40 "Free Forever" Tools for Developers

Hey everyone,

I am Hrishikesh, co-founder of Flexiple, an exclusive freelance network for developers & designers.

I am forever on the lookout for great tools that help me get work done better & easier and I regularly feature them on remote.tools.

So here, I am sharing the list of my go-to "Free forever" tools.

For easier reading, I've categorised them based on their primary function:

• Bonus Tools
• Bug Tracking
• File Hosting
• Productivity
• Code Collaboration
• Product Management
• Project Management
• Design Collaboration
• Team chat
• Document Collaboration
• Remote Whiteboard
• Standups
• Time Tracking
• Virtual Office

Bonus Tools

Freebies.ByPeople

Freebies.bypeople is a professionally-curated repository of the best free-for-commercial use resources for developers and designers. It includes icons, fonts, plugins, UI kits, web templates, web tools & much more.

Lunchclub

Lunchclub aims to make remote networking easier. You can register on the site with your background, interests, and goals, and each week, the AI-based tool directly matches you with relevant people for 1:1 conversations

Cafecito

Cafecito is great for connecting with other people who share similar interests. Its algorithm matches you with vetted creatives to have "coffee break"-style conversations with them.

Reslash

Reslash is a video communication tool that aims to make team conversations realistic and fun. Team members can hangout in a single virtual space, where if you move closer to someone, you can hear them, and as you move away, they fade away.

Bug Tracking

Linear

Linear is an issue tracking tool that allows seamless collaboration between developers, designers, and peers. It helps streamline software projects, sprints, tasks, and bug tracking.

Zoho Bug Tracker

Zoho Bug Tracker is a simple, fast and scalable bug tracking application that offers a nifty set of features & dashboards with a high level of customisability.

File Hosting

BlackHole

BlackHole is secure, server-less file transfer that works on blockchain. It's open-source, and is available for Windows and Mac. It offers a simple UI, data streaming, and transfer compression.

Productivity

CoderMirror

CoderMirror integrates with your JetBrains IDEs to allow you to track, analyse, and create reports of your coding activity. It collects detailed data on your activity and enables you to perform personal retrospectives.

Metro Retro

Metro Retro is a web application that helps teams run engaging and fun retrospectives. It uses real-time updates, and a quirky sense of humor to help teams manage their retros. It also offers a wide set of templates.

Friday

Friday is a tool that can be used as a compliment to your team's Slack. It allows you to better organise and comprehend team chats and automate routine tasks. It is aimed at teams who want to efficiently run recurring communication like one-on-one conversations or standups.

Code Collaboration

CoScreen

CoScreen allows you to turn your secondary display into your "team desktop" via a single drag-and-drop interface. Peers can share their windows on the same desktop in real-time, and each of them is given their own mouse pointer to interact with the shared windows.

CodeStream

CodeStream lets coders eliminate the friction that accompanies code reviews. With CodeStream, you can get feedback on a WIP project within two clicks, allowing you to course-correct early on and obtain better code quality.

JSFiddle

JSFiddle is an online community that lets you test and showcase your HTML, CSS and JavaScript code snippets ("fiddles"). Its amazing UI and responsive editor make it a must-try for any serious JavaScript developer.

Product Management

Prioritize

Prioritize is a simple tool that is essentially a 2-axis chart. It helps you create, visualise, and prioritise tasks on a drag and drop interface with different priority boards or matrixes, including Effort / Impact , Risk / Value , Eisenhower, and MoSCoW.

Figma Product Planner

Figma's Product Planner makes it easy to integrate product planning features with its design collaboration tool. It offers a range of prebuilt templates relevant to common tasks.

Project Management

nTask

nTask is a comprehensive project and task management tool that offers collaboration, task management, meeting scheduling, project planning and more.

Tara.ai

Tara.ai is an AI-based free alternative to Jira. It helps teams deliver on planned release cycles and run weekly sprints with more predictability.

Taskade

Taskade is a remote workspace tool that aims to make teams more productive. With Taskade, teams can manage tasks, write notes, and video chat, all within a single platform.

Design Collaboration

Mockplus

Mockplus is a one-stop online design collaboration platform that helps you accomplish everything from prototyping to developer handoff. It enables designers, developers, and product managers to work together online with auto specs, assets, and code snippets.

Framer

Framer is a feature-rich prototyping tool that helps designers draw, build layouts, incorporate components, and create interactive designs. It has lots of team collaboration features such as multi-player editing and inline commenting.

Marvel

Marvel is a holistic platform that enables designers to transform ideas into digital products by providing them with an environment to create, test, iterate as well as gather feedback.

Feedback by Pixelic

Feedback by Pixelic allows you to seamlessly share your designs with coworkers. It lets them add visual feedback to your design, which you can even organise with version control.

Team Chat

Twist

When Slack becomes a bit too chaotic, you can turn to Twist. Twist aims to keep team conversations organized, on-topic, and easily searchable. It has thread-based and asynchronous-friendly messaging to allow team members to focus on work without missing out on important discussions.

Document Collaboration

Slite

Slite is a great-looking, simple collaborative documentation tool that helps your team stay organised. It offers everything a team needs: collaborative writing, feedback and sharing, powerful search, integrations, and easy permissions.

ntile

With ntile, you can start a blog, build a knowledge base, open an info portal, or use pre-made document organisation solutions for business and daily life. Moreover, you can create a digital ecosystem by overlapping disparate entities.

Tettra

Tettra is an "internal wiki" tool that helps teams document important processes, policies, and procedures in one centralised place, reducing the need to answer repetitive questions.

Coda

Coda is an all-in-one platform that brings together documents, spreadsheets, and apps. It allows teams to share notes, track tasks, and more.

Notion

Notion has been one of the best documentation tools around, and recently they've also started offering a free forever version. It has a highly flexible interface for taking notes, creating to-do lists, and much more.

Remote Whiteboard

Explain Everything

Explain Everything is a presentation app that can be used by teams to present ideas with remote team members or clients. This simple tool is especially effective for teachers who want to create fun and interactive lessons for students.

A Web Whiteboard

A Web Whiteboard is a touch-friendly, easy-to-use web browser-based collaborative tool that can be used by remote workers to draw sketches, and collaborate and share them with others.

Miro

Miro's whiteboard toolkit can be used for creating mockups and schemes, writing down ideas and leaving feedback on other collaborators inputs. It comes with a range of pre-loaded templates and an integrated library of icons, wireframes, and other content.

Milanote

Milanote is excellent for organising your ideas and projects into visual "moodboards". You can use the simple and easy-to-use tool for gathering inspiration, collating your team's ideas, and exploring creative possibilities.

Standups

Olaph

Olaph is a tool that integrates into Slack and facilitates stand-ups for your team. It brings teams closer together by encouraging communication and exchange.

Armadill

Armadill provides remote teams with a transparent work structure by combining Kanban workflows with automatic daily standups.

Time Tracking

TopTracker

TopTracker is a simple and lightweight desktop app, that works really well as a time tracking tool for freelance developers. However, it lacks essential features like invoicing and integrations with other project management tools.

Code Time

Code Time is a powerful time tracking plugin built for developers, that integrates with over 15 code editors and IDEs. You can set daily coding goals and view coding stats right in your editor.

Worklog

Worklog is an extension that enables seamless time tracking and synchronising work logs between different time trackers. It works well with a host of apps including Jira, Toggl, and Keen.

Virtual Office

Pragli

Pragli is a virtual office tool that enables remote workers to dive into impromptu conversations with audio channels and direct conversations, similar to a walkie talkie.

Loop Team

Loop Team aims to bring the best parts of in-office working to a remote setting, and enables distributed teams to communicate faster and capture face-to-face discussions.

Wurkr

Wurkr is a video platform that aims to replicate your physical office in an online setting. Distributed team members can internally communicate and work with each other visibly and in real-time, regardless of their location.