With prices going up these days it would be nice if you could get free alternatives to popular software. In this article. I will give my top free programs to install on your PC or other device that you recently bought, or you have been using for years.
This is my top pick of great free software for 2025.
| Title | Description |
| 7zip | A free file achiever that can compress / decompress your files to save space and make easier to send attachments through email. |
| Aomi Backupper | This is a great free program that allows you to create a system image of your PC for fast recovery. |
| Audacity | A free audio software |
| Autoruns | Autoruns is a great program that helps you see what is starting up when you Windows PC boots, and allows you to disable the ones you do not want to start up |
| Bitwarden | A great free password manager. |
| Blender | Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite that supports the entire 3D pipeline. With its powerful tools, you can create stunning 2D/3D content with ease. It has been used to make games, movies, and other forms of computer graphic projects |
| Brave | “Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software; Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. It blocks ads and website trackers and provides a way for users to send cryptocurrency contributions in the form of Basic Attention Tokens to websites and content creators.” |
| CrystaDiskInfo | CrystalDiskInfo is a great program to find out the health of you hard drive. |
| Foxit Reader | A great alternative to Adobe Acrobat reader that reads PDFs |
| Gimp | The Gimp is a free alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop, which comes all of the bells and whistles that come with Photoshop. |
| Inkscape | “Inkscape is a Free and open source vector graphics editor for GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS X. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming and flowcharting. It uses vector graphics to allow for sharp printouts and renderings at unlimited resolution and is not bound to a fixed number of pixels like raster graphics. Inkscape uses the standardized SVG file format as its main format, which is supported by many other applications including web browsers.” |
| LibreOffice | Libreoffice is one of the popular free office suite. It includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, program a presentation program, a drawing program, a math program, and a database program. |
| Linux Mint | The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use.” |
| Notpad++ | NoteTab Light is a great free replacement for Window’s notepad. |
| OBS | OBS Studio aka Open Broadcaster Software is the best video recording and live streaming. It works on Windows, MAC, and Linux |
| Paint.net | is a great image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. |
| Open Shell | A great free program that allows you to have the style Windows Start Nunu Back. |
| Rufis | Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.” |
| ShareX | A great free screen capture, file sharing and productivity tool |
| Teamviewer | Control, manage, monitor, and repair computers, mobile devices, network machines and more – from anywhere, anytime.” |
| Thunderbird | A great free email program |
| Vintoy | Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. |
| VLC | VLC media player is a the best free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software, and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems, and mobile phones. It plays everything that is DRM free. It is a must if you play any media file, or stream media from the internet. |
| Wintoys | “Wintoys is a free software that helps you customize, optimize, and repair your Windows 10/11 system. You can access various settings, tools, and apps to improve your performance, privacy, and appearance” |
I hope after reading this article you find one or more programs you want find useful.