24 alternatives
iFixit is a free online repair manual with tens of thousands of illustrated, step-by-step guides for phones, laptops, consoles, household appliances and more, written by the company and its community…
Alternative to manufacturers’ after-sales services that are expensive or refuse to repair, and replacing a device at the first fault
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parkrun is a free, timed 5 km run held every Saturday morning in parks and run by volunteers. Runners register once online and get a personal barcode that works at every parkrun in the world; they…
Alternative to gym subscriptions and paid races
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Project Gutenberg is a free online library of books in the public domain: nearly 78,000 e-books in March 2026, to read in the browser or download without an account. It is an alternative to buying…
Alternative to buying classics as e-books from Amazon’s Kindle store and other paid shops
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A Repair Café is a free meeting where volunteers help people repair their own broken things: toasters, lamps, clothes, bikes, toys, laptops. It is an alternative to throwing away a broken appliance…
Alternative to throwing away broken appliances and buying new ones, often because repair seems too expensive
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Signal is a free messenger for texts, voice and video calls, groups and file sharing, with end-to-end encryption for everything by default, run by a non-profit foundation. It is an alternative to…
Alternative to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other messengers owned by advertising groups
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The Man in Seat 61 is a guide to travelling by train and ferry, written since 2001 by Mark Smith, a former British railway manager. For hundreds of routes, it explains which trains to take, how and…
Alternative to flight comparison sites and booking platforms that only show planes
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VLC is a free, open-source media player that plays almost every video and audio file, DVDs and online streams without extra codec packs, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and more. It is an…
Alternative to paid video players and codec packs full of adware
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Pl@ntNet is a free app and website that names a plant from a photo of its flower, leaf, fruit or bark. It was built by French public research institutes, and every confirmed photo feeds a public…
Alternative to commercial plant identification apps with subscriptions
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GIMP is a free, open-source photo editor and image creation program for Windows, macOS and Linux. It crops, corrects colours, cuts out shapes, works with layers and masks, paints and draws.
Alternative to Adobe Photoshop and its monthly subscription
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KeePassXC is a free, open-source password manager for Windows, macOS and Linux. It keeps logins, passwords, passkeys and notes in an encrypted file, in the common KeePass (KDBX) format, opened with a…
Alternative to cloud password managers such as LastPass, 1Password or Dashlane
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Khan Academy is a US non-profit organisation that offers free courses with videos and exercises, mainly in mathematics and science, but also computing, economics, history and test preparation, from…
Alternative to paid tutoring and online course platforms financed by advertising or subscriptions
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LibreOffice is a free, open-source office suite with a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), presentations (Impress), drawing (Draw), a database (Base) and a formula editor (Math). It…
Alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs, with their subscriptions and data collection
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Mastodon is open-source software for a decentralised social network: thousands of independent servers, run by associations, universities, media, public bodies or individuals, connect with each other…
Alternative to X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and the other advertising-funded social networks
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Open Food Facts is a free, collaborative database of food products run by a French non-profit association: volunteers scan barcodes and photograph packaging, and the app and website then show the…
Alternative to the marketing on food packaging, and commercial food-scanning apps
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Incredible Edible is a movement of local groups that grow vegetables, fruit and herbs in public places, for anyone to pick for free. It started in Todmorden, in northern England, in 2008.
Alternative to buying every vegetable at the supermarket and to ornamental-only public planting
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PeerTube is free, open-source software for sharing videos, developed by the French non-profit Framasoft, on which anyone can run a video platform that connects with the others, so there is no single…
Alternative to YouTube and its ads, recommendation algorithm and single owner
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Good On You rates fashion brands on their impact on people, the planet and animals, on a five-step scale from “We avoid” to “Great”. Its website and free app for iOS and Android cover more than 7,000…
Alternative to the green marketing of fashion brands, which nobody checks
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Medito is a free meditation app for iPhone and Android with no ads, trial period or premium tier, published by Stichting Medito, a non-profit foundation registered in Amsterdam in 2020. It is an…
Alternative to paid meditation apps such as Headspace or Calm
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Simply Good Food is a recipe site of classic, simple dishes, mostly vegetarian, in English, French and German: soups, salads, pasta, curries, bakes and desserts. It is an alternative to recipe sites…
Alternative to recipe sites full of advertising, pop-ups and life stories before the recipe
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HappyCow is a guide to vegan, vegetarian and veg-friendly restaurants, shops and cafés around the world, with a map, filters and reviews written by its community, on the web and in an app.
Alternative to general review apps for finding vegan and vegetarian food
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Worn Wear is Patagonia’s programme for used and repaired clothing: the outdoor brand buys back its own garments, resells them second-hand and repairs them under its Ironclad Guarantee, so that a…
Alternative to buying new outdoor clothing and gear
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Couchsurfing is a website and app that connects travellers with locals who put them up for free, on a sofa, in a spare room or on a mattress. Hosts may not charge for the stay, and they decide whom…
Alternative to hotels and holiday rentals such as Airbnb
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Too Good To Go is a free app that sells the day’s unsold food from bakeries, supermarkets, restaurants and caterers as “surprise bags”, at about a third of their stated value. Customers book and pay…
Alternative to bakeries and shops throwing away the day’s unsold food
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Workaway is a website that connects travellers with hosts in more than 170 countries: the traveller helps a few hours a day and gets board and lodging in exchange. Hosts are families, farms, hostels…
Alternative to package holidays and paid accommodation when travelling for a long time
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Repair and do it yourself
Electronics and home appliances
Leisure, sport and outdoor gear
Health, care and wellbeing
Culture: books, music, films and streaming
Education and training
Neighbourhood, community spaces and local networks
Search engines, social networks and messengers
Telecoms: mobile, internet and email
Travel and tourism
Digital services, software and devices
Garden, seeds and biodiversity
Children, family and toys
Office, paper and printing
Nutrition advice and recipes
Food and community farming
Shopping: online, marketplaces and local shops
News, media and knowledge
Clothing and mending
Restaurants and food delivery
Second-hand, swapping, lending and sharing
Waste, recycling and zero waste