Introduction
"That service you thought cost money? There's probably a free tier. You just didn't know where to look."
This is the 181st article in the "One Open Source Project a Day" series. Today's project is free-for-dev.
Every solo developer, student, or small team hits the same wall: you want to build something, and the infrastructure alone feels like it's going to cost a fortune — databases, CI/CD, monitoring, email services, CDN… Before the budget materializes, the prototype never gets off the ground.
But the reality is that a huge number of mainstream services offer genuinely generous free tiers — enough to get your project running, sometimes for a very long time. The problem is these free tiers are buried in the corners of each vendor's pricing page and nearly impossible to find systematically.
free-for-dev is the map. 60+ categories, hundreds of services, every entry a real free tier that someone has tried and confirmed — not a 14-day trial, not a "credit card required" trap.
137k Stars, among GitHub's top resource repositories, maintained continuously by 1,600+ contributors.
What You Will Learn
- The 60+ category system and eligibility criteria behind free-for-dev
- Real free-tier quotas compared across major cloud platforms (AWS / GCP / Azure / Oracle)
- Free options for the services developers reach for most (CI/CD, databases, monitoring, email)
- How to use this list efficiently to find exactly what you need
- The value and maintenance logic behind "curation" open source projects like this one
Prerequisites
- Familiarity with what SaaS / PaaS / IaaS mean
- Some experience building a web application or backend service
Project Background
What It Is
free-for-dev is a pure documentation repository. Its core output is a structured Markdown list, divided into 60+ categories by service type. Each entry tells you:
- Service name and link
- Exactly what the free tier includes (requests / storage / bandwidth / users / etc.)
- Any caveats worth knowing
Eligibility requirements are strict:
| Criterion | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Service type | Must be as-a-Service (no self-hosted software) |
| Free tier duration | Ongoing, or at least one year if time-limited |
| TLS support | Free tier must include TLS — paid-only HTTPS is disqualifying |
| No tricks | Not a trial period, no credit card required to start |
These standards make free-for-dev's list significantly higher quality than anything you'd find through a search engine — every entry is a real, community-verified free tier.
About the Author
-
Author: R.I. Pienaar (GitHub:
ripienaar) - Background: Veteran systems administrator and DevOps practitioner, active Puppet ecosystem contributor, author of MCollective (now part of Puppet)
- Project started: 2014 (10+ years of active maintenance)
- License: No explicit license (community collaboration)
Project Stats
- ⭐ GitHub Stars: 137,000+
- 🍴 Forks: 14,500+
- 👥 Contributors: 1,600+
- 📅 Created: 2014
- 🌐 Website: https://free-for.dev
What It Covers
The Problem It Solves
The issue is more widespread than it sounds:
Traditional workflow for finding a service:
Want an email delivery service
→ Google "email service free"
→ Open 5 websites, compare pricing pages
→ Find that some "free" plans require a credit card
→ Find that some free tiers expire after 7 days
→ Spend two hours comparing, still unsure
→ Haven't written a single line of code yet
Using free-for-dev:
Open README, Ctrl+F "Email"
→ See 10+ options in that category
→ Each entry lists the exact free quota
→ Pick one in 5 minutes, start coding
For solo developers and small teams, this isn't just about saving money — it's about eliminating the time cost of information gathering.
The 60+ Category System
free-for-dev's categories map directly to the services developers actually reach for:
Infrastructure Layer
| Category | Representative Services |
|---|---|
| Major Cloud Providers | AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, Cloudflare |
| PaaS | Render, Railway, Fly.io, Vercel, Netlify |
| IaaS | Oracle ARM VM, Google Cloud Compute |
| DNS | Cloudflare DNS, Hurricane Electric, FreeDNS |
| CDN | Cloudflare, jsDelivr, BunnyCDN |
Developer Tooling Layer
| Category | Representative Services |
|---|---|
| Source Code Repos | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Codeberg |
| CI and CD | GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Buildkite |
| Code Quality | SonarCloud, Codecov |
| IDE / Code Editing | Gitpod, GitHub Codespaces, Replit |
Data & Storage Layer
| Category | Representative Services |
|---|---|
| DBaaS | Supabase, PlanetScale, Neon, MongoDB Atlas, Turso |
| NoSQL | Upstash Redis, Fauna, Firestore |
| Object Storage | Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2 |
| BaaS | Firebase, Appwrite, Supabase |
AI & API Layer
| Category | Representative Services |
|---|---|
| APIs, Data and ML | Hugging Face, Replicate, Roboflow |
| Generative AI | Free quotas from major model platforms |
| Testing | Postman, Insomnia |
Operations & Monitoring Layer
| Category | Representative Services |
|---|---|
| Monitoring | Grafana Cloud, New Relic, Datadog |
| Log Management | Papertrail, Logtail |
| Crash and Exceptions | Sentry, Bugsnag |
| Resend, Mailgun, SendGrid, Brevo | |
| Push Notifications | ntfy.sh, OneSignal |
Other Categories
| Category | Representative Services |
|---|---|
| Authentication | Auth0, Clerk, Supabase Auth |
| CMS | Contentful, Sanity, Directus |
| Design and UI | Figma (free tier), Canva |
| Feature Toggles | Flagsmith, Unleash |
| Screenshot APIs | ApiFlash, ScreenshotOne |
| Forms | Formspree, Netlify Forms |
| Web Hosting | GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages |
Major Cloud Platform Free Tier Comparison
One of the most-referenced sections in free-for-dev — the always-free tiers across the big four clouds:
| Service Type | AWS Free Tier | GCP Free Tier | Azure Free | Oracle Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute | EC2 t2.micro 750h/month (year 1) | e2-micro 1 instance permanent | B1S 750h/month (year 1) | 2× ARM VM + 12GB RAM permanent |
| Serverless | Lambda 1M requests/month | Cloud Functions 2M/month | Functions 1M/month | Functions 2M/month |
| Object Storage | S3 5GB (year 1) | Cloud Storage 5GB | Blob Storage 5GB (year 1) | Object Storage 20GB |
| Database | RDS 750h/month (year 1) | No permanent free SQL | SQL Database (year 1) | MySQL/PostgreSQL permanent |
Oracle Cloud's free tier is by far the most generous — those 2 ARM VMs with 12GB RAM and no expiry are a go-to for solo developers running small services.
How to Use It
free-for-dev requires no installation:
# Option 1: Browse on GitHub
# https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev
# Use GitHub search (press T for file search, or Ctrl+F for in-page keyword search)
# Option 2: Use the official website (browse by category)
# https://free-for.dev
# Option 3: Clone locally and grep
git clone https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev.git
grep -i "email" free-for-dev/README.md
The most common pattern: open the README, find the category you need, compare the free tier details row by row.
A Deeper Look
Why This List Is So Valuable
On the surface, free-for-dev is just a Markdown file. Its value is continuous maintenance and community verification:
Static list (blog post, forum answer):
Published → immediately starts going stale
Service changes free tier → article not updated → readers get burned
free-for-dev:
1,600+ contributors submitting PRs continuously
Service changes tier → someone notices → PR updates the entry
New commits every week
Freshness is collectively maintained
This is a classic "collective intelligence" project: no single person can track pricing changes across hundreds of services — but a community of enough users can.
Content Governance Strategy
PR review for free-for-dev follows an informal but effective set of standards that maintainers and community members collectively enforce:
1. Real-world verification
- New entries must be independently verifiable by other contributors
- Free tier descriptions must be precise — vague language isn't accepted
- Services requiring a credit card are flagged or rejected
2. Deduplication and categorization
- Too many similar services reduces readability
- Entries are favored when they offer something distinctive vs. existing entries
- High learning-curve niche tools are generally not included
3. Update mechanism
- Service removes free tier → Issue or PR deletes entry
- New service launches free tier → PR adds new entry
- Free tier quota changes → PR updates description
This governance model has kept the list reliably accurate for over a decade.
The Categories Worth Watching
CI/CD Free Tiers: A Shrinking Landscape
Free CI/CD allocations have tightened significantly in recent years:
- Travis CI: Once the most generous, now heavily restricted for free users
- CircleCI: Free tier now capped at 6,000 minutes/month
- GitHub Actions: Still the best deal — unlimited for public repos, 2,000 min/month for private
For open source projects, GitHub Actions is the clear winner.
The Rise of Serverless Databases
A new generation of serverless databases has made free tiers far more durable for prototype work:
Traditional database free tier (billed by instance):
Instance must stay running → burns free quota → gone quickly
Serverless database (billed by request / storage):
Idle = zero consumption → free tier lasts much longer
Notable options:
Neon (PostgreSQL): 0.5GB storage + 100 compute-hours/month
Turso (SQLite): 500 databases + 9GB storage/month
Upstash (Redis / Kafka): 10,000 commands/day
AI Tool Free Tiers: The Fast-Growing Category
This is the fastest-growing section in free-for-dev right now — every major AI platform is using a free tier to compete for developer mindshare:
- Hugging Face: Model hosting and inference API
- Groq: Extremely fast inference speed with a free quota
- Google AI Studio (Gemini API): Quite generous free tier
- Cohere: Free tier for Command model family
- Together AI: Pay-as-you-go with new-user credits
How It Compares to Similar Projects
| Dimension | free-for-dev | awesome-selfhosted | public-apis (No. 213) |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Cloud service free tiers | Self-hostable open source software | Publicly usable APIs |
| Cost to use | Zero (within free tiers) | Requires a server | Zero |
| Maintenance | Community PRs | Community PRs | Community PRs |
| Stars | 137k | 200k+ | 474k |
| Update frequency | High | High | Medium |
| Core value | Save money + save time | Data sovereignty + customization | Data access |
The three repos are complementary: need free cloud services → free-for-dev. Need control over your data → awesome-selfhosted. Need data endpoints → public-apis.
Project Links and Resources
Official Resources
- 🌟 GitHub: https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev
- 🌐 Website: https://free-for.dev
- 🐛 Issue Tracker: https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev/issues
- 📋 Contributing Guide: CONTRIBUTING.md
Related Resources
- awesome-selfhosted — 200k+ Stars, the definitive self-hosted open source software list
- public-apis — 474k Stars, free public API catalogue (covered in No. 213)
- cloudcosts.dev — Cloud service pricing comparison tool
Summary
Key Takeaways
- Precise positioning: Only real, ongoing free tiers — no trials, no credit card tricks. That single standard is what makes the whole thing worth trusting
- 60+ categories, comprehensive coverage: From cloud compute to AI tools, basically every service type a developer needs has a corresponding section
- Community-driven freshness: 1,600+ contributors keep this 10-year-old list current — a testament to the power of collective maintenance
- Cloud platform free tier scorecard: Oracle Cloud's permanent ARM VMs are widely considered the best deal among the big four
- Serverless databases changed the calculus: Neon, Turso, Upstash and others make free tiers far more durable than the old instance-based model
Who This Is For
- Solo developers: Building prototypes and side projects, looking to minimize infrastructure costs from day one
- Students and newcomers: Learning cloud services and DevOps tools without spending money on experiments
- Small teams: Keeping operating costs lean in the early stage, spending budget where it matters
- Technical evaluators: When you need a quick first-pass on what options exist in a given category
One-Line Verdict
free-for-dev is collective memory: it takes the "searching for free services" dead ends that 1,600 people have hit individually, and turns them into a map every developer can benefit from directly.
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