Free B-Roll Finder

B-roll hunting is the slowest part of editing: open five stock sites, type the same query into each, scrub through watermarked previews, repeat. This finder searches a curated index of free HD footage and lets you preview the actual clip on hover — no clicking into detail pages to see if a thumbnail moves the way you hoped.

Every result is licensed for free commercial use, so the clips are safe for monetized YouTube videos, client projects, and ads. Search in landscape for YouTube or portrait for Shorts, TikTok, and Reels — whether you need nature, city, tech, finance, or gym footage, it is one search away.

If you are gathering clips for a narrated video, there is a faster path: paste your script into Broller and it finds matching B-roll for every line automatically — the same search, run once per scene, with an AI voiceover and captions on top.

Search queries that find cinematic footage

Stock search rewards specificity in a particular grammar: subject + shot type + atmosphere. These worked examples show the difference for common creator needs:

• Need: "success/ambition" → search "city skyline sunrise aerial" or "businessman walking slow motion" — not "success".
• Need: "stress/burnout" → search "man rubbing eyes desk laptop night" — emotions are found through physical behavior, not emotion words.
• Need: "money/finance" → search "counting cash close up" or "stock chart screen macro" for literal shots; "chess pieces macro" for strategy metaphors.
• Need: "health/fitness" → search "running shoes pavement close up" or "kettlebell chalk slow motion" — equipment detail shots cut better than generic gym-wide shots.
• Need: transitions/breathing room → search "clouds time lapse", "traffic light bokeh night", "coffee pour macro" — neutral connective tissue every edit needs.

Building a reusable B-roll library

Downloading clips per-video is the slow way to work. Channels that publish weekly maintain a small standing library organized by narrative function rather than subject: openers (high-energy establishing shots), evidence (subject-specific literal footage), mood (emotional close-ups), and connectors (neutral transitions). Twenty clips per category covers most narrated videos in a niche, and refreshing five clips a month keeps the channel from visually repeating itself.

The same logic is what Broller automates: when it assembles a video from a script, it is effectively running this finder once per scene with the narrative function inferred from each line — which is why a script written in concrete visual language (see the faceless script generator) produces a near-final edit on the first pass.