10 free GitHub repos that replace paid software
10 GitHub projects you can run yourself instead of paying for Autodesk Maya, Salesforce, Adobe Audition and 7 more — $3,373 a year in subscriptions between them.
All 10 repos, with prices and links
- Autodesk Maya costs
- $168/mo · Maya planPrinted as “$168 / month” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $2,016Computed: $168 × 12.
- Blender costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 20.9k stars · 1,585 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
02Work
SuiteCRM
Instead of
Salesforce“SuiteCRM - Open source CRM for the world”
- Salesforce costs
- $25/user/mo · Starter Suite planPrinted as “$ 25” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $300 per userComputed: $25 × 12.
- SuiteCRM costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 5.8k stars · 286 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
- Adobe Audition costs
- $22.99 mo · Adobe Audition planPrinted as “$22.99/mo for the annual” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $276Computed: $22.99 × 12.
- Audacity costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 18.7k stars · 319 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
- Fender Studio Pro costs
- $19.99/mo · PRO+ MONTHLY PLAN planPrinted as “$19.99/month” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $240Computed: $19.99 × 12.
- Ardour costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 5.3k stars · 290 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
05Files
BentoPDF
Instead of
Adobe Acrobat“The Privacy First PDF Toolkit”
- Adobe Acrobat costs
- $14.99/mo · Acrobat Standard planPrinted as “$14.99/mo” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $180Computed: $14.99 × 12.
- BentoPDF costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 16k stars · 71 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
06AI
ComfyUI
Instead of
Midjourney“The most powerful and modular diffusion model GUI, api and backend with a graph/nodes interface. The fastest local inference engine in the world.”
- Midjourney costs
- $10/mo · Basic Plan planPrinted as “$10” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $120Computed: $10 × 12.
- ComfyUI costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 138k stars · 355 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
07AI
Buzz
Instead of
Otter“Buzz transcribes and translates audio offline on your personal computer. Powered by OpenAI's Whisper.”
- Otter costs
- $8.33/user/mo · Pro planPrinted as “$8.33 /user/month save” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $100 per userComputed: $8.33 × 12.
- Buzz costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 22k stars · 45 contributorsLast commit 11 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
08Work
Wiki.js
Instead of
Atlassian Confluence“Wiki.js | Next Generation Open Source Wiki”
- Atlassian Confluence costs
- $5.78/user/mo · Standard planPrinted as “$5.78 per user” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $69 per userComputed: $5.78 × 12.
- Wiki.js costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 29k stars · 169 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
09AI
Open WebUI
Instead of
Gemini“User-friendly AI Interface (Supports Ollama, OpenAI API,...)”
- Gemini costs
- $4.99/mo · Google AI Plus planPrinted as “$4.99/ month” on their pricing page, read 14 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $60Computed: $4.99 × 12.
- Open WebUI costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 156k stars · 889 contributorsLast commit 14 Oct 2026, per GitHub on 14 Oct 2026.
10Email hosting
Mailu
Instead of
Zoho Mail“Insular email distribution - mail server as Docker images”
- Zoho Mail costs
- $1/user/mo · Mail Lite plan · billed yearlyPrinted as “$1” on their pricing page, read 11 Oct 2026.
- Over a year
- $12 per userComputed: $1 × 12.
- Mailu costs
- $0 licence, self-hostedYour server and your time are not free.
- Maintenance
- 7.5k stars · 260 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 2026-10-14, 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.
