Mockups are a visual representation or rough sketch of what the final design would look like. They are meant to give the most helpful look in as minimal effort as possible.

Mockups are often shared with the clients and other stakeholders. They show a preview of how the final design will look in various scenarios – on banners, stationery, billboards, business cards, wireframes, etc. This allows the clients to make any desired changes before developing it, saving on cost and effort.

Mockups are an essential part of the creative process. They are not just a great way to get client feedback but also to help clients visualize how the design would look in real life. Living in a world that is changing quickly, it is essential to iterate ideas flexibly.

Mockups allow the designers to test their design and make changes to make sure that the design is fit for production. Additionally, if you are doing concept projects which do not involve developing products, displaying your designs on mockups gives your project a sense of professionalism.

Though, the greater the number of mockup sites on the web, the longer it takes to find one which has high-quality mockups. As a graphic designer, I prefer to work with a handful of websites that I trust to provide good mockups for free. These websites have a great variety of mockups for all my branding-related needs, from packaging to stationery.

Freepik offers a massive library of all types of free graphic resources including illustrations, stock photos, mockups, and other media. You will find what you are looking for here almost every time. However, the sheer volume of resources uploaded to this platform makes it difficult to find mockups that are not of subpar quality.

Features

• Great collection of design assets in one place
• Free resources can be used for personal and commercial projects.
• Wide variety of mockups for every category
• Due to the huge quantity of assets uploaded, quality gets compromised.
• Non-registered users are restricted to downloading only 3 assets per day.
• To use free resources commercially, you need to give attribution to the author.

Mockupworld offers links to high-quality photo-realistic mockups of all kinds – magazines, books, iPhones, MacBooks, fashion, apparel, billboards, and packaging. With the clutter-free aesthetic of the mockups from this site, it becomes very easy to find minimalist mockups to showcase your design. Most of the free mockups on this site are available as downloadable PSD files. In case you don’t have photoshop, you can use the ready-made mockups provided by PlaceIt in your browser, but these require you to buy a subscription for the service.

Features

• High-quality mockups with a minimalist aesthetic
• Good variety of appealing mockups
• Downloading involves being redirected to the site on which the asset is being hosted.
• Free usage license terms vary with respect to the site the assets are hosted on.
• Sometimes broken links are not updated.

Smartmockups is one of the best sites to download ready-made mockups straight from your browser. Much like PlaceIt, this site allows you to upload your image and download the finished mockup without needing to download heavy PSD files. But it has one major advantage over PlaceIt and that is, it offers free download of mockups. It is very easy to customize the mockups on this platform and free users can download the finished mockup as JPG with a high-quality resolution which is good enough for print as well as online use. It offers a wide variety of mockups in every category and was one of the first websites to provide high-quality mask mockups when the pandemic started.

Features

• Ready-made mockups available to download straight from the browser.
• High-resolution mockups suitable for print as well as online usage
• Free users can only download mockups in JPG format without registering. To download mockups in PNG format, users need to register.
• Mockups are easily customizable
• Can be integrated with other platforms like Canva or Figma to view your design on their mockups

ZippyPixels is another great resource for exploring mockups for your design projects. ZippyPixels has a large library of resources in both paid as well free categories. In the freebies section on the site, you can find a great variety of mockups to choose from. However, some of the mockups here are not exactly photo realistic. It requires some deep navigating in the pages to find the good ones. The free mockups available here can be used in personal as well as commercial projects. Downloading mockups involves providing your email address as the download link is sent to your inbox.

Features

• Large collection of good-quality mockups available for free
• Good variety of mockups for all branding applications
• Free resources are available for personal and commercial use
• No attribution is required but is appreciated
• Not all mockups are photo realistic

Unblast is a site dedicated to providing free graphic design assets including mockups, icons, templates, 3D models and vectors. The library of Unblast is carefully selected by their team and offers a collection of beautiful, high-quality assets which are contributed by some of the best designers around the world. In addition to the mockups, the site also features fonts as well as curated color palettes that can be handy for your next project.

Features

• Downloading involves being redirected to the site on which the asset is being hosted
• Free assets need to be checked for a commercial license on their respective sites
• High-quality and aesthetically beautiful mockups
• Templates are available for applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Illustrator, Figma and Sketch
• Great collection of assets with enough variety in all categories

Mr.Mockup provides creative, unique and clean PSD mockups created by an independent team of designers. It is a side project of Noeeko, a creative design studio delivering graphic design and brand identity services. This site features both paid as well as free mockups. You can find the free mockups in the freebies section on the site. Since it is a side project of a design studio, you can rest assured that all their mockups, even free ones, are of high quality. The clean and professional look of the mockups helps your design to stand out.

Features

• High-quality professional PSD mockups made by designers working for a creative studio
• Mockups are available for categories like stationery, magazines, packaging, posters, billboards, fashion, devices, and vehicles
• The site also features font deals at discounted rates
• Free mockups are eligible for personal and commercial use
• No attribution is required but is appreciated

Graphberry is yet another amazing library of free graphic design resources. It features a varied collection of mockups of all categories. Be it packaging, billboards, devices, stationery, or vans, you are bound to find what you are looking for here. The site also has free vectors, UI kits, icon sets, and PSD, HTML and XD templates ready to download. The site has beautiful creative mockups that are perfect for branding projects.

Features

• Free pixel-perfect mockups and design resources
• All the resources are free for personal and commercial use
• Attribution is not required but is appreciated
• Varied collection of mockups for all types of branding projects
• High-quality mockups which help you showcase your design creatively

Mockups-design is a site dedicated to providing premium-quality mockups for free. The mockups are curated by the founder, Andrew, who is a graphic designer himself. The site has beautiful mockups that are even sorted according to their sizes in whichever category possible such as business cards, flyers, brochures, etc. All the mockups can be downloaded as PSD files and many of them contain multiple files with different views for the mockup. With such an arsenal of high-quality mockups, showcasing your design elegantly becomes very easy and flexible.

Features

• Premium quality beautiful mockups available for free download
• Mockups can be downloaded as PSD files
• Mockups are free for personal and commercial use
• Mockups come with different views for a single product

Anthony Boyd Graphics is a website run by the talented 3D designer, Anthony Boyd. The mockups on his site are spectacular. There is a good variety of mockups and there are mockups for smartphones and laptops other than iPhone and MacBook as well, such as Samsung Galaxy and Microsoft Surface Pro. You can also find mockups for branding, packaging, posters, vinyl records, UI showcases, Apparel, TV and much more. Apart from the freebies, there are also premium mockups that are available for purchase.

Features

• Minimalistic, high-quality professional free mockups
• Great collection of free mockups for branding projects
• Free mockups can be used for personal as well as commercial applications
• The site also features free CG 3D texture models

AlienValley is a great place to find premium-quality, minimalistic, unique mockups for free to highlight your latest design project. The free mockups in the freebies section of the site have a great collection of options to choose from but the variety is limited. The mockups are crisp, stylish and cater to most branding applications. Apart from mockups, there are also free fonts, UI kits, icon sets that can come in handy in your daily design work. To download the mockups, you need to provide your email address as the download link will be sent to your inbox.

Features

• Premium-quality unique design mockups for free
• Less variety of mockups with the majority being in packaging, devices, CDs, business cards and stationery.
• All mockups are allowed to be used for personal and commercial purposes
• No attribution is required but is appreciated
• The site also has free fonts, UI kits and icon sets available to download

So, this is my arsenal of free mockup sites to turn towards when I do brand identity projects. Having a handful of them helps to aggregate the shortcomings of individual websites with the positive aspects of the other websites. Also, these sites have resources spread overall branding applications, saving me the time and effort of searching for high-quality mockups on the web for every project. I hope that you have found some new sites in case you already know a few.

Share your favorite mockup websites with us and let us know what you like about them in the comments. We are interested to know if we missed out on any gems to include in our list.