A hand-maintained, curated list of free and open tools for designers, developers, writers and content creators. Contributions welcome.
Every tool below is free to start with. Open-source projects are marked where relevant. This list favours tools that respect your privacy, run in the browser or on your own machine, and don't lock your work behind a paywall.
Design & Illustration
GIMPMature open-source raster editor — a free alternative to Photoshop.
InkscapeOpen-source vector graphics editor for SVG, logos and illustration.
KritaFree painting and digital-art application built by and for artists.
ExcalidrawVirtual hand-drawn-style whiteboard for diagrams and sketches.
PenpotOpen-source design and prototyping platform, a Figma alternative.
AI & Creative
Art Prompts GeneratorFree AI art prompt generator with ready-made prompts for Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E and Flux — handy when the blank prompt box wins.
OllamaRun open large language models locally on your own machine.
AudacityOpen-source, cross-platform audio recorder and editor.