Digital, Tech & Creation

A polished self-hosted AI interface that connects local and cloud models in one place. It's open source and built for people who want control, not landlord software.

A local-first desktop AI app that lets users run models on their own machine or connect external providers. Free and open source, which is refreshing in this economy.

A dead-simple way to run large language models locally with one command. It's a staple for self-hosted AI setups and local experimentation.

A private, local chatbot that runs open models on consumer hardware. Good for offline use, document chat, and people who'd rather keep their data at home.

A document-chat and agent workspace that can run fully local or connect to outside models. Great for turning files, notes, and codebases into searchable assistants.

An open-source chat interface that works with multiple AI providers and local models. Ideal for teams that want a ChatGPT-style front end they actually control.

A private AI framework for chatting with your documents offline and on-prem. Built for folks who want local RAG without handing their files to some cloud goblin.

A docs and knowledge-base assistant for answering questions across files, websites, code, and data sources. The open-source edition is useful for support and internal search.

An open-source workplace search and chat tool that connects to internal apps and documents. Good for teams that want enterprise search without enterprise nonsense.

An AI coding assistant that plugs into popular IDEs and can run against different models. Useful for autocomplete, chat, and repo-aware coding workflows.

A self-hosted AI coding assistant with code completion and chat features. Solid for dev teams that want local-first AI instead of renting every keystroke.

A visual builder for chaining LLMs, tools, memory, and agents into usable apps. Great for people who want drag-and-drop workflows instead of spaghetti scripts.

An open-source platform for building AI apps, workflows, and agents with a friendly UI. Good for prototyping products without rebuilding the plumbing from scratch.

A visual app builder for LLM pipelines and agents, built for rapid prototyping and experimentation. Handy when you want to see the flow instead of just pray it works.

A node-based interface for building image and video generation workflows. Brilliant for power users who want flexible pipelines instead of one-click mystery meat.

An open-source creative studio for running image generation workflows locally. Useful for people who want more control over prompting, inpainting, and model management.

The classic community web UI for running Stable Diffusion locally with a mountain of extensions. Not pretty, but wildly useful.

A flexible local chat front end built for power users, roleplay, and custom model setups. Surprisingly capable once you get past the mildly chaotic vibe.

An open-source tool that lets language models run code and use a computer more directly. Good for automation, data tasks, and controlled agent experiments.

The dominant free code editor with a huge extension ecosystem and built-in git, debugging, and AI integrations. Hard to beat as a default.

A telemetry-free, fully open-source build of VS Code. Same editor, fewer Microsoft strings attached.

A modern, extensible fork of Vim with first-class Lua scripting and a thriving plugin scene. Beloved by terminal devs and dotfile gardeners.

A fast, collaborative code editor written in Rust, with AI features and open-source core. Great for low-latency coding and pairing.

The version control system that runs the whole industry. Free, open source, and very much not optional for builders.

A community-led, self-hosted git forge that's a friendly fork of Gitea. Good for teams that want their own GitHub on their own server.

A lightweight self-hosted git service with issues, pull requests, and CI integrations. Easy to run on cheap hardware.

A non-profit, community-run git hosting platform built on Forgejo. A solid free home for open-source projects.

The kernel that quietly runs servers, phones, and most of the cloud. Distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian make it free and approachable.

A popular, polished Linux distribution suited to desktops, servers, and clouds. Free, well-supported, and a frequent default for devs.

The de facto way to package and run apps in containers. Personal use is free, with paid tiers for larger teams.

A daemonless, rootless container engine that's API-compatible with Docker. A favourite for security-conscious setups.

The open-source orchestration platform that runs containers at scale. Free to use; complexity sold separately.

A lightweight Kubernetes distribution built for edge, IoT, and home labs. All the K8s, less of the YAML pain.

A friendly web UI for managing Docker, Swarm, and Kubernetes environments. The community edition is free and very usable.

A self-hosted productivity suite with files, calendar, contacts, chat, and more. The freedom-loving alternative to Google Workspace.

A local-first markdown notes app with a vibrant plugin ecosystem. Personal use is free and the file format is plain markdown forever.

An open-source outliner and knowledge-base tool that stores notes as plain markdown. Great for daily notes and PKM.

An open-source Notion alternative with docs, databases, and AI features. Free to self-host or use locally.

A knowledge base that combines docs, whiteboards, and databases in one open-source app. Good fit for teams tired of tool sprawl.

An open-source design and prototyping tool that's a real alternative to Figma. Free to use and friendly to self-hosting.

A free hand-drawn-style whiteboard and diagramming tool you can use in the browser or self-host. Perfect for sketches and architecture diagrams.

The classic free and open-source vector graphics editor. Capable of serious illustration, logos, and SVG work.

A long-running free and open-source image editor with plenty of power once you get past the UI quirks. A genuine Photoshop alternative.

A polished free and open-source painting app aimed at digital artists, illustrators, and concept work. Surprisingly pro for free software.

A wildly capable 3D suite for modelling, animation, sculpting, and rendering. Free, open source, and used on real productions.

A free and open-source game engine with 2D and 3D support and a friendly scripting language. A genuine alternative to Unity for indies.

A professional video editor and colourist suite with a remarkably full free edition. Not open source, but free enough to mention.

A veteran free and open-source audio editor for recording, trimming, and cleaning up sound. Great for podcasts and quick edits.

The dominant free and open-source app for streaming and screen recording. Used by basically everyone on Twitch and YouTube.

A free, open-source password manager that's available across every device. Personal use is free; teams can pay or self-host.

A community Rust implementation of the Bitwarden server, designed for personal self-hosting. Lightweight and easy to run.

An open-source identity and access management server with SSO, social login, and OIDC support. Free to self-host for serious auth needs.

A modern web server with automatic HTTPS and a friendly config. A breath of fresh air after years of NGINX YAML wrangling.

The classic high-performance web server, reverse proxy, and load balancer. Free open-source core powers a huge slice of the internet.

The much-loved free and open-source relational database that quietly powers half the cool startups. The grown-up default for new projects.

A tiny, fast, embedded SQL database that ships inside almost everything. Public-domain code; free in every sense.

A community-developed fork of MySQL with active development and friendly licensing. A safe free choice for relational data.

The classic in-memory data store for caching, queues, and realtime features. The open-source core remains free for self-hosting.

A community fork of Redis under a permissive licence, backed by the Linux Foundation. A natural choice if Redis licensing makes you nervous.

An open-source workflow automation tool that's a self-hostable Zapier alternative. Great for builders who want their automations under their own roof.

An open-source automation platform with a friendly UI for connecting apps and APIs. Solid Zapier alternative for self-hosters.

The leading open-source home automation platform with thousands of integrations. Free, local-first, and refreshingly community-owned.

A self-hostable team chat platform that's a real open-source Slack alternative. Great for teams that need control over their messages.

An open-source team and customer messaging platform with chat, voice, and video. Self-host for free or use their cloud.

Free and open-source video conferencing you can use in a browser or self-host. A solid Zoom alternative for casual and serious use.

An open-source web conferencing platform built for online learning and classrooms. Free to self-host for schools, teams, and communities.

The default home for code on the internet, with free public and private repos, Actions minutes, and Pages hosting. Pretty much non-negotiable for builders.

A full DevOps platform with free repos, CI/CD minutes, and built-in issue tracking. Solid alternative for teams that want everything under one roof.

CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, Workers, Pages, R2, and D1 — a huge chunk of which has surprisingly generous free tiers. Borderline mandatory for modern web projects.

Free static site and Jamstack hosting with unlimited bandwidth and git-based deploys. Great for portfolios, docs, and front ends that need to be fast everywhere.

Serverless functions that run at the edge with a generous free tier of daily requests. Useful for APIs, auth glue, and lightweight back ends.

The go-to hosting platform for Next.js and modern front ends, with free deploys, preview URLs, and analytics. Hobby tier covers most personal projects.

Free static and Jamstack hosting with build minutes, forms, functions, and identity baked in. A long-time favourite for fast site launches.

Open-source Firebase alternative with a free tier covering Postgres, auth, storage, realtime, and edge functions. A solid back end for indie and serious projects alike.

Google's app back-end with free auth, Firestore, hosting, and cloud functions on the Spark plan. Handy for prototypes that need to ship yesterday.

Serverless Postgres with branching, autoscaling, and a free tier that's hard to beat for side projects. Great for devs who like real SQL without server babysitting.

A serverless MySQL platform with branching workflows and a free Hobby plan. Useful for teams that want database schema changes without the usual drama.

Edge-hosted SQLite (libSQL) with a generous free tier and global replication. Perfect for low-latency reads and tiny-to-medium apps.

Managed MongoDB with a free 512MB shared cluster that's been the default starter DB for countless side projects. Easy to spin up, easy to scale later.

A friendly platform-as-a-service with free static sites, web services, and Postgres. A solid Heroku-style experience without the Heroku-style pricing.

A modern PaaS that makes deploying apps, workers, and databases almost too easy. Trial credits help you ship before you pay.

Run full apps and databases close to users on a global edge network. The free allowance is enough for small services and useful experiments.

A globally distributed runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript with a generous free tier. Great for serverless APIs without the cold-start sob story.

Free static site hosting straight from any GitHub repo, with custom domains and HTTPS. Bulletproof choice for docs, blogs, and project sites.

Dead-simple static site publishing from the command line, with a free plan that just works. Handy when you need a URL right now.

An open-source back-end-as-a-service with auth, databases, storage, and functions. Self-host for free or use the generous cloud tier.

A single-file open-source back end with database, auth, file storage, and admin UI. Perfect for tiny projects where Supabase feels like overkill.

A serverless data platform that mixes Postgres, search, and analytics with a generous free plan. Aimed at devs who want a database that actually feels modern.

Serverless Redis, Kafka, and Vector with pay-per-request pricing and a real free tier. Useful for queues, caching, and edge-friendly state.

An open-source self-hosted alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Vercel. Great for folks who want PaaS vibes on their own server without the rent.

A tiny self-hosted PaaS that fits in a single VPS and speaks the same git-push deploy language. Lightweight, dependable, and refreshingly boring.

A self-hosted PaaS built on Docker with one-click apps, automated SSL, and a friendly UI. Great for hobbyists running their own server farm.

An in-browser code playground with instant hosting for Node apps and static sites. Brilliant for teaching, demos, and tiny prototypes.

A browser-based IDE with hosting, databases, and AI coding help built in. The free tier is solid for learning, prototyping, and quick demos.

The veteran PaaS for deploying apps in many languages with simple git workflows. The Eco plan brings back a low-cost on-ramp after the great free-tier purge.

Amazon's free tier covers a long list of services including EC2, Lambda, S3, and DynamoDB for limited usage. Useful, sprawling, and slightly intimidating.

Google Cloud's always-free allowances plus trial credits cover Compute Engine, Cloud Run, Firestore, and more. A practical playground for cloud-native builders.

Microsoft Azure's free tier includes always-free services and a credit window for the rest. Worth a look for anyone on the Microsoft stack.

Quietly one of the more generous always-free tiers, including ARM VMs, autonomous databases, and storage. Great for home-lab style projects.

Cheap S3-compatible object storage with 10GB free forever. A no-drama backup and asset store for indie projects.

Image and video hosting with on-the-fly transformations and a generous free plan. A lifesaver for anyone shipping media-heavy apps.

OpenAI's chat assistant for writing, brainstorming, coding, and quick answers. The free tier makes it an easy on-ramp for everyday AI use.

Anthropic's assistant is strong at writing, analysis, and long-document work. There's a free plan, with paid upgrades if users outgrow it.

Google's general-purpose AI assistant for search, writing, summaries, and multimodal tasks. The base version is free for everyday use.

A fast, capable chatbot and reasoning model with broad public access. Handy for coding, drafting, and general Q&A without immediate paywalls.

Alibaba's chat interface for Qwen models offers strong multilingual and coding performance. A useful free option for prompts, drafts, and experiments.

Microsoft's AI assistant covers search, writing help, image generation, and everyday tasks. The standard web experience is free to use.

xAI's chatbot focuses on live-web answers, coding help, and fast back-and-forth chat. Free access exists, though premium tiers unlock more.

An answer engine that mixes web search with AI summaries and citations. The free plan is great for research, fact-finding, and link chasing.

Google's source-grounded notebook tool turns documents into briefs, FAQs, and podcast-style summaries. It's especially good for learning and research.

A giant hub for models, demos, datasets, and AI apps. Free community features make it a goldmine for trying and sharing AI tools.

A free-first AI platform for text, image, audio, and video generation with a simple developer-facing API. Good for scrappy experiments and quick builds.

A popular desktop app for downloading, testing, and chatting with local AI models. Dead simple for people who want offline AI without terminal drama.

A community site for browsing, sharing, and remixing AI prompts and bots. Useful for discovery when users want ideas, not just another blank textbox.

A multi-bot chat app that lets users try different AI models and custom bots in one place. The free tier is limited but still useful for casual testing.

Mistral's chat app powered by their open and commercial models. The free tier is plenty for everyday writing, coding, and brainstorming.

Meta's chat assistant powered by Llama models, available across the web and their apps. Free to use for general tasks and image generation.

Inflection's conversational AI focused on supportive, friendly chat. Free to use for personal reflection, advice, and casual conversation.

Hugging Face's free chat interface for open-source LLMs, with model switching and tools. A great way to try open models without spinning up your own server.

An open-source, polished chat UI that connects to many model providers and plugins. Great when you want a single front end for everything.

A friendly desktop app for running local and cloud AI models side by side. Excellent for power users juggling multiple providers.

An AI-first code editor built on VS Code with chat, edits, and agents. The free tier is genuinely useful before teams pay for more.

Codeium's AI IDE with agentic coding flows, refactors, and chat. Free tier is solid for everyday development.

An in-browser AI app builder that scaffolds, runs, and deploys full-stack projects from a prompt. Free tokens included for tinkering.

Vercel's generative UI tool that turns prompts into React and Tailwind components. The free plan is enough for plenty of design exploration.

An AI app builder that turns plain-language briefs into deployable web apps. Free credits let you take an idea to a working URL fast.

AI coding help built directly into the Replit IDE, with a free plan for casual use. Handy when you want to learn by shipping.

GitHub's free Copilot plan offers limited monthly completions and chat in supported editors. A practical on-ramp before paying for unlimited use.

Sourcegraph's AI coding assistant with repo-aware chat and a free tier. Especially useful on big codebases where context matters.

A developer-focused answer engine that searches, cites, and writes code. Free plan is generous enough for daily use.

An AI search and chat platform with multiple modes and free everyday access. Useful when you want answers plus sources without the noise.

An AI assistant bundled with Kagi's premium search, focused on quality answers from quality sources. Pricing is paid, but worth noting for serious researchers.

A conversational AI search engine that gives direct answers with sources. Free to use and refreshingly free of ad clutter.

A text-to-music generator that produces full songs with vocals from a prompt. The free tier gives daily credits for plenty of experimentation.

Another high-quality AI music generator with a free monthly credit allowance. Handy for jingles, ideas, and full tracks.

An image-generation platform with multiple models, controls, and a daily free token allowance. Aimed at game art, illustration, and design.

Image generation that's particularly good at legible text and typography. Free tier covers plenty of social and design experimentation.

A friendly image generator with a daily free image quota and useful editing tools. Good for casual creators and quick concepts.

AI image generation tuned for vector and brand-style work, with a free monthly allowance. A favourite for icons, illustrations, and clean graphics.

Realtime AI image and video tools with a generous free tier. Great for quickly iterating on visual ideas.

A creative AI suite known for text-to-video and video editing tools. Free credits help newcomers test the waters before subscribing.

AI text-to-video generation with a daily free generation quota. Useful for short clips, ideation, and visual storytelling.

A text-and-image-to-video tool with a friendly UI and free monthly credits. Great for short, shareable clips.

Sketch a UI on a virtual whiteboard and turn it into working code via AI. A delightful free demo of multimodal building.

Excalidraw's free AI features turn text into diagrams and sketches. A useful sidekick for whiteboarding sessions.

Turn written ideas into editable visuals, diagrams, and infographics. Free plan is great for slides, blogs, and explainers.

AI-powered slide, doc, and webpage generation with a free credit allowance. Perfect for fast pitches and decks that don't look like 2007.

Google's browser-based workspace for testing Gemini prompts and building AI features. Free usage is available before teams need paid scale.

A very fast inference platform with free playground access and developer-friendly APIs. Great for low-latency demos and prototype apps.

Model hosting and inference for open-source AI, with chat access and developer APIs. Free credits make it useful for early-stage testing.

A single API that routes requests across many models and providers. Some models are free, which makes it handy for testing without vendor lock-in.

An open-source framework for search, retrieval, RAG, and agent pipelines. It's a workhorse for developers building serious AI back ends.

A high-performance inference engine for serving large language models efficiently. Excellent for developers who need speed, batching, and less GPU heartbreak.

Hugging Face's core library for working with transformer models across NLP, vision, and audio. Basically one of the default toolboxes for AI developers now.

A framework for connecting LLMs to documents, databases, and APIs. Good for building retrieval and agent systems without reinventing half the stack.

A widely used framework and ecosystem for building LLM apps, chains, agents, and evaluation workflows. Useful when projects get more complex than a single prompt box.

A framework for orchestrating multiple AI agents around shared goals and tasks. Good for developers building agent teams instead of one lonely chatbot.

Microsoft's framework for building multi-agent applications and workflows. A solid pick for experiments where agents need to collaborate, hand off, and reason together.

A dead-simple Python tool for turning AI demos into shareable web apps. Perfect for prototypes, internal tools, and model showcases.

The reference API for GPT, embeddings, vision, and audio models. Free trial credits help new devs get to a working prototype quickly.

Direct API access to Claude models for chat, analysis, and long-context tasks. Free trial credits make early integration painless.

Google's API for Gemini models, including multimodal and long-context features. Free quota in AI Studio is generous for prototypes.

Hosted access to Mistral's open and commercial models with a clean API. Free credits and competitive pricing for serious experiments.

An enterprise-friendly NLP API with strong embeddings, rerank, and generation models. A free trial tier helps teams evaluate before they commit.

Run thousands of open-source AI models via a single API with pay-per-second billing and free trial credits. Handy for image, audio, and niche models.

Fast inference API for image, video, and audio models with a developer-first feel. Free credits get you to working media pipelines quickly.

High-performance inference for open-source models with a free playground and trial credits. Useful for low-latency LLM and embedding workloads.

Pay-as-you-go inference for popular open models with simple APIs and free credits to start. A budget-friendly option for production workloads.

Speech-to-text, speaker diarisation, and audio intelligence APIs with free monthly credits. A solid pick for transcription and call analytics.

Streaming and batch speech APIs with strong accuracy and a free starting credit. Great for voice agents and live captioning.

Realistic text-to-speech and voice cloning APIs with a free tier for short-form audio. Widely used for narration, demos, and voice apps.

APIs for Stable Diffusion and related image, video, and audio models. Free trial credits help you put a generative back end together quickly.

Managed vector database for retrieval and RAG with a usable free Starter tier. Common building block for AI search and agents.

Hosted vector database from the open-source Weaviate project, with a free sandbox for getting started. Good fit for hybrid search and RAG.

Managed vector search built on the open-source Qdrant engine, with a free cluster tier. Fast, friendly, and runs anywhere if you outgrow the cloud.

An open-source embedding database for AI apps that runs locally or in the cloud. Easy to drop into LangChain or LlamaIndex stacks.

Serverless GPU and CPU compute for Python with a generous free monthly credit. Great for running AI jobs and background workers without ops drama.

GPU cloud with serverless endpoints and pod rentals, plus free trial credits. Useful for training, inference, and stable-diffusion-style workloads.

A developer-first email API with React Email components and a free monthly send allowance. Pleasant alternative to legacy mail providers.

Twilio's transactional and marketing email platform with a free tier for low-volume senders. A long-standing default for app-generated email.

Reliable transactional email with a free developer plan for small projects. Known for fast delivery and clean dashboards.

SMS, voice, WhatsApp, and verification APIs with free trial credits to build and test. The default toolkit for adding comms to an app.

Payments, subscriptions, and billing APIs that are free to integrate; you only pay per successful charge. Test mode is unlimited and properly featured.

Hosted search APIs with a generous free tier of records and operations. Great when you want fast typo-tolerant search without running your own cluster.

An open-source search engine with a friendly API and a free cloud sandbox. Easy to self-host and surprisingly capable out of the box.

Open-source typo-tolerant search with a hosted cloud and a free trial tier. A solid Algolia alternative for builders watching the budget.

Maps, geocoding, navigation, and tiles APIs with a free monthly allowance for most services. The default for custom-styled web and mobile maps.

Community-built world map data, free to use under open licence. The bedrock under countless apps that don't want to pay rent on the planet.

Drop-in authentication and user management with a friendly free tier. Saves teams weeks compared to rolling auth themselves.

Veteran identity platform with social login, SSO, and a free tier for small apps. Still a sensible default when auth needs to be airtight.

Open-source product analytics, feature flags, and session replay with a generous free cloud tier. Great for builders who want insights without spyware vibes.

Error monitoring and performance tracing for almost every stack, with a free developer tier. Indispensable when production breaks at 2am.

Privacy-friendly, open-source web analytics with a clean dashboard. Self-host for free or use the paid cloud if you'd rather not.

Open-source, self-hostable web analytics with a simple UI and respect for visitors. A solid free alternative to Google Analytics.

Voice AI APIs for building phone agents and voice assistants, with free trial minutes. Useful for builders chasing the voice-first wave.

High-quality stock photos free to use under the Unsplash licence, with attribution appreciated. Huge library covering most subjects.

Free stock photos and videos under the Pexels licence, including a strong library of short clips for social content.

Free photos, illustrations, vectors, videos and music under a permissive licence — useful when you need varied media in one place.

WordPress Foundation search engine for openly licensed images and audio, aggregating Creative Commons works across the web.

Massive repository of freely usable media files (images, sound, video) maintained by the Wikimedia community.

Public domain and openly licensed historical photography contributed by museums and archives worldwide.

Public domain image library — handy for projects where attribution isn't possible.

CC0 stock photos refreshed regularly; no attribution required for personal or commercial use.

Free stock photography from Shopify, geared toward e-commerce and product/lifestyle imagery.

Stylised stock photos with colour palette suggestions for each image — useful for branding.

Quirky, high-resolution free photography you won't find on other stock sites.

Free stock video clips for use on websites and in projects, no sign-up required.

Free stock video, music tracks, sound effects and templates released under the Mixkit licence.

Free stock footage and motion graphics, plus paid premium tier. Strong drone and B-roll selection.

Curated library of free, legally downloadable music for video, podcasts and apps under Creative Commons licences.

Collaborative database of Creative Commons-licensed audio samples, recordings and sound effects.

Community music site for remixes and samples shared under Creative Commons licences.

Free music and sound effects from Google, cleared for use in YouTube videos (and beyond, depending on track).

Open source typography library hosted by Google — drop-in web fonts with no licensing cost.

Hand-picked free fonts licensed for commercial work, plus a useful webfont generator.

Massive directory of free downloadable fonts; check each licence for commercial usage rules.

Curated free fonts for personal and commercial use, well-organised by style.

Open source type foundry releasing high-quality fonts free for any use.

Beautiful hand-crafted SVG icons from the makers of Tailwind CSS, free under MIT.

Community-maintained fork of Feather Icons with a wider library — clean, consistent SVG icons.

Flexible icon family with multiple weights, free under MIT — great for design systems.

Over 5,000 free MIT-licensed SVG icons designed on a 24x24 grid.

The web's iconic icon set — the free tier covers thousands of glyphs across solid, regular and brand styles.

Open source SVG icon library from the Bootstrap team, free for any project.

Google's official icon system used across Android, the web and Material Design — free under Apache 2.0.

Unified API and search for over 150,000 open source icons across hundreds of icon sets.

Huge library of icons and photos covering virtually any concept. Free with attribution; paid for attribution-free use.

Search engine for millions of icons and stickers in multiple formats; free tier requires attribution.

Open source illustration library with recolourable SVGs — no attribution required.

Free customisable illustrations in multiple styles, with animation options.

Hand-drawn, free-to-use sketches released under CC0.

Mix-and-match library of human illustrations to compose your own scenes, free under CC.

Vast library of vectors, photos, PSDs and icons. Free tier with daily download limits and attribution.

Over half a million open-licensed SVG vectors searchable by tag.

Fast colour palette generator and explorer — free tier covers most personal and small project use.

Free colour wheel, palette explorer and accessibility checker from Adobe — no Creative Cloud subscription needed.

AI-trained palette generator that learns your colour preferences and produces infinite combinations.

Free PSD and Sketch mockups for showcasing designs on devices, packaging and stationery.

Browser-based mockup generator with a free tier — drop your design onto realistic device shots.

Free in-browser screenshot beautifier with device mockups and backgrounds.

Generator for SVG backgrounds, blob shapes, gradients and patterns — exports for free.

Drag-and-drop design platform for social posts, presentations, docs and video. The free plan covers most everyday creators.

Collaborative interface design tool. The free Starter plan supports unlimited personal files and three team files.

Online whiteboard from Figma for brainstorming, workshops and diagrams; free tier includes three FigJam files.

Browser-based Photoshop alternative that opens PSD, AI, Sketch and XD files — free, ad-supported.

Online photo editor and design tool with a generous free tier — Pixlr E for advanced edits, Pixlr X for quick ones.

Free vector graphics editor that runs in the browser or as a desktop app.

Browser-based SVG editor with a free web version and paid desktop tier.

Simple open source SVG editor that runs in the browser.

Hollywood-grade non-linear video editor with colour, audio and VFX. The free version is fully featured for most workflows.

Free video editor from ByteDance for desktop, mobile and web — popular for short-form social video.

Open source non-linear video editor based on the MLT framework. Cross-platform and feature-rich.

Free, open source, cross-platform video editor with wide codec support.

Easy-to-use open source video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Open source video transcoder for converting almost any format to modern, widely supported codecs.

Microsoft's browser video editor included with Windows; the free tier is enough for most short videos.

Online video editor with subtitle generation and screen recording. Free tier with watermark.

Edit video and podcasts by editing the transcript. Free plan covers light podcasting work.

Free, open source digital audio workstation for music production — Linux MultiMedia Studio.

Professional open source DAW for recording, editing and mixing audio. Free if built from source.

Full-featured DAW with a generous, fully functional 60-day evaluation and a low-cost personal licence.

Free cloud-based music studio with unlimited projects, collaboration and a built-in social network.

Browser-based music and podcast studio from Spotify; free tier for casual creators.

Free hosting, distribution and analytics for podcasts (formerly Anchor), with monetisation tools.

Beautifully designed Apple-only writing app. The free tier covers single-device markdown notes.

Free in-browser markdown editor with cloud sync to Dropbox, Google Drive and GitHub.

Free web tool that grades your writing for clarity and readability — paste-and-go in the browser.

Open core grammar, style and spelling checker supporting 30+ languages. Strong free tier and self-hosting option.

Spelling, grammar and tone suggestions across the web. The free plan handles everyday writing.

Visual bug reporting tool. Free tier available for small teams.

Open source infinite canvas whiteboard with a polished, fast UI — free to use and self-host.

Online collaborative whiteboard. Free plan includes three editable boards — enough for many small teams.

Visual workspace for flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps and docs. Free tier covers light personal use.

Diagramming tool for flowcharts, network diagrams and more. Free plan limited to three documents.

Completely free diagramming tool you can run in the browser, desktop or self-host. Great Google Drive/OneDrive integration.

Free editor for Mermaid diagram syntax — quick way to generate flowcharts, sequence and ER diagrams from text.

Hosted version of the popular hand-drawn whiteboard. Free tier for personal use; underlying tool is open source.

Open source GUI prototyping tool for desktop, useful for early-stage wireframes.

All-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis and lightweight databases. The personal free plan is generous.

Kanban-style project boards. The free plan covers unlimited cards and up to 10 boards per workspace.

Task and project management for teams up to 10 on the free plan.

All-in-one productivity platform — tasks, docs, goals, time tracking. Free Forever plan.

Cross-platform task manager with natural-language parsing. Free tier handles personal task management.

Task manager with built-in calendar and Pomodoro timer; useful free tier.

Free task and reminder app tightly integrated with Outlook and Microsoft 365.

Free quick-capture notes, lists and reminders, synced across your Google account.

Built-in iCloud notes for Apple devices — surprisingly capable, fully free.

Open source note-taking and to-do app with end-to-end encrypted sync to your own cloud.

Open source, end-to-end encrypted notes app. Free tier is text-only across all devices.

Open source hierarchical note-taking application for personal knowledge bases.

End-to-end encrypted collaborative docs, sheets, slides and whiteboards — free and self-hostable.

Free collaborative documents, spreadsheets and slides for anyone with a Google account.

Free, open source office suite — Writer, Calc, Impress and more. The leading Microsoft Office alternative.

Free open source office suite with strong Microsoft Office compatibility and a self-hostable collaboration server.

Free tier of Zoho's office and collaboration suite for up to five users.

Free booking links for one event type — eliminates email back-and-forth for meetings.

Open source scheduling platform — a Calendly alternative you can self-host.

Free time tracking for individuals and small teams up to five users.

Free unlimited-user time tracker — strong free tier funded by paid upgrades.

Focus timer that grows a virtual tree while you work. Free on Android; paid on iOS.

Free browser-based Pomodoro timer — no sign-up required.

Beautiful free bookmark manager with browser extensions and mobile apps; paid tier adds permanent backups.

Read-later service from Mozilla — save articles for offline reading. Free tier covers most users.

Open source self-hostable read-later service — a privacy-friendly Pocket alternative.

Free end-to-end encrypted messaging from the non-profit Signal Foundation. Open source clients and server.

End-to-end encrypted email from Switzerland. The free plan includes 1GB of storage.

Open source encrypted email service based in Germany. Free plan with 1GB storage.

Free VPN tier from Proton with no data caps and no ads — rare in the VPN free-tier world.

Privacy-focused free browser built by Mullvad and the Tor Project for non-Tor use.

Free browser that routes traffic through the Tor network for anonymous browsing.

Free Chromium-based browser with built-in ad and tracker blocking.

Open source, privacy-respecting browser from Mozilla — completely free.

Hardened, privacy-focused Firefox fork — free and open source.

Free privacy-respecting search engine and browser — no tracking, no profile building.

Free, open source, highly efficient ad and tracker blocker for Firefox and Chromium browsers.

Free, open source local password manager — secure, audited, no cloud dependency.

Free two-factor authentication app with multi-device sync.

Open source 2FA app for Android with encrypted local backups — free.

Free, open source client-side encryption for cloud storage — encrypts files before they sync to Dropbox, Drive, etc.

Free service to check whether your email or password has appeared in known data breaches.

Free community-maintained list of privacy-respecting software and services across categories.

Free email alias service by Proton — protect your real address when signing up to sites.

Open source email alias service with a free tier — alternative to SimpleLogin.

Free voice, video and text chat platform popular with communities, gamers and teams.

Workplace chat platform; the free tier keeps 90 days of messages and most everyday features.

Free video meetings up to 40 minutes for groups, unlimited 1-on-1s.

Free browser-based video meetings up to 60 minutes for groups, included with any Google account.

Free Microsoft Teams tier for personal and small team use — chat, meetings and file sharing.

Free cloud-based messaging app with large groups, channels and a bot platform.

Open source Matrix client for end-to-end encrypted chat — free on the public Matrix network.

Free, open source, peer-to-peer messaging and video calling — no central server.

The free encyclopedia — millions of articles in hundreds of languages, maintained by volunteers.

Free multilingual dictionary project from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Computational knowledge engine. Free web tier answers most maths, science and data questions.

Free library of over 70,000 public-domain ebooks.

Free, beautifully formatted public-domain ebooks, hand-curated and proofread.

Non-profit digital library of millions of free books, films, music, software and web pages (via the Wayback Machine).

Internet Archive project cataloguing every book ever published, with millions available to borrow free.

Free public-domain audiobooks read by volunteers.

Free open-access archive of pre-prints in physics, maths, CS, biology and economics.

Free search engine for academic papers and citations across publishers and repositories.

Free AI-powered academic search from the Allen Institute for AI.

Directory of Open Access Journals — free, peer-reviewed academic articles across disciplines.

Free search of biomedical literature, maintained by the US National Library of Medicine.

Free web frontend for querying OpenStreetMap data — handy for custom geo-extracts.

Free consumer mapping, navigation and street view from Google.

Free, open source offline maps for hikers, cyclists and travellers — based on OpenStreetMap.

Free US government open data portal across thousands of datasets.

Free research, charts and datasets on the world's biggest problems — non-profit funded.

Free public dataset hub used by data scientists worldwide; includes a free notebook environment.

Free hosted catalogue of open datasets, especially strong for ML and NLP.

Free, community-maintained directory of high-quality public datasets across many topics.

Free, ad-supported music streaming with offline limitations — the world's biggest free music tier.

Free ad-supported music streaming via YouTube. Premium adds offline and background play.

Free music streaming and a huge platform for independent artists; basic listening and uploads are free.

Free streaming of artist-uploaded music; pay-what-you-want downloads support creators directly.

Free, ad-supported streaming of movies and TV from Fox.

Free ad-supported live TV channels and on-demand video from Paramount.

Free, ad-supported movie and TV streaming service from Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.

Free streaming of films and documentaries via your public or university library card.

Free movies, music, ebooks and audiobooks via participating libraries.

Free ebooks and audiobooks from your local library via the Libby app.

Free kids' learning and entertainment from the Khan Academy non-profit.

Free multi-currency account; transparent low fees on conversions. The basic account itself is free.

Free standard tier offering multi-currency wallets, stock and crypto, with paid upgrades.

Free, open source personal and small-business accounting software using double-entry bookkeeping.

Open source self-hosted personal finance manager.

Open source local-first envelope budgeting app, free to use and self-host.

Free world-class education in maths, science, economics and more — non-profit funded.

Non-profit offering thousands of hours of free coding curriculum and certifications.

Free MIT course materials covering most of the curriculum — lectures, notes, exams.

University-led courses; audit most for free, pay only if you want a certificate.

MOOC platform founded by Harvard and MIT. Free to audit; certificates are paid.

Free Stanford lectures and materials, including the famous CS229 machine learning course.

Free Harvard courses including CS50 — one of the best introductions to computer science.

Harvard's free intro to computer science — full lectures, problem sets and community support.

Free, open source full-stack web development curriculum maintained by the community.

Interactive coding lessons in the browser. The free plan covers basic courses across many languages.

Free coding practice with mentor feedback across 70+ languages — non-profit.

Coding interview practice platform. Free tier includes hundreds of problems.