Can You Use Wikimedia Commons Images on YouTube?

The short answer

• Yes, if the image's license allows commercial use and changes. Files marked public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA do; each image has its own license.
• Credit each image with TASL: Title, Author, Source, License. Creative Commons recommends “that the attribution include the Title, Author, Source, and License”.
• Put the credits in the description. An on-screen credit, such as an end card, is optional extra.
• A license lets you use the image. It does not decide whether the video earns money: YouTube decides that under its own policies.

Images on Wikipedia

Wikipedia's text is under CC BY-SA, but each image has its own license. Wikipedia's reuse policy: “Each media file has its own licensing statement which must be verified, and reuse of any media file must comply with its licensing.”

Click the image in an article until you reach its File: page. If that page marks it as a file from Wikimedia Commons, the file lives on Commons and everything below applies.

If it does not, the file is stored on Wikipedia itself; read its license box. Some of these files are free. Others are non-free images that Wikipedia uses under U.S. fair use, a reason tied to Wikipedia's own use. The same policy: “Remember what is fair use for Wikipedia may not be considered a fair use for your intended use of the content in another context.” This guide treats non-free files as not usable.

The licenses you will see on Commons

ShareAlike raises the hardest question. If you change the photo itself, the careful reading is that your changed version of that photo is shared under CC BY-SA. Whether a whole video built around an unchanged photo counts as an adaptation, the Creative Commons FAQ answers only in general terms: whether a modification counts as an adaptation “depends primarily on the applicable copyright law.”

Why NC and ND are a problem on YouTube

NonCommercial (NC): “You may not use the material for commercial purposes.” The FAQ says NC licenses prohibit uses that are “primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation.” A video that runs ads is hard to describe as anything else.

NoDerivatives (ND): “If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.” Editing for video often means cropping, zooming, color correction or text over the image. Whether a given edit counts as an adaptation depends on copyright law (see the FAQ above), and ND leaves you no room if it does.

Wikimedia Commons itself says: “Unless also licensed under an acceptable free license, non-commercial and/or non-derivative content cannot be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.” So if a Commons file shows NC or ND, look for the free license next to it and use the file under that one. If you found an NC or ND file somewhere else (a photo-sharing site, a museum), that site's terms apply.

How to read a Commons file page

• Summary. Description, date, source and author. The author is the name you credit, as the page gives it: the license text quoted on Commons: Credit line asks for “the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied”.
• Licensing. One or more license boxes. Commons: “Each media file has its licensing specified on its file description page.”
• The author's own instructions. Some authors say how they want to be credited. Commons: Credit line: “Those requests must be honored, as long as they fall within what is required by the license”.
• The reuse buttons. Commons has a reuse tool for “downloading and creating attribution statements (credit lines)”. “The tool creates buttons above an image (if you're logged in), or to the top right (if not).” Treat its output as a draft and check it against the page.

The responsibility stays with you. In Commons' words, “it is the responsibility of reusers to ensure that the use of the media is according to the license and violates no applicable law.”

Are public domain images on Commons free everywhere?

Commons accepts a public domain file when it is “in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work”. Your own country may count differently, and a YouTube video is watched everywhere.

Many old photographs carry the PD-US-expired tag: “This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1931.” The template moves that date forward by a year every January, so read the current wording on the file page. That is a U.S. rule. The same template adds: “If the work is not a U.S. work, the file must have an additional copyright tag indicating the copyright status in the source country.” Read both. If a file only has a U.S. tag, treat its status elsewhere as unknown.

Looking beyond Commons? Public Domain Images for YouTube: Where to Find Them covers The Met, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Internet Archive.

How to write the credit, step by step

1. Open the file page, not the image. On Wikipedia, click the image until you reach its File: page; on Commons, open the File: page. The license, author and source are written there, not in the image itself.
2. Read the Licensing section. Find the license template under Licensing. Public domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA all allow commercial use; check what each one requires (see the table above).
3. Copy the four TASL facts. Write down the Title, the Author as the file page names them, the Source (a link to the File: page) and the License (its name and a link to the license).
4. Note what you changed. If you cropped, recolored or otherwise changed the image, say so. CC licenses ask you to indicate changes.
5. Put the credit in the description. Paste one line per image into the video description. If you also want the credits on screen, an end card works.

The format

Creative Commons' own example of a good credit: “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by Timothy Vollmer is licensed under CC BY 4.0, with the title linked to the source and the license name linked to the license. In a description box, where links are plain text, write the addresses out:

Image credits
1. "[File title]" by [Author], via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:[file name]
   License: CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ (cropped)
2. "[File title]" by [Author], via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:[file name]
   License: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
3. "[File title]", via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:[file name]
   Public domain

Replace the brackets with what the file page says, or let the generator below fill them in. The license name alone is not enough for CC BY and CC BY-SA: the deed asks you to “provide a link to the license”.

Where the credit goes is flexible. Creative Commons' attribution guide quotes the licenses: “You may satisfy the attribution requirement in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means and context in which the Licensed Material is used.” The guide has no separate rule for photos in a video. Its nearest example is music in a video, which “can be attributed within the audio/video, and in the description text of the audio/video.” For photos, this guide puts the credit in the description; an end card is your choice.

Image credit generator for Wikimedia Commons

Paste links to Commons or Wikipedia file pages, one per line. The generator reads each file's author and license from Wikimedia Commons and writes the attribution in the format above. Files whose license this guide treats as a problem are left out, with the reason.

Runs in your browser: the file names go to the public Wikimedia Commons API, not to Vidcapp. Commons reports one license per file; when a page lists several, the line uses that one. Check each line against its file page.

Wikimedia Commons and YouTube monetization

A Creative Commons license answers one question: may you use this image. Whether the video earns money is a different question, answered by YouTube.

• YouTube's channel monetization policies cover reused content, and say: “This policy applies even if you have permission from the original creator.” Reused content is allowed “if viewers can tell that there's a meaningful difference between the original video and your video.”
• In an update dated July 15, 2025, the same page renamed “repetitious content” to “inauthentic content”. Two of its examples of what cannot be monetized: “Image slideshows, templated storylines, or scrolling text with minimal or no narrative, commentary, or educational value” and “AI-generated content made with generic or unoriginal templates giving the impression of mass production without adding the creator's original, authentic insights or perspective”.
• Credit is not a substitute for permission. YouTube's fair use page says giving credit “won't by itself turn a non-transformative copy of their material into fair use”, and that “no infringement intended” won't automatically protect you.

So the license and the credit keep the image use clean. They do not make a channel eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, and no tool or credit line can promise that.

What a license does not cover

CC licenses deal with copyright. The CC BY-SA deed notes that “other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material”, and the CC0 deed says “In no way are the patent or trademark rights of any person affected by CC0”. A photograph of a living person or a brand logo can raise questions the license does not answer.

What Vidcapp does with this

Vidcapp turns a script into a narrated video built from real archive photos, many of them from Wikimedia Commons. It only uses Commons files whose license reads as public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA; files marked non-commercial, no-derivatives, non-free or fair use are skipped. When the video is finished, its page shows a credit list with a Copy button, labeled “Required credits” when a line names Wikimedia Commons or Creative Commons:

Footage & images:
• Photo: [Author] / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Photo: [Author] / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
• [Creator] / Pexels

Each Commons line gives the author, source and license name, but not the file title or links, so it is not a full TASL credit. A Pexels line gives the creator's name. The list does not say that photos are cropped or zoomed to fit the frame. Identical lines are merged.

Sources

• Creative Commons: Recommended practices for attribution
• Creative Commons: Frequently asked questions
• CC BY 4.0 deed · CC BY-SA 4.0 deed · CC BY-NC 4.0 deed · CC BY-ND 4.0 deed · CC0 1.0 deed
• Wikipedia: Reusing Wikipedia content
• Wikimedia Commons: Licensing
• Wikimedia Commons: Reusing content outside Wikimedia
• Wikimedia Commons: Credit line
• Wikimedia Commons: Template PD-US-expired
• YouTube Help: Channel monetization policies
• YouTube Help: Fair use on YouTube

Sources read on 18 October 2026. Policies change; the linked pages are the authority, not this one.