Great Software That Costs Nothing

A full, free office suite with Writer (documents), Calc (spreadsheets), and Impress (presentations). Opens and saves Microsoft Office files.

A free online office suite that runs in your web browser. Real-time collaboration with other people and automatic saving to Google Drive.

An office suite with strong Microsoft Office compatibility. Works as a desktop app or in your browser with optional cloud storage.

A long-standing free office suite with word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases. Fully open-source.

A free tier for personal use with mail, writer, sheet, show, and team chat. Web-based with mobile apps.

A flexible note-taking and productivity app that combines documents, wikis, databases, and task lists. Generous free plan for personal use.

A powerful note-taking app that saves your notes as plain text files on your own computer. Free for personal use.

A free, open-source note-taking and to-do app. Supports Markdown, syncs across devices, and keeps your notes encrypted.

A professional-grade photo editor with layers, masks, filters, and advanced retouching. Edits the same file formats as Photoshop.

Digital painting software designed for illustrators and comic artists. Huge brush library, pressure-sensitive tablet support, and animation tools.

A professional vector graphics editor for logos, icons, diagrams, and illustrations. Works with the same SVG files designers use everywhere.

A full 3D creation suite for modeling, animation, rendering, and video editing. Used in real movies and games — completely free.

A non-destructive photo editor and RAW developer for photographers. Manages your whole photo library and edits in high quality.

A browser-based design tool with thousands of free templates for social posts, flyers, presentations, and more. Free plan covers most everyday needs.

A simple, fast photo editor for Windows with layers, effects, and unlimited undo. Sits between MS Paint and Photoshop.

A secure password manager that works on every device. Free plan includes unlimited passwords and syncing across all your devices.

An offline password manager that stores your passwords in an encrypted file on your own computer. No cloud required.

End-to-end encrypted email from Switzerland. Free plan includes 1 GB storage and no ads. Mobile apps available.

A free, encrypted messaging app for text, voice, and video calls. The gold standard for private messaging — recommended by security experts.

The antivirus built into every modern copy of Windows. Real-time protection, firewall, and web filtering — already installed, just keep it on.

A free on-demand scanner that finds and removes malware, adware, and unwanted programs other tools miss. Good as a second opinion.

A browser that routes your traffic through multiple servers to protect your anonymity. Used by journalists, activists, and anyone needing privacy.

One of the only free VPNs with unlimited data and no ads. Servers in three countries on the free plan, with strong privacy protections.

Plays virtually any video or audio file, including DVDs, Blu-rays, and network streams. No codec packs needed — it just works.

Professional screen recording and live streaming software used by the biggest streamers on Twitch and YouTube. Free forever.

A Hollywood-grade video editor used on real blockbuster films. Color grading, audio post, and visual effects all in one app.

A multi-track audio editor and recorder for podcasts, music, and voiceovers. Simple to start with but powerful enough for pro work.

A free video converter for resizing, compressing, and converting videos between formats. Great for shrinking large video files.

A powerful non-linear video editor with multi-track editing, transitions, and effects. A good fit for YouTube creators on any budget.

A fast, privacy-focused web browser made by Mozilla, a nonprofit. Built-in tracking protection and thousands of extensions.

A Chrome-based browser with a built-in ad blocker and privacy features turned on by default. Loads pages faster by blocking trackers.

A hardened version of Firefox with maximum privacy settings out of the box. For people who want Firefox with stronger defaults.

A free file archiver that opens and creates ZIP, RAR, 7Z, and dozens of other compressed file formats. A must-have Windows tool.

Warms your screen color in the evening to match the light around you, reducing eye strain and making it easier to sleep.

A super-fast file search tool for Windows that indexes your entire drive in seconds. Finds any file as you type.

Free window management for macOS. Snap windows to halves, quarters, and thirds of your screen with keyboard shortcuts.

A free suite of power-user utilities from Microsoft — window snapping, color picker, file renamer, image resizer, and more.

A clipboard manager for Windows that remembers everything you copy. Search your clipboard history and paste older items anytime.

Free high-quality video courses on math, science, history, economics, and more — from kindergarten through college level. A nonprofit.

A flashcard app that uses spaced repetition — the best-proven method for memorizing anything. Free on most platforms.

Free language learning in short daily lessons covering 40+ languages. Mobile apps and a free tier with ads.

The largest free encyclopedia ever built — 6 million+ articles in English alone. Written and maintained by volunteers worldwide.