The story
The site was founded in November 2010 in Ulm, Germany, by Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinberger.
Prior to 9 January 2019, Pixabay images were released under the CC0 declaration, which deeds content into the public domain. On that day, it imposed a custom, more restrictive license on all of its content, and changed its license to the "Pixabay License", which prohibits the sale of unaltered copies of the licensed works, or distribution as stock images or wallpapers. As the terms of CC0 explicitly indicate that the surrender into the public domain is "irrevocable" once completed, images that had already been released under CC0 prior to the change in license remain available through various mirrors distributing under the original CC0 declaration.
In November 2018, Pixabay was acquired by the Australian design and publishing platform Canva.
On 17 April 2023, significant changes to Pixabay’s terms of service came into effect. This included the modification of the "Pixabay License" to the "Content License", as well as the reinstatement of the CC0 license, for content uploaded to Pixabay prior to 9 January 2019.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pixabay, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4