I cancelled $25/month in dev tool subscriptions. Here's what I use for free now.

TL;DR: I was paying for a JSON formatter ($8/mo), JWT decoder ($12/mo), and an API dashboard I forgot to cancel ($5/mo). Built browser-based replacements in a weekend. Zero cost. Data never leaves your machine. Links below.

$300 a year.

That's what I was spending on three dev tools that basically rearrange text.

I sat down one weekend and actually looked at what the $8/month JSON formatter does when I click "Format." It runs JSON.parse() and then JSON.stringify() with indentation.

That's the whole product. Three lines of JavaScript behind a paywall.

So I cancelled everything and built my own. Let me walk you through what I actually use now.

🔧 JSON Formatter — the one I use daily

nexuslabs.website/tools/json-formatter

Before: API response comes back as one massive minified line. Copy it, go to paid formatter site, wait for it to load, dismiss the newsletter popup, paste, format, copy the output.

Now: Paste, format, done. Browser-only. No server involved.

Here's the core logic. Seriously, this is it:

try {
  const parsed = JSON.parse(input);
  output = JSON.stringify(parsed, null, 2);
} catch (e) {
  showError(e.message);
}

Three lines doing the actual work. The rest is syntax highlighting and a copy button.

Why this matters beyond saving $8: Your JSON never hits a server. No "we may use anonymized inputs to improve our service." Everything stays in your browser tab.

🔑 JWT Decoder — because pasting tokens into random sites is sketchy

nexuslabs.website/tools/jwt-decoder

Think about this for a second. Auth tokens contain user IDs, roles, permissions, expiration data. Actual sensitive production data.

And the most common workflow is... paste that into a third-party website?

My decoder splits header/payload/signature, shows expiration as a human-readable date, and flags expired tokens. In the browser. No network call. Under 5 seconds from paste to answer.

I know jwt.io exists and it's fine. But it loads slow and the UI has a lot going on when all I need is: "is this token expired, and what's in the payload?"

📊 CSV to JSON — the one I didn't expect to need

nexuslabs.website/tools/csv-json

Client sends a spreadsheet. Backend expects JSON. Doing this by hand for 200 rows at 4pm on a Friday is the kind of task that slowly erodes your will to keep programming.

This converter handles headers-as-keys mapping, quoted fields, escaped commas — the weird edge cases that break naive parsers. Used it three times last week.

The actual cost breakdown

	Before	After
JSON formatter	$8/mo	$0
JWT decoder	$12/mo	$0
API dashboard	$5/mo	$0
Total/year	$300	$0
Time to build	—	1 weekend

Where I draw the line

I'm not going to pretend free replaces everything. Paid tools earn their price when they provide:

• Real infrastructure — monitoring, CI/CD, hosted databases
• Team collaboration — actual multiplayer features, not "collaboration" as a checkbox
• Complex stateful workflows — Postman with environments and variables for teams

My rule: if the tool transforms data locally with zero server logic, you probably don't need to pay for it. If it manages infrastructure or requires persistent storage, the subscription might be justified.

Quick sanity check for your own subscriptions

Look at your credit card statement. Find the dev tool charges. For each one, ask:

1. Does this tool need a server, or is it computing everything in my browser?
2. Am I sending sensitive data to a third party for no reason?
3. Could I build a basic version of this in an afternoon?

If the answers are "no server needed," "yes," and "yes" — you might be overpaying.

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What dev tool subscription are you paying for that you suspect is overpriced? Or the opposite — what paid tool is genuinely worth every cent?

I've been thinking about this a lot since cancelling mine, and I'm curious what other people's lists look like.