Placeholder Resources for Designers & Developers

Last updated: February 2026

Building mockups, prototypes, or templates? You need placeholder content — text, images, data, icons, and video — to make your designs look realistic before the real content is ready. This is a curated guide to the best placeholder resources available, organized by type, so you can find exactly what you need without wading through ads or bloat.

Whether you are a designer filling out a Figma layout, a developer scaffolding a new app, or a product manager putting together a prototype for stakeholders, these tools will save you time and keep your workflow moving.

Placeholder Text

Placeholder text is the foundation of any mockup. It fills your headings, paragraphs, and content blocks with realistic-looking text so you can evaluate layout, typography, and spacing without waiting for final copy.

Placeholder Images

Every design needs images — hero banners, product photos, user avatars, thumbnails. These tools generate placeholder images on demand so you do not need to hunt for stock photos during the wireframing stage.

  1. Placeholder.com — The simplest option for solid-color placeholder images with dimension text. You specify the size directly in the URL (for example, placeholder.com/300x200) and get a gray image with "300x200" printed on it. Supports custom colors, text, and formats. Ideal for wireframes where you just need to indicate where an image goes.
  2. Lorem Picsum — Serves beautiful random photographs sourced from Unsplash. The URL format is straightforward: picsum.photos/300/200 returns a random 300 by 200 photo. You can request specific images by ID, apply grayscale or blur effects, and get consistent results with seed values. Best for designs that need to look polished with real photography.
  3. DummyDash — Our sister tool for generating placeholder images. Create custom placeholder images with specific dimensions, colors, and text labels. Visit DummyDash to generate exactly the placeholders you need for your project.
  4. Placekitten — Returns photos of kittens at any dimension you specify. A lighthearted option that works well for internal demos and team presentations. The adorable subjects make it easy to spot which images are still placeholders.
  5. Placebear — Similar to Placekitten but with bears. Generates bear photos at any specified dimension. Another fun option for internal mockups where you want placeholder images that are obviously temporary.
  6. UI Faces — Provides realistic avatar and face photos specifically designed for user profile placeholders. Essential when designing social features, comment sections, team pages, or any interface that displays user profiles. The faces look authentic, which helps stakeholders visualize the final product.
  7. Lorem Flickr — Serves Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr as placeholder images. You can filter by search term (for example, request only photos of mountains or food) so the placeholder images are contextually relevant to your design. Useful when generic placeholders are not enough to convey the intended content.

Fake Data Generators

Paragraphs of text are the wrong placeholder for tables, forms, dashboards, and databases. These tools generate structured fake data — names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, dates, and more — that looks realistic and follows proper formatting conventions.

  1. Faker.js — The most popular JavaScript library for generating fake data. Produces realistic names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, dates, company names, product descriptions, and dozens of other data types. Works with Node.js on the server and in the browser. Supports localization for over 60 locales, so you can generate data that matches the naming conventions and address formats of any country.
  2. FakerPHP — The PHP equivalent of Faker.js. Generates the same variety of realistic fake data for PHP applications. Widely used with Laravel, Symfony, and other PHP frameworks for seeding development databases with test data. Supports localized data for dozens of countries.
  3. Python Faker — A Python library for generating fake data. Produces names, addresses, text, dates, credit card numbers, job titles, and many other data types. Integrates well with Django, Flask, and data science workflows. Particularly useful for generating large datasets for testing and development with just a few lines of code.
  4. Mockaroo — A web-based tool for generating realistic fake data without writing code. You define your schema (columns and data types) through a visual interface, then download the results as CSV, JSON, SQL, or Excel files. Supports over 150 data types including geographic coordinates, IP addresses, and custom formulas. Great for non-developers or for quickly generating test datasets.
  5. JSON Generator — Generates complex, nested JSON data structures using customizable templates. You define the shape of your data with a template syntax and the tool fills it with realistic values. Useful for front-end developers who need mock API responses or test data that matches a specific JSON schema.

Placeholder Icons & Illustrations

Icons and illustrations bring interfaces to life. During the prototyping phase, these free libraries give you professional-quality visuals without waiting for a custom icon set or hiring an illustrator.

  1. Heroicons — A set of free, MIT-licensed SVG icons created by the Tailwind CSS team. Available in outline and solid styles, with each icon designed on a clean 24x24 grid. Optimized for use in web applications and easily customizable through CSS. One of the most popular icon sets in the modern web development community.
  2. Feather Icons — A collection of simple, beautifully designed open-source icons. Each icon is a single SVG element designed on a 24x24 grid with a consistent 2px stroke width. The minimalist style works well in nearly any design context. Available as individual SVG files, as a web font, and through npm for easy integration.
  3. unDraw — A library of free, open-source SVG illustrations that you can customize with your brand color directly on the website. The illustrations cover common concepts like teamwork, technology, design, and business. Unlike icons, these are full-scene illustrations suitable for hero sections, empty states, and landing pages.
  4. Blush — Offers curated illustration collections from independent artists. The illustrations are composable — you can mix and match characters, backgrounds, and objects to create unique scenes. Useful for mockups that need a more polished, illustrative feel than what generic stock illustrations provide.

Placeholder Videos

Video placeholders are less common in prototypes, but when you are designing a video-heavy interface — a streaming platform, a course page, or a media gallery — you need placeholder video content to test layout and playback behavior.

  1. Coverr — Provides free stock videos that can be used as placeholder content in designs and prototypes. The library includes a wide range of categories including nature, technology, people, and abstract loops. Videos are available in multiple resolutions and can be downloaded without an account.
  2. Pexels Videos — A large library of free video clips contributed by creators worldwide. The videos are high quality and cover diverse subjects, making them suitable as placeholder content for mockups of video players, media galleries, and background video sections. All videos are free to use without attribution.

Complete Mockup Workflow

With the right placeholder resources, you can build a realistic, complete prototype without waiting for any real content. Here is a practical workflow that covers every type of placeholder content you will need:

  1. Start with text — Use Lorem Latin to generate placeholder paragraphs for your headings, body text, and content sections. One click, no ads, instant results.
  2. Add images — Drop in placeholder images for hero banners, product photos, and thumbnails. Use solid-color placeholders for wireframes and photo placeholders for higher-fidelity mockups.
  3. Generate structured data — For tables, user lists, dashboards, and forms, use a Faker library in your language of choice to populate the interface with realistic names, emails, dates, and numbers.
  4. Include icons and illustrations — Pull from an open-source icon library for navigation elements, buttons, and status indicators. Use illustration libraries for empty states and feature sections.

This four-step approach gives you everything needed to build a realistic prototype that stakeholders can evaluate and test — without waiting for copywriters, photographers, or data teams to deliver real content. The prototype looks complete, the layout is tested with realistic content dimensions, and every placeholder is clearly temporary.

Start with placeholder text

Generate Lorem Ipsum — No Ads, One Click

Related Pages