These are the first 15 such people in the top 132 places. The “30-day place” is their position on the leaderboard as shown on that day.
• Things change. The leaderboards update all the time, and Pexels says it can take a couple of days for positions to update, so these figures will already be a little out of date.
• This is an unofficial thank-you. It isn’t endorsed by Pexels or by any of the creators named here.

Thank you

To everyone who shares their photos and videos on Pexels, whether you’re on these lists or uploaded your first picture yesterday: thank you. Your work helps more people than you might think.

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