| Metric | Live Badge |
|---|---|
| 🏆 GitHub Stars | |
| 🍴 Total Forks | |
| 👥 Followers | |
| 📦 Public Repos |
Auto-updates via GitHub API pins — star what matters, it surfaces here.
Why pay? Every tool below is free, open-source, or has a killer free tier.
| Tool | What it beats | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Figma (free tier) | Adobe XD, Sketch | figma.com |
| Penpot | Figma (fully open source) | penpot.app |
| Spline | Cinema 4D for web 3D | spline.design |
| Coolors | Adobe Color | coolors.co |
| Google Fonts | Typekit/Adobe Fonts | fonts.google.com |
| Tool | What it beats | Link |
|---|---|---|
| VS Code | JetBrains IDEs (for most tasks) | code.visualstudio.com |
| Gitpod | Local dev environment | gitpod.io |
| Railway (free tier) | Heroku | railway.app |
| Vercel | Netlify Pro | vercel.com |
| Supabase | Firebase | supabase.com |
| PlanetScale | AWS RDS | planetscale.com |
| Cloudflare Workers | AWS Lambda | workers.cloudflare.com |
| Tool | What it beats | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Notion (personal free) | Confluence | notion.so |
| Obsidian | Roam Research, Notion | obsidian.md |
| LibreOffice | Microsoft Office | libreoffice.org |
| Joplin | Evernote | joplinapp.org |
| Tool | What it beats | Link |
|---|---|---|
| DaVinci Resolve | Premiere Pro, Final Cut | blackmagicdesign.com |
| GIMP | Photoshop | gimp.org |
| Inkscape | Illustrator | inkscape.org |
| Kdenlive | iMovie, Premiere | kdenlive.org |
| Audacity | Adobe Audition | audacityteam.org |
| OBS Studio | Camtasia | obsproject.com |
| Tool | What it beats | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Bitwarden | LastPass, 1Password | bitwarden.com |
| ProtonMail | Gmail (privacy) | proton.me |
| Signal | WhatsApp, Telegram | signal.org |
| uBlock Origin | Paid ad blockers | ublockorigin.com |
| Tool | What it beats | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Claude.ai (free) | ChatGPT Plus | claude.ai |
| Perplexity (free) | Copilot, Gemini | perplexity.ai |
| Mistral (free API) | OpenAI API | mistral.ai |
| Hugging Face | AWS AI services | huggingface.co |
| Stable Diffusion | Midjourney, DALL·E | stability.ai |
🌐 Deploy a Free Website (5 min)
# 1. Create repo named: yourusername.github.io
# 2. Clone it
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/yourusername.github.io
# 3. Drop your index.html in
# 4. Push
git add . && git commit -m "launch" && git push
# Done. Live at https://yourusername.github.io🗃️ Free Database Setup (Supabase)
// Install: npm install @supabase/supabase-js
import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js'
const supabase = createClient('YOUR_URL', 'YOUR_ANON_KEY')
// Query
const { data } = await supabase.from('table').select('*')⚡ Cloudflare Worker (Free Serverless)
// Free: 100k requests/day — no credit card needed
export default {
async fetch(request) {
return new Response(JSON.stringify({ status: 'alive' }), {
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }
})
}
}🔧 VS Code Must-Have Extensions
- Prettier (formatting)
- ESLint (linting)
- GitLens (git superpowers)
- Thunder Client (free Postman replacement)
- Path Intellisense (autocomplete paths)
- GitHub Copilot (free for students)
- Live Server (instant local server)