Every verdict

LibreOffice

You getThe full suite: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base

SAVES ≈ $100+

Blender

You getModeling, sculpting, rigging, and animation

GIMP

You getLayers, masks, channels, and selection tools

SAVES ≈ $270+

VLC Media Player

You getPlays virtually every audio and video format ever made

OBS Studio

You getUnlimited screen recording and live streaming

VS Code

You getA full code editor with IntelliSense, debugging, and Git integration

Signal

You getEnd-to-end encrypted text, voice, and video

Linux (Ubuntu)

You getA complete operating system — desktop, laptop, or server

Audacity

You getMultitrack recording and editing

SAVES $50

VSCodium

You getThe VS Code editor, built from source without Microsoft's telemetry

7-Zip

You getOpens zip, 7z, rar, tar and most archive formats

SAVES $29

DaVinci Resolve

You getProfessional nonlinear video editing

SAVES $295

Truly Free96

WordPress.org (self-hosted)

You getThe complete WordPress software, GPLv2, free to download

Photopea

You getFull layer-based image editing in the browser

SAVES ≈ $270/year

DreamSite Site Checkup

You getInstant Speed and Security scores for any web address

Free Forever90

Cloudflare

You getGlobal CDN — your site served from the nearest of 300+ data centers

Bitwarden

You getUnlimited passwords in an encrypted vault

$36 value

Netlify

You getReal website hosting with drag-and-drop or Git deploys

Free Forever86

GitHub

You getUnlimited public and private repositories

$7 value

Free Forever86

Discord

You getUnlimited servers, channels, and members

$7 value

Proton VPN

You getUnlimited data — no bandwidth cap

$60 value

Notion

You getUnlimited pages and blocks for personal use

$100+/year value

Canva

You getThe full drag-and-drop editor, no watermark on your designs

$120/year value

You getEnd-to-end encrypted messaging and calls

Microsoft 365 Online

You getWord, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook in the browser

~$70/year value

Google Drive & Gmail

You get15GB of storage shared across Gmail, Drive, and Photos

You getUnlimited messaging and groups up to 200,000 members

Canva Docs

You getA visual document editor with rich media support

~$120/year value

The Old Reader

You getFollow up to 100 feeds in a clean, Google-Reader-style UI

Figma

You getUnlimited personal draft files

$16 value

Google Meet

You get60-minute group meetings (up to 100 people)

NewsBlur

You getRead up to 64 sites with training and filtering

~$36/year value

Free Forever74

Inoreader

You getFollow up to 150 feeds, with ads

~$90/year value

Free Forever72

Feedly

You getFollow up to 100 sources in 3 folders

~$72 value

Free-ish60

Grammarly

You getCore spelling, grammar, and punctuation checking

$144/year value

Zoom

You getUnlimited number of meetings

Slack

You getUnlimited members in a workspace

$7 value

Wix

You getThe full drag-and-drop site builder

Free-ish50

WordPress.com

You getA hosted blog or website with basic themes

$4 value

Free-ish48

Dropbox

You get2GB of synced cloud storage

$120/year value

Free-ish35

LastPass

You getUnlimited passwords on one device type (mobile OR desktop)

~$36/year value

Trap Trial22

Adobe Creative Cloud

You get7 days of full access to the apps in your chosen plan

$55+/month value

Fake Free8

Hola VPN

You getA browser extension that unblocks some sites

Not Free8

NordVPN

You getNothing free — every plan is paid

Business

All business →

PageSpeed Insights

You getPerformance scores for mobile and desktop

Qualys SSL Labs

You getA full TLS/SSL configuration analysis with a letter grade

checkmysite.pro

You getSSL/TLS certificate and encryption checks

SAVES $200

QRCode Monkey

You getUnlimited static QR codes

Truly Free96

Google Business Profile

You getYour business on Google Search and Maps

Unsplash

You getMillions of high-resolution photos

$10+ value

Trello

You getUnlimited cards, lists, and members

HubSpot CRM

You getFull contact and company database with up to a million stored contacts

$15 value

Calendly

You getUnlimited meetings booked through your link

Loom

You getOne-click screen and camera recording

$8 value

Free-ish46

Mailchimp

You getA drag-and-drop email builder and basic templates

Trap Trial22

Squarespace

You getA 14-day trial to build and preview a complete site

$16 value

Trap Trial20

GoDaddy Website Builder

You getA short trial to build and preview a site

Trap Trial18

Adobe Stock Free Trial

You get10 standard stock assets during the 30-day trial — card required

$80 value

Trap Trial18

Shopify

You getA 3-day trial to build a store (card required)

~$39/month value

Fake Free14

QR Code Generator (qr-code-generator.com)

You getStatic QR codes, which genuinely work forever

Fake Free12

"Free" Logo Makers (Looka, Tailor Brands & co.)

You getUnlimited designing, previewing, and tweaking

Streaming

All streaming →

Truly Free99

Jellyfin

You getA full media server for your own films, shows and music

Tubi

You getThousands of licensed movies and shows

SAVES $8

Anchor (Spotify for Podcasters)

You getFree podcast hosting with no episode or storage limits

Pluto TV

You getHundreds of free live channels

SAVES $60+/month

Truly Free92

You getBrowsing all public content without an account

SAVES $6/month

Truly Free90

YouTube

You getThe largest video library ever assembled, no account needed

SAVES $14/month

Free Forever90

Hoopla

You getMovies, TV, audiobooks, ebooks, comics, and music in one app

Free Forever90

Kanopy

You getAcclaimed films, documentaries, and classic cinema

Truly Free90

The Roku Channel

You getFree movies and TV shows with ads

SAVES $8

Free Forever68

Spotify

You getThe full music catalog, with ads

$12/month value

Plex

You getA personal media server for your own files

$50 value

Trap Trial20

Amazon Prime Video

You getA 30-day trial of Prime — card required up front

$140/year value

Not Free5

Crunchyroll

You getNothing on Crunchyroll itself since January 1, 2026

Not Free4

Peacock

You getNothing for a new customer — the free tier is closed to new signups

Not Free3

Netflix

You getNothing — every plan is paid

Not Free3

Disney+

You getNothing — every plan is paid

AI

All ai →

Ollama

You getRun open-weight models locally with one command

SAVES $20/month

Stable Diffusion

You getOpen-weights image generation you run on your own machine

SAVES $10

Hugging Face

You getBrowse a vast hub of open AI models and datasets

DeepSeek

You getFree chat with a frontier-class model, web and app

Perplexity

You getUnlimited standard AI searches with cited sources

NotebookLM

You getUpload your documents and query them with citations

Claude

You getEveryday chat, writing, analysis, and coding help

Free Forever77

Microsoft Copilot

You getThe mainstream assistant free in Windows, Edge, Bing and the app

$240/year value

ChatGPT

You getReal conversations with capable current models

Google Gemini

You getChat with a capable model, tied to your Google account

Free Forever70

Character.AI

You getUnlimited character chat on the free tier

~$120/year value

Free-ish60

Grok

You getA capped free allowance of chat and image generation

Suno

You getFull song generation — vocals, lyrics, arrangement — on daily credits

~$10 value

ElevenLabs

You getBest-in-class text-to-speech on a monthly quota

$5/month value

Not Free2

Midjourney

You getNothing on midjourney.com or Discord

Finance

All finance →

AnnualCreditReport.com

You getFull credit reports from all three bureaus

Truly Free92

IRS Free File

You getGuided federal tax preparation and e-filing, free

SAVES $40

Wave Accounting

You getUnlimited invoicing with online-payment buttons

$30+/month value

FreeTaxUSA

You getFree federal filing for all return types — no income or complexity limit

$39 value

Wealthsimple

You getCommission-free Canadian stock and ETF trades

Credit Karma

You getCredit scores and reports from two bureaus, updated regularly

Cash App

You getFree person-to-person payments

Venmo

You getFree person-to-person payments via bank or debit

Robinhood

You getCommission-free stock, ETF, and options trades

Free Forever75

PayPal

You getFree domestic person-to-person transfers from bank/balance

Free-ish52

H&R Block Free Online

You getFree federal and state for simple returns

$35 value

Free-ish50

Rocket Money

You getA subscription finder that scans linked accounts

Free-ish45

TurboTax Free Edition

You getFederal and state filing for simple Form 1040 returns

$39 value

Fake Free8

"Free Phone" Carrier Deals

You getA new flagship phone, at $0/month net — as long as every condition holds for the full term

$2,735 over 36 mo value

Learning

All learning →

Khan Academy

You getThe full curriculum: math K through calculus, science, economics, history

freeCodeCamp

You getThousands of hours of coding curriculum

SAVES $10,000+

Wikipedia

You getThe largest encyclopedia ever created, in 300+ languages

SAVES $0

MIT OpenCourseWare

You getLecture videos, notes, and exams from thousands of MIT courses

CS50 (Harvard)

You getEvery lecture, in full production quality

Google Digital Garage

You getCourses on digital marketing, data analytics, AI, and career skills

SAVES $200

Anki

You getThe full desktop app on Windows, macOS and Linux

Coursera

You getFull video lectures on many courses via 'audit' mode

$49+ value

edX

You getAudit-track access to lectures and materials on many courses

$50 value

Codecademy

You getA set of genuinely free beginner courses (Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS and more)

Free-ish52

Duolingo

You getAll course content in every language

Free-ish40

Udemy

You getThousands of free courses across many topics

Trap Trial25

LinkedIn Learning

You getA one-month trial of the full library — card required

Trap Trial20

Skillshare

You getNothing without entering a card — the 'free' is a trial of the full library

$100+/year value

Data & APIs

All data & apis →

Wikidata & Wikimedia dumps

You getThe full Wikidata graph as downloadable JSON and RDF

data.gov

You getHundreds of thousands of federal, state and local datasets

OpenAlex

You getMetadata for hundreds of millions of scholarly works, authors and institutions

Truly Free96

OpenStreetMap

You getThe entire world map as downloadable data (planet file and regional extracts)

Common Crawl

You getPetabytes of crawled web pages, updated monthly

Truly Free94

Open-Meteo

You getWeather forecasts and historical data with no API key at all

Hugging Face Datasets

You getHundreds of thousands of public datasets, downloadable

Supabase

You getA real hosted Postgres database with an auto-generated API

$15 value

Firebase

You getThe Spark plan: a hosted database, authentication and hosting at small scale

Free-ish52

Reddit API

You getRate-limited API access for non-commercial projects

Free-ish44

Google Maps Platform

You getA monthly free allowance per service — commonly 10,000 calls on the core APIs

Not Free4

X (Twitter) API

You getNothing for new developers

Earn

All earn →

Prolific

You getPaid research studies from universities and companies

PAYS YOU $8–15/hr

Respondent.io

You getPaid research interviews and surveys, typically $75–300+

PAYS YOU $75–300/study

UserTesting

You getPaid website and app testing sessions

PAYS YOU $4–10/test

Truly Free93

Remote OK

You getBrowse every remote job listing — no account, no card

PAYS YOU ~$60/year

Indeed

You getSearch and apply to millions of job postings

PAYS YOU $0

PAYS YOU You set the price

Fiverr

You getFree to list and sell services worldwide

PAYS YOU You set the price

LinkedIn Jobs

You getJob search, applications, and networking on the free tier

PAYS YOU ~$360/year

Free Forever72

Etsy

You getOpening a shop and listing products (at $0.20/listing)

Free-ish60

Swagbucks

You getSurveys, video watching, shopping cashback, and search rewards

PAYS $2–6/hr

Not Free8

FlexJobs

You getNothing without paying — browsing previews only

COSTS YOU

Fake Free5

"Make Money Online" Courses

You getA sales pitch disguised as free value (webinar, masterclass, PDF)

COSTS YOU

Fake Free3

MLMs / Network Marketing

You getA sales pitch about 'being your own boss'

COSTS YOU

Books

All books →

Sefaria

You getTanach, Talmud, Midrash, and thousands of connected texts

Project Gutenberg

You getOver 70,000 classic books

SAVES $0

Standard Ebooks

You getBeautifully typeset, carefully proofed classic editions

SAVES $10

The Rebbe's Letters

You getA clean reader's portal into the Rebbe's Igros Kodesh

SAVES $0

Internet Archive

You getMillions of public-domain books, films, concerts and recordings

Beis Moshiach

You getThe weekly magazine's content, open in the browser

Free Forever92

Libby

You getCurrent bestsellers as ebooks and audiobooks

$30 value

Open Library

You getBorrow scanned books with a free account

Trap Trial25

Audible

You getA 30-day trial with a book credit — card required

~$15 value

Trap Trial18

Kindle Unlimited

You getA 30-day trial of the full catalog — card required

$12/month value

Leisure

All leisure →

Free Community Events (Library, Parks & Rec)

You getAuthor talks, concerts, film nights, and workshops — free

Free Museum Days

You getSmithsonian museums — free every day, always

SAVES $60

Eventbrite (free events)

You getBrowsing and filtering thousands of free local events

Free-ish70

Meetup (free events)

You getJoining unlimited groups and RSVPing free

~$150/yr membership value

House Sitting & Home Exchange

You getFree accommodation worldwide in exchange for pet/house sitting

Groupon

You getGenuine 30–56% discounts on local services you'd buy anyway

Free-ish30

Timeshare 'Free Stay' Presentations

You getThe free nights or resort stay, if you attend the presentation

$200 value

Fake Free2

"Free Vacation" Prizes & Sweepstakes

You getNothing. There is no vacation.

Reviews

All reviews →

$200+/mo (business) value

Google Reviews

You getReading every review without an account

Free Forever72

Trustpilot

You getReading all 300+ million reviews, no account needed

Free Forever70

Yelp

You getReading all reviews free, no account

Glassdoor

You getCompany reviews, salary ranges, and interview questions — the workplace transparency standard