10 free GitHub repos that replace paid software
10 GitHub projects you can run yourself instead of paying for Kajabi, Hootsuite, Deepnote and 7 more — $4,512 a year in subscriptions between them.
All 10 repos, with prices and links
01Courses
Moodle
Instead of
Kajabi“Moodle - the world's open source learning platform”
- Kajabi costs
- $143/mo · Basic planPrinted as “$143 /mo*” on their pricing page, read 12 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $1,716Computed: $143 × 12.
- Moodle costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 7.5k stars · 1,381 contributorsLast commit 3 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 12 Oct 2026.
02Social scheduling
Postiz
Instead of
Hootsuite“The ultimate agentic social media scheduling tool”
- Hootsuite costs
- $99/user/mo · Standard planPrinted as “$99 per month per user/month*” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $1,188 per userComputed: $99 × 12.
- Postiz costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 37.1k stars · 75 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
03Notebooks
JupyterLab
Instead of
Deepnote“JupyterLab computational environment.”
- Deepnote costs
- $39/editor/mo · Team plan · billed yearlyPrinted as “$39” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $468Computed: $39 × 12.
- JupyterLab costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 15.4k stars · 739 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
04BI
Apache Superset
Instead of
Hex“Apache Superset is a Data Visualization and Data Exploration Platform”
- Hex costs
- $36/editor/mo · Professional planPrinted as “$36 per” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $432Computed: $36 × 12.
- Apache Superset costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 75.1k stars · 1,791 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
05Experiment tracking
MLflow
Instead of
Comet“The open source AI engineering platform for agents, LLMs, and ML models. MLflow enables teams of all sizes to debug, evaluate, monitor, and optimize production-quality AI applications while controlling costs and managing access to models and data.”
- Comet costs
- $19/mo · Pro Cloud planPrinted as “$19” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $228Computed: $19 × 12.
- MLflow costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 28.3k stars · 1,238 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
06Business accounting
Dolibarr
Instead of
Zoho Books“Dolibarr ERP CRM is a modern software package to manage your company or foundation's activity (contacts, suppliers, invoices, orders, stocks, agenda, accounting,...). it's an open source Web application (written in PHP) designed for businesses of any sizes, foundations and freelancers.”
- Zoho Books costs
- $15/org/mo · STANDARD plan · billed yearlyPrinted as “$15” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $180Computed: $15 × 12.
- Dolibarr costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 7.7k stars · 1,246 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
07VPN
NetBird
Instead of
Tailscale“NetBird securely connects people, machines and AI agents across any network with one identity-based Zero Trust platform. Powered by peer-to-peer WireGuard®”
- Tailscale costs
- $8/user/mo · Standard planPrinted as “$8” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $96 per userComputed: $8 × 12.
- NetBird costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 29.9k stars · 171 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
08Package registry
Verdaccio
Instead of
npm“A lightweight Node.js private proxy registry”
- npm costs
- $7/mo · Pro planPrinted as “$ 7 per month” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $84Computed: $7 × 12.
- Verdaccio costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 17.9k stars · 347 contributorsLast commit 8 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
09Internal tools
Budibase
Instead of
Retool“AI agents, automations and apps that run your operations. Model agnostic.”
- Retool costs
- $5/user/mo · Team planPrinted as “$ 5” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $60 per userComputed: $5 × 12.
- Budibase costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 28.3k stars · 149 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
10Kanban
WeKan
Instead of
Trello“FLOSS kanban, built with Meteor. Official Public Support at GitHub issues only. Official Private Pre-Paid Support at only. Translation PRs to imports/i18n/data/en.i18n.json, other translations at. No telemetry.”
- Trello costs
- $5/user/mo · STANDARD planPrinted as “$5 a month” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $60 per userComputed: $5 × 12.
- WeKan costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 21.1k stars · 350 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 11 Oct 2026.
Free of licence, not free of cost.
Self-hosting means a server and the time to run it. The free tools here cost $0 to license; the paid prices are the cheapest paid tier in US dollars on the day shown, and they change. “Open source” is only shown where the repository declares an OSI-approved licence.
How these were checked
Every price was read off the vendor's own pricing page, rendered in a real browser on 2026-10-11 and 2026-10-12, taking the cheapest paid tier in US dollars. The page and the date are listed against each one below, so you can check any of them yourself.
Quoted or computed. Each entry shows the price as the page prints it. 10 of 10 appear on the vendor's page word for word. Anything worked out from those figures is labelled computed and shows its arithmetic, so a number we calculated cannot be mistaken for one a vendor published. The only computed figures here are the yearly costs and the totals.
0 of the 10 free tools describe themselves, in their maintainers' own words, as an alternative to the tool they sit beside. The other 10 do not name theirs, so those pairings are not their maintainers' claim, and each one says so. Every description is quoted underneath its tool. Stars, contributors and last commit came from the GitHub API on the same day as the prices.
All 10 free projects had been committed to within the last 90 days.
Self-hosting is not free of cost — it is free of licence. A server and the time to run it are yours to pay either way, and nothing below pretends otherwise.
