Due to the big success of my icon-list in September I decided to look for more advantageous links for you. Here are the most interesting icon resources. You can use these sets both for commercial and private projects (as they say in their disclosures) – but to be on the safe side: check their license agreements again. Did you stumble upon a site which offers icons for commercial and private use not listed here? Feel free to publish it in your comment. After checking it will be incorporated with the next update.
If you like this list I would be happy if you share with your friends or digg this article.
- Iconbuffet – the community site with a lot of very creative, cutting-edge icon sets, (150 free sets now and growing every week). Every set is delivered in gif, tiff, png, bmp, icn & ico format to be used in any OS and application. Definitely my first visit every day! All of them usable for commercial projects and for private pleasure.

- Silk Set – the famous and ubiquitously used set from Marc James is still one of the best (over 700 icons).

- Vikiworks the site of Yichi, a chinese designer from Beijing, presents a very elegant set of social bookmark icons.

- Horizon Foundation is the name of a free to use icon set from Clevericons. The format range goes up to 256 pixels and the set includes the states Normal, Hot and Disabled. Sad that it is delivered only as a Windows-exe – so Mac-unfriendly.
- Ian Main from e-lusion gives away 40 greyscale icons.

- DaPino (redirected to his main page, see comment) delivers 400 sweet 10×10 and 16×16 pixel icons free for commercial use in png format.

- Stylishlabs provides us with a new set of RSS icons. 1 standard web 2.0 style and 4 avant garde style. Well: Des goûts et des couleurs on ne discute pas.

- UserInterfaceIcons, the site of Abdylas Tynyshov provides a set of 140 very nicely designed icons for all purposes. All in png and 4 sizes.

- The italian designer Sonia Anepeta shows a set of quite unusual social bookmarking icons on her site Webfruits.

- Techlogica has icon from 16×16 up to 48×48 – not quite the modern style – but free.
- The Minimalist Pixel Icon Set from nclud’s website consists of 26 tiny icons in grey – very stylish.

- Mint Set same author Marc James as with FamFam, different set- just marvellous.

- Tango Project – a huge resource for beautiful icons – for almost anything you can think of.

- The Iconmaster – artistic and fun.Take a look especially at Mondrian!

- The Notebook iconset from Manuela Hoffmann is a true hit.Very special!

- Toolbar Icons from Matt Ball. Highly recommendable.

- Everaldo Coelho produced a beautiful KDE Crystal Clear Set.Wonderful, not only for KDE…

- My fellow countrymen, the widely known Bartelme, shares a beauiful shopping cart icon with the world.
- Deziner Folio delivered the free Aqua Gloss Set for private and commercial projects.

- Web 2.0 Buttons 3D-style you’ll find on Utom Box for free download and usage.

- Liquidicity gives you 165 free to use vector icons – so you can alter them in Illustrator for your needs – handy!

- InterfaceLift provides the fanatic with some nice icons (searchable for platform and other parameters) below a sample from the blessed icon designer Dirceu Veiga – see also FastIcon link below…

- Sweetie is a nifty and as the name suggests sweet set of 182 icons in the base set and 37 icons in the web-communication set.

- Iconshock is the right place for all Vista icon freaks. Sign up for free and exchange with your buddies. You can use them in commercial and private projects. Some are even downloadable in vector format.
- BrandSpankingNew: 113 10 x 10 greyscale icons ideal for using in a blog
- DocType icons: same source as above gives you 42 free icons 16 x 16 pixels.
- Drunkey Love: iconset of over 100 icons in png 16 x 16, still growing…
- Graphic Push: they give away a teaser icon set for bloggers free for private and commercial use and some file and developer icons.
- mIcons: some cute little icons free to use from Björn Seibert – 9 sets of them.
- nDesign Mini icons: free to use up to 10 different per site – use more: linkback or pay…
- Sanscons: a small spinoff of the Bitcons icon set that allows for CSS-based coloring and framing.
- Fasticon: gives away some Web 2.0 styled Social Bookmarks Icons. And not only that! As the icons are special I provide you with 2 preview panes…


- VistaIcons: supplies you with 12 iPhone inspired icons for free.
- Danish Royalty Free Icons: from one of the masters, Jona Rask come these beautiful 96 icons free for commercial and private use (you have to scroll to the bottom of his Startpage).
- Looking for some parrots? Find them as a free icon set here. Provided by Maria Rodriguez.
- A small set of control icons in 3 sizes and 4 different colors by Marko Vidberg.
- A cute little set of icons – Nuvola – by David Vignoni licensed under LGPL.
Found another source with nice icons free to use both commercially and personal? Drop a comment here.
Tags: favourite sites, freebies, icons, resources














great list! seems to be a hack of work to find them…
This post is very useful information for me..thanks you o much..
Great list, thanks very much for that!
Just as a heads-up: the DaPino icons seem to be gone.
The link leads to a page-not-found
http://www.dapino-webdesign.nl/blog/?p=148
@Vikingread
Thx for the comment – he is moving his content to another site. Meanwhile I redirected to his main page
If you could help me, you may save my life! Hehe, in the top icon buffet icon set, there is an icon of a spy, would you be able to tell me which set it is from? I REALLY need it for a project! Thanks
@carly: you’ve got mail
Great icons resources, Can you add my free icons site to your list
http://www.freeiconsdownload.com
Free Icon Download Offers Over 230 High Quality Royalty Free icons Set.
Regards.
@previous poster: sorry, but as you might have read, I list icons which are free for commercial use. You have a list on your site of icons mainly for personal use.
I love these icons..They are just amazing and really cool
What a fantastic resource!
I don’t think you have this one listed: http://yellowicon.com
and it’s link site: http://iconbase.com
This one is good: http://www.icondrawer.com
The excellent Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/06/35-really-incredible-free-icon-sets/
I’ll leave you to pick out the best from their extensive list!
Cheers
SooBrett (IB member)
@ sue: iconbase has wonderful icons – alas they are not for commercial use. Smashing Magazine is a good resource indeed… I frequently visit their site.
You might be interested in http://iconfu.com/ – over 9000 creative-commons-licensed icons (ie, free, and mostly ok for commercial use), along with a simple icon editor, so if the icon library doesn’t have exactly what you want, you can adjust an existing icon or make a new one from scratch.
awesome list btw, it must have taken some serious research. I will be exploring some of your links further.
cheers -
@conan: interesting concept – thx for your link.
Some more good free icons are available at:
http://www.glyfx.com/products/free.html
There are also commercial XP & Vista / Aero icon sets available.
Matt
Hi guys i like to share with you something, recently i came to know one new website through my friend there are loads of free high quality icons to download. Really amazing collections from them. Just go and grab it.. The website is http://www.icongab.com. Hope u all will like it…………….
Cheers…………..