Every Developer (or Non-Developer) Needs These Free Tools — I Use Them Daily

Every developer (and most non-developers) needs these free tools

I have been running a small software consulting business for eight years. Before that, I worked inside larger companies. Across both, the list of tools I actually use on a given day is shorter than the list of tools I have tried. This post is the short list. They are all free. None of them are particularly new. All of them have saved me time this year.

The non-developer part of the title is real. Half of these tools are not for writing code. They are for the other half of running a business, which is the half that does not get a commit history.

Tools I use every day

These are the tools that are open in a window right now as I write this. The list is short because the list is honest.

• A real terminal. Not the one in VS Code. A separate terminal app, configured with my preferred font, my preferred color scheme, and my preferred keybindings. The reason it is separate is so my terminal state survives across editor restarts. I use kitty on macOS and foot on Linux.
• A real text editor for everything that is not code. Sublime Text. I have been paying for it once every three years since 2014. It is fast, it opens in 80 milliseconds, and I never think about it. The “free” part is that one license lasts so long it amortizes to zero.
• A password manager that is not in my browser. Bitwarden, self-hosted on a small VPS (a virtual private server, a small remote Linux machine you rent by the month for a few dollars). The free tier of the hosted version would also work. The self-hosted version is the same code with my own data on my own machine.
• A VPN (a virtual private network, an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server) I actually trust. I use a paid one for travel. For day-to-day work on my home network, I use a self-hosted WireGuard setup on the same VPS as the password manager. Free, after the VPS cost.
• A clipboard manager. The Linux one I wrote is in another post. The macOS one I use is the built-in history, plus a small free tool called Clipy that gives it a keyboard shortcut.

The clipboard manager is the only one of these that the average person does not need. The other four are useful to anyone who touches a computer for a living.

Tools I use every week

The every-week list is longer because it includes the tools I do not need at 9 AM but cannot do my job without at 9 PM.

• A diagramming tool. I use excalidraw for the kind of diagrams I draw for my own understanding. I use draw.io (now app.diagrams.net) for the kind I send to clients. Both are free. Both run in the browser. Neither requires an account for the features I use.
• A file sync tool. Syncthing. It is the file sync that Dropbox wishes it was: peer-to-peer (devices talk directly to each other, no central server in the loop), encrypted, and free forever. The only cost is the half hour it takes to set up the first time.
• A screenshot tool with annotation. The free version of whatever ships with your OS is fine. I use flameshot on Linux and the built-in macOS screenshot tool with the Mark Up menu. Both are free. Both let me draw arrows on screenshots, which is most of what I need.
• A video recorder for screen shares. OBS Studio. It is overkill for what I do, which is record 20-minute product demos for clients. It is also the only free tool that does it well, and it is the one I recommend to every non-developer who asks me how to record a tutorial.
• A markdown editor for long-form writing. I use a plain text file in vim for short notes and Obsidian for anything longer than 500 words. Obsidian is free for personal use. The vault lives in a folder that Syncthing syncs to my phone.

The non-developer part of the title is flameshot, OBS, and Obsidian. These three tools have made me more productive on the non-code side of my business than any paid tool I have ever used. The cost is $0 and the learning curve is about an afternoon.

Tools I use every month

The every-month list is the “I am glad this exists when I need it” list. I do not open these tools often. When I do, I am grateful.

• A network scanner. nmap. It is the canonical network exploration tool, available on every operating system, free, and almost certainly already installed on your Linux machine. I use it about twice a year when I am debugging a “why can device A see device B” problem at a client site.
• A disk recovery tool. testdisk and photorec. I have used both to recover files for clients who thought they were gone. Free, command-line, and terrifyingly effective. Read the docs before you run them.
• A local LLM (large language model, a generative AI you can run on your own hardware) runner. I run ollama on my laptop. It is free, it runs local models, and it is the tool I reach for when I want to summarize a 60-page PDF or rewrite an email draft. The local part is the important part. The model is on my machine, not on someone else’s.
• A network-wide ad blocker. Pi-hole, on a small device on my network. It blocks ads and tracking domains for every device in my house, including the ones that do not run ad blockers natively. Free, after the device cost.

The network-wide ad blocker is the one I recommend most often to non-developers. The cost is a $35 Raspberry Pi and an hour of setup. The benefit is that every device in the house stops loading tracking pixels on the same day. It is the highest-leverage tool on the list.

What I would tell past me

If I could send a message back to the version of me that was paying for a dozen SaaS (software as a service, a tool you rent by the month instead of buying) tools, I would say three things.

• Audit the credit card statement. Most of the tools I was paying for were tools I had stopped using and forgotten to cancel. The list above is what I actually opened in 2025.
• Self-host what you can, pay for what you must. The $5 per month VPS I rent runs the password manager, the VPN, and the file sync for my family. That replaces about $400 per year in SaaS subscriptions.
• A short list of tools you actually use is worth more than a long list of tools you have installed. The discipline is the part that matters. The tools are the easy part.

Trade-offs

Self-hosting saves money and costs time. The password manager, the VPN, the file sync, and the ad blocker all need a server somewhere. I rent a VPS for $5 per month. When it goes down, the password manager is offline until I fix it. When I travel, the file sync still works but the VPN requires me to remember the configuration. None of this is hard. All of it is on me.

Pi-hole is a great tool and a commitment. It requires a device that is on all the time, it requires updates every few months, and it requires you to whitelist the domains your bank and your kid’s school use. The maintenance is real. I think the maintenance is worth it. You may not.

Local LLMs are good and getting better, and they are also a hardware commitment. The model I run is small enough to fit on a laptop with 16 GB of RAM. The larger models require a desktop with a discrete GPU (graphics processing unit, the chip that renders 3D graphics and is also useful for AI inference). If you do not have the hardware, the local LLM is not free for you.

Bottom line

If you are starting from scratch, install the five tools in the every-day list. They are all free. They all work. They will save you time this year, and they will still work next year. The other two lists are what to add when the every-day list stops being enough.