DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

I Replaced 5 Paid SaaS Tools with Free APIs (Saving $200/Month)

#webdev #productivity #python #discuss

The SaaS Tax Is Real

I was paying $200/month for tools that do what free APIs do better. Here's what I replaced and the exact code.

1. Weather API: $40/mo → $0 (Open-Meteo)

Replaced: OpenWeather Pro ($40/mo for 16-day forecast + historical data)

import requests

# 16-day forecast + history back to 1940 — completely free
resp = requests.get("https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast", params={
    "latitude": 40.71, "longitude": -74.01,
    "hourly": "temperature_2m,precipitation_probability",
    "forecast_days": 16
})
data = resp.json()["hourly"]
print(f"{len(data['time'])} hourly forecasts loaded")
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Open-Meteo gives me 80+ weather variables, no key, no rate limits. The paid API gave me 20 variables with a rate limit.

Full Open-Meteo tutorial →

2. Research Database: $100/mo → $0 (OpenAlex + Semantic Scholar)

Replaced: Scopus API ($100/mo for institutional access)

# OpenAlex: 250M+ papers, no key
papers = requests.get("https://api.openalex.org/works", params={
    "search": "large language models", "sort": "cited_by_count:desc", "per_page": 10
}).json()["results"]

# Semantic Scholar: AI-generated summaries, free key
for p in papers[:3]:
    doi = p.get("doi", "").replace("https://doi.org/", "")
    if doi:
        s2 = requests.get(f"https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/DOI:{doi}",
            params={"fields": "tldr"}).json()
        if s2.get("tldr"):
            print(f"{p['title']}")
            print(f"  TLDR: {s2['tldr']['text'][:150]}")
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

OpenAlex + Semantic Scholar combined give me better data than Scopus: more papers, AI summaries, citation intent classification.

Full academic API guide →

3. Data Analysis Tool: $30/mo → $0 (DuckDB)

Replaced: Mode Analytics ($30/mo for SQL on CSVs)

import duckdb

# Query any CSV with SQL — no upload, no cloud
result = duckdb.sql("""
    SELECT category, COUNT(*) as orders, SUM(revenue) as total
    FROM 'sales_2026.csv'
    GROUP BY category
    ORDER BY total DESC
""")
print(result.df())
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

DuckDB runs SQL on local files. 10x faster than pandas for large datasets. No data leaves my machine.

Full DuckDB tutorial →

4. Stock Market Data: $20/mo → $0 (Yahoo Finance)

Replaced: Alpha Vantage Premium ($20/mo for real-time + history)

import yfinance as yf

stock = yf.Ticker("AAPL")

# Current price
print(f"Price: ${stock.info['currentPrice']}")

# 1 year of daily history
history = stock.history(period="1y")
print(f"52-week high: ${history['High'].max():.2f}")
print(f"52-week low: ${history['Low'].min():.2f}")

# Financial statements
print(stock.quarterly_financials)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Full price history, financials, insider transactions, options chains — all free.

5. IP Geolocation: $15/mo → $0 (ip-api.com)

Replaced: IPinfo.io Business ($15/mo for bulk lookups)

# Free for non-commercial use, no key
resp = requests.get("http://ip-api.com/json/8.8.8.8")
data = resp.json()
print(f"City: {data['city']}")
print(f"Country: {data['country']}")
print(f"ISP: {data['isp']}")
print(f"Coords: {data['lat']}, {data['lon']}")
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Handles 45 requests/minute. For my use case (geolocation on user signups), that's more than enough.

Total Savings

Tool Was Paying Now Paying Replacement
Weather API $40/mo $0 Open-Meteo
Research DB $100/mo $0 OpenAlex + Semantic Scholar
Data Analysis $30/mo $0 DuckDB
Stock Data $20/mo $0 Yahoo Finance
IP Geolocation $15/mo $0 ip-api.com
Total $205/mo $0 Free APIs

The Catch

Free APIs work great for:

  • Side projects
  • Internal tools
  • Prototyping
  • Small-scale production

When you might still need paid:

  • SLA guarantees (99.9% uptime)
  • Enterprise support
  • Very high rate limits (>10K req/min)
  • Compliance requirements

But for 90% of what developers build? Free APIs are more than enough.

All Free APIs in One Place

I maintain a curated list of 200+ free APIs:

awesome-free-data-apis — Weather, stocks, news, research, geo, and more.

python-data-scripts — Ready-to-run scripts for all these APIs.

What paid tools have you replaced with free alternatives? I'm always looking for more savings.

I write about free APIs and practical dev tools. Follow for weekly tutorials.

More from me: 10 Dev Tools I Use Daily | 77 Scrapers on a Schedule | 150+ Free APIs

Top comments (0)