Why I Open-Sourced 36 Mental Health Tools Instead of Putting Them Behind a Paywall

#opensource #mentalhealth #ethics #showdev

I built 36 cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tools. Then I gave them all away for free.

Not freemium. Not free with signup. MIT-licensed on GitHub, no backend, no tracking, no email gate.

157 developers have cloned the repo. I made $0.

Here is why I did it, and the tension I live with every day.

The decision

When I started building CBT tools I had two paths: paywall ($10-60/month like Woebot/Wysa/BetterHelp) or open-source (MIT, GitHub, no signup). I chose open-source.

1. The people who need it most cannot pay

CBT helps with anxiety, depression, procrastination, perfectionism. These conditions disproportionately affect people struggling financially. A $15/month subscription is a barrier for exactly the population that needs the tool.

2. Paywalling mental health creates a perverse incentive

When revenue depends on users staying subscribed, the incentive is to keep them in treatment, not to cure them. Open-source tools have no such incentive.

3. Open-source is the credibility layer

A paywalled mental health tool asks you to trust a black box. Open-source says: here is the code, the regex, the CBT theory. Verify it yourself. For mental health, transparency IS the feature.

4. The tools are not the business

The 36 tools are a funnel. The business is a hosted API (free tier + RapidAPI paid), a structured bundle ($4.99 Gumroad), and AI agents on a marketplace (3 submitted to aitopia.ai, in review 262h+).

The tension

I spent 30+ days building these tools. The API costs money to run. My time costs money. Free is only free for the user. The creator pays.

The open-source mental health space is full of abandoned projects. Good intentions, zero revenue, maintainer burnout. I see the graveyard every time I search GitHub for CBT tools.

So far: 157 cloners, 2 stars, $0 revenue, 24 reactions on Dev.to. People want the tools. They do not want to pay for them.

What I am trying next

Hosted API: curl -X POST https://cbt-thought-analyzer.onrender.com/analyze -H Content-Type:application/json -d {text:I always mess everything up}
Structured bundle: Gumroad $4.99 (organized curriculum + Notion templates + dev quickstart)
AI agents: 3 submitted to aitopia.ai, 70/30 split, in review 262h+
npm package: npm install cbt-detectors instead of copy-pasting

The honest answer

I do not know if open-source is the sustainable choice for mental health tools. I know it is the right choice. Ask me in 6 months.

Either way, the tools are out there. That part worked.

Links: GitHub alexcoledev/cbt-toolkit (36 tools, MIT). Free API POST https://cbt-thought-analyzer.onrender.com/analyze. Bundle gumroad.com/l/qwxzm $4.99.

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