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Free software alternatives, remarkable AI experiments, GitHub finds and real technology costs — researched, verified and worth saving.
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Four series
Pick your rabbit hole.
Free Alternatives
Paid tools and the free software that does the job — every price read off the vendor’s own page.
15 posts · 180 tools
GitHub Finds
Useful repositories you can run yourself, with stars, licence and last commit.
10 posts · 100 repos
Actually Tested
Published experiments and benchmarks — read, checked and explained. We don’t run them.
4 studies
Real Build Cost
What software and AI really cost to run, from published bills and breakdowns.
4 breakdowns
Editor’s picks
Worth your attention.
The posts and single finds we’d send a friend — opened up, with the working shown.
- Actually Tested· Part 4
Stop asking AI for the news: 45% of answers had a serious problem.
45% of AI assistants' news answers had at least one significant issue, graded by journalists at 22 broadcasters.
- Free Alternatives· Part 15
Save $1,620/year. Use these free tools instead.
12 paid tools and a free, self-hostable alternative for each — $135 a month, $1,620 a year between them.
- GitHub Finds· Part 10
10 free GitHub repos that replace paid software
10 GitHub projects you can run yourself instead of paying for Autodesk Fusion, Autodesk AutoCAD LT, Microsoft Copilot and 7 more — $2,262 a year in subscriptions between them.
Replaces
MidjourneyAI
ComfyUI
“The most powerful and modular diffusion model GUI, api and backend with a graph/nodes interface. The fastest local inference engine in the world.”
vs $120/yr 138kGPL-3.0
From GitHub Finds · Part 8
Replaces
MiroWhiteboards
Excalidraw
“Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams”
vs $96/yr 132kMIT
From Free Alternatives · Part 2
Free alternatives
Stop paying for what you can get free.
280 paid tools, each with a free tool you can run yourself. Every price is read off the vendor’s own page, with the date.
Documentation
can be replaced by
Mintlify
$450/mo · Pro
Nextra
$0 licence
Simple, powerful and flexible site generation framework with everything you love from Next.js.
From GitHub Finds · Part 3Vulnerability scanning
can be replaced by
Aikido Security
$350/mo · Basic
Trivy
$0 licence
Find vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, secrets, SBOM in containers, Kubernetes, code repositories, clouds and more
From Free Alternatives · Part 8Data pipelines
can be replaced by
Hevo
$265/mo · STARTER
Meltano
$0 licence
Meltano: the declarative code-first data integration engine that powers your wildest data and ML-powered product ideas. Say goodbye to writing, maintaining, and scaling your own API integrations.
From Free Alternatives · Part 9LLM observability
can be replaced by
Braintrust
$249/mo · Pro
Langfuse
$0 licence
Open source agent evals & observability: Trace, evaluate, and improve LLM applications with one open platform.
From GitHub Finds · Part 4Subscription billing
can be replaced by
Recurly
$249/mo · Starter
Lago
$0 licence
Open Source Metering and Usage Based Billing API Consumption tracking, Subscription management, Pricing iterations, Payment orchestration & Revenue analytics
From Free Alternatives · Part 5Creative
can be replaced by
Unity
$210/mo · Pro
Godot
$0 licence
Godot Engine – Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine
From GitHub Finds · Part 7