Published February 23, 2026 · 25 min read
Building a startup in 2026 does not require a big budget. The free tier of modern software is more powerful than what enterprise companies paid thousands for five years ago. From hosting and databases to design tools and AI assistants, you can build, launch, and grow a real business spending exactly zero dollars on software.
We compiled the 50 best free tools for startups in 2026, organized by category: development, design, marketing, analytics, and AI. For every tool, we verified that the free tier is genuinely useful — not a crippled trial that forces you to upgrade after a week. These are tools you can use seriously, at scale, without paying.
Whether you are a solo founder bootstrapping your first product, a small team stretching a limited budget, or an experienced builder who simply refuses to pay for things that should be free, this list is your startup toolkit.
These are the tools that let you build, host, and deploy your product without spending a cent. The free tiers listed here are sufficient for most startups through their first 10,000 users.
What you get free: Unlimited public and private repositories, GitHub Actions CI/CD (2,000 minutes/month), GitHub Pages hosting, Codespaces (60 hours/month), GitHub Copilot free tier (2,000 completions/month), issue tracking, project boards, and package registry.
Why startups need it: GitHub is the center of modern software development. Even if you use no other tool on this list, you need version control. The free tier is absurdly generous — unlimited private repos, enough CI/CD minutes for most projects, and free static site hosting via GitHub Pages. SpunkArt and the entire Predict Network run on GitHub Pages.
Get GitHub FreeWhat you get free: Unlimited static site deployments, serverless functions, edge functions, preview deployments for every git push, automatic HTTPS, global CDN, and generous bandwidth (100GB/month). Supports Next.js, React, Svelte, and more.
Why startups need it: Vercel is the fastest way to deploy a web application. Push to git, and your app is live globally in under a minute. The free tier supports hobby projects and early-stage startups without any restrictions on the number of deployments.
Get Vercel FreeWhat you get free: DNS management, CDN, DDoS protection, SSL certificates, Cloudflare Pages (unlimited sites, unlimited bandwidth), Workers (100,000 requests/day), R2 storage (10GB), D1 database (5GB), KV storage (1GB), and email routing.
Why startups need it: Cloudflare's free tier is legendary. You get enterprise-grade DDoS protection, a global CDN, and a serverless platform that can handle substantial traffic — all for free. Cloudflare Pages with Workers can replace a traditional backend for many applications.
Get Cloudflare FreeWhat you get free: PostgreSQL database (500MB), authentication (50,000 MAU), file storage (1GB), real-time subscriptions, edge functions, vector embeddings, and auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs.
Why startups need it: Supabase is the open-source Firebase alternative that gives you a production-ready backend in minutes. The PostgreSQL database with Row Level Security, built-in auth, and real-time features means you can build a full-stack app without writing backend code.
Get Supabase FreeWhat you get free: Firestore database (1GB storage, 50K reads/day), Authentication (unlimited users), Cloud Storage (5GB), Hosting (10GB bandwidth/month), Cloud Functions (125K invocations/month), and Analytics.
Why startups need it: Firebase remains the fastest way to add a backend to a mobile or web app. The real-time database, push notifications, and authentication system are production-ready out of the box. The Predict Network uses Firebase for real-time prediction market data across all 16 sites.
Get Firebase FreeWhat you get free: MySQL-compatible serverless database with 5GB storage, 1 billion row reads/month, 10 million row writes/month, branching for schema changes, and automatic backups.
Why startups need it: If your app needs a relational database at scale, PlanetScale gives you a MySQL database that scales horizontally without the DevOps overhead. The branching feature lets you test schema changes safely before applying them to production.
Get PlanetScale FreeWhat you get free: $5/month in free credits (enough for light usage), one-click deploys from GitHub, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, and MySQL databases, environment variables management, and automatic scaling.
Why startups need it: Railway is the simplest way to deploy backend services, databases, and workers. Connect your GitHub repo and you have a live backend in minutes. The $5 monthly credit is enough to run a small API and database for free.
Get Railway FreeWhat you get free: Static site hosting (unlimited bandwidth), web services (750 hours/month), PostgreSQL database (256MB), Redis (25MB), cron jobs, and automatic deploys from GitHub.
Why startups need it: Render is a clean, developer-friendly alternative to Heroku. The free tier includes enough to run a small web application with a database, making it great for MVPs and side projects that need a backend.
Get Render FreeWhat you get free: Everything. VS Code is fully free and open source. Includes: integrated terminal, git management, debugging, 40,000+ extensions, remote development, and GitHub Codespaces integration.
Why startups need it: VS Code is the default code editor for most developers in 2026. It is free, fast, and extensible. Combined with AI extensions like GitHub Copilot or Cursor-like plugins, it becomes a complete development environment.
Get VS Code FreeWhat you get free: API testing and documentation, unlimited collections, mock servers (1,000 calls/month), monitoring (1,000 calls/month), team collaboration (up to 3 members), and API design tools.
Why startups need it: If your product has an API (and in 2026, almost everything does), Postman is essential for testing, documenting, and sharing API specifications with your team or customers.
Get Postman FreeWhat you get free: Project management for up to 250 issues, sprint planning, roadmaps, issue tracking, GitHub integration, Slack integration, and a beautifully fast interface.
Why startups need it: Linear is what Jira should have been. It is fast, keyboard-driven, and designed for software teams. The free tier supports small teams through their first major product launch. No bloat, no slow page loads, just clean project management.
Get Linear FreeWhat you get free: Error tracking for up to 5,000 events/month, performance monitoring, session replay (50 sessions/month), release tracking, and integrations with GitHub, Slack, and Jira.
Why startups need it: You need to know when your app breaks before your users tell you. Sentry catches errors in real time, shows you the stack trace, and helps you prioritize which bugs to fix first. The free tier is enough for early-stage apps.
Get Sentry FreeTemplates, checklists, and resources to launch your startup without spending money. Built by founders, for founders.
Get the Toolkit Explore SpunkArtYou do not need Adobe Creative Cloud to build a beautiful product. These design tools offer free tiers that are more than enough for startup needs.
What you get free: 3 Figma design files, unlimited Figma files in drafts, unlimited collaborators on each file, FigJam whiteboard (3 files), prototyping, components, auto layout, and developer handoff.
Why startups need it: Figma is the standard for product design. The free tier lets you design your entire MVP, create a clickable prototype, and hand off specs to developers. Three files is enough when you use pages within each file to organize your designs.
Get Figma FreeWhat you get free: Drag-and-drop design tool with 250,000+ free templates, millions of free photos and graphics, social media templates, presentation templates, video editor, and 5GB cloud storage.
Why startups need it: Canva handles everything that is not product design: social media posts, pitch decks, one-pagers, business cards, email headers, YouTube thumbnails, and more. The free tier includes enough templates and assets to build a complete brand identity.
Get Canva FreeWhat you get free: Color palette generator, color picker, gradient generator, contrast checker, palette visualization, and the ability to export palettes in multiple formats including CSS, Tailwind, and SVG.
Why startups need it: Choose a color palette in seconds instead of hours. Coolors generates harmonious color schemes that you can lock, adjust, and export directly to your codebase. Our full guide covers more palette generators.
Get Coolors FreeWhat you get free: Over 4 million high-resolution photos, all free for commercial use with no attribution required. Searchable library covering every topic imaginable.
Why startups need it: Professional photography for your website, blog, social media, and marketing materials without licensing fees or attribution requirements. Unsplash photos are used by millions of websites worldwide.
Get Unsplash FreeWhat you get free: Virtual whiteboard for sketching diagrams, wireframes, flowcharts, and architecture diagrams. Real-time collaboration, export to PNG/SVG, and a hand-drawn aesthetic that makes diagrams look clean and approachable.
Why startups need it: Perfect for quick wireframes, system architecture diagrams, and brainstorming sessions. The hand-drawn style means your diagrams look intentionally casual rather than sloppy, which is ideal for early-stage planning.
Get Excalidraw FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Penpot is open source. Includes: design tool, prototyping, components, auto layout, collaboration, and self-hosting option. No file limits, no collaborator limits.
Why startups need it: Penpot is the open-source Figma alternative. If you want a design tool with zero limits and no vendor lock-in, Penpot is it. The cloud version is free, or you can self-host for complete control.
Get Penpot FreeWhat you get free: 1,700+ open-source fonts packaged as npm modules. Self-host fonts without relying on Google Fonts CDN. Includes all Google Fonts plus additional open-source families.
Why startups need it: Self-hosting fonts improves page load speed and privacy compliance (GDPR). FontSource makes it trivial: npm install the font, import it, and you are done. No external CDN requests, no privacy issues.
Get FontSource FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Image compression tool by Google that runs entirely in your browser. Supports WebP, AVIF, JPEG XL, PNG, and more. Visual comparison slider, batch processing, and CLI tool.
Why startups need it: Image optimization is one of the easiest performance wins. Squoosh compresses images by 50-90% with negligible quality loss. Use it before uploading any image to your website.
Get Squoosh FreeWhat you get free: 300+ hand-crafted SVG icons by the makers of Tailwind CSS. Available in outline, solid, and mini styles. MIT licensed for any use.
Why startups need it: Clean, consistent icons that match the Tailwind CSS aesthetic. Copy the SVG directly or use the React/Vue components. No icon subscriptions, no attribution required.
Get Heroicons FreeWhat you get free: Beautiful mockup generator for screenshots. Add browser frames, device mockups, backgrounds, and shadows to your app screenshots. Free tier includes basic templates and exports.
Why startups need it: Turn plain screenshots into professional marketing images. Essential for landing pages, Product Hunt launches, and social media posts. Takes 30 seconds to make a screenshot look polished.
Get Shots.so FreeGrowth on a zero budget. These marketing tools help you reach customers, build an audience, and drive traffic without paying for ads or expensive software.
What you get free: Email marketing for up to 500 subscribers, 1,000 sends/month, email builder with templates, landing pages, basic automations, and audience segmentation.
Why startups need it: Email remains the highest-ROI marketing channel. Mailchimp's free tier lets you build a subscriber list, design professional emails, and set up basic drip campaigns to nurture leads into customers.
Get Mailchimp FreeWhat you get free: Social media scheduling for up to 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel, AI assistant for writing posts, link-in-bio page, and basic analytics.
Why startups need it: Consistent social media presence is essential, but manually posting every day is time-consuming. Buffer lets you batch-create a week of content and schedule it to post automatically. Three channels covers most startups (X, LinkedIn, Instagram).
Get Buffer FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Search performance data, index coverage reports, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, manual action notifications, sitemap management, and URL inspection tool.
Why startups need it: This is the only tool that shows you exactly how Google sees your website. Which queries bring traffic, which pages are indexed, which have errors. It is free, essential, and most startups underutilize it. Read our SEO guide to learn how to use it effectively.
Get Search Console FreeWhat you get free: 3 keyword searches per day, keyword suggestions, content ideas, domain overview, and backlink data. Enough for basic keyword research on a limited schedule.
Why startups need it: Keyword research drives organic traffic. Ubersuggest helps you find keywords with high search volume and low competition — the sweet spot for startups that cannot compete with established brands on head terms.
Get Ubersuggest FreeWhat you get free: Simple one-page website builder. 3 free sites, responsive templates, custom domain support (with Pro), and integrations with Mailchimp, Google Analytics, and more.
Why startups need it: When you need a landing page in 10 minutes, Carrd delivers. It is faster than building from scratch and looks better than most DIY attempts. Perfect for collecting emails, launching a waitlist, or creating a simple product page.
Get Carrd FreeWhat you get free: Unlimited forms, unlimited submissions, conditional logic, file uploads, payment collection, calculations, and integrations with Notion, Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Why startups need it: Tally replaces Typeform, Google Forms, and SurveyMonkey for most use cases. Unlimited forms and submissions on the free tier is remarkable. Use it for user feedback, lead capture, onboarding surveys, and bug reports.
Get Tally FreeWhat you get free: Unlimited pages and blocks for personal use, page sharing, web publishing, basic API access, and integrations. Team plan offers limited free usage for up to 10 members.
Why startups need it: Notion is the default workspace for startups. Use it as your wiki, documentation hub, project tracker, meeting notes, and knowledge base. Share pages publicly as a free blog, changelog, or help center.
Get Notion FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Launch your product, collect upvotes, get feedback, connect with early adopters, and reach the tech community. Top launches get thousands of visitors on launch day.
Why startups need it: Product Hunt is still the most effective single-day marketing channel for tech products. A well-prepared launch can drive 5,000-20,000 visitors and hundreds of signups in 24 hours, all for free.
Launch on Product HuntWhat you get free: Sell digital products, subscriptions, and memberships with no monthly fee. Gumroad takes a 10% transaction fee on sales. Includes: checkout pages, email delivery, affiliate program, and customer management.
Why startups need it: If you sell digital products — ebooks, templates, courses, software — Gumroad lets you start selling immediately with zero upfront cost. No monthly fee means zero risk. We use Gumroad for the SpunkArt digital toolkit.
Get Gumroad FreeWhat you get free: Live chat widget for your website, 2 operator seats, chatbot builder, shared inbox, and mobile app. The free tier includes 5,000 contacts and basic CRM features.
Why startups need it: Talking to your users is the most important thing an early-stage startup can do. Crisp puts a live chat widget on your site so potential customers can ask questions and get answers instantly, reducing friction in the signup process.
Get Crisp FreeChecklists, templates, and playbooks for launching and growing your startup on zero budget.
Get It on Gumroad Read: Start a Business in 2026Data drives decisions. These analytics tools help you understand your users, track growth, and identify what is working.
What you get free: Everything except BigQuery export (on the free tier, you get limited sampling). Includes: event tracking, conversion tracking, audience insights, real-time reporting, path analysis, funnel visualization, and integrations with Google Ads.
Why startups need it: GA4 is the industry standard for web analytics. It tracks user behavior, acquisition channels, and conversions. Every startup should install it on day one, even if you do not look at the data until later. Having historical data is invaluable when you start optimizing.
Get GA4 FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Session recordings, heatmaps, scroll maps, click maps, dead click detection, rage click detection, JavaScript error tracking, and dashboard analytics. Unlimited traffic, unlimited recordings.
Why startups need it: Clarity shows you exactly how users interact with your site. Watch session recordings to see where users get confused, check heatmaps to see what gets attention, and identify rage clicks on elements that look clickable but are not. Completely free with no traffic limits.
Get Clarity FreeWhat you get free: Plausible is open source — self-host it for free on your own server. Lightweight, privacy-focused, cookie-free analytics. Under 1KB script size. No personal data collection.
Why startups need it: If you care about privacy (GDPR compliance without cookie banners) or page speed (the script is 45x smaller than Google Analytics), Plausible is the best alternative. Self-hosting is free; the managed cloud service starts at $9/month.
Get Plausible FreeWhat you get free: Product analytics (1M events/month), session recordings (5K/month), feature flags (1M evaluations/month), A/B testing, surveys, and data warehouse. Self-host option available.
Why startups need it: PostHog is the all-in-one product analytics platform. It replaces Mixpanel, LaunchDarkly, and Hotjar in a single tool. The free tier is generous enough for startups with thousands of users, and the self-host option means you never lose access to your data.
Get PostHog FreeWhat you get free: Event analytics for up to 20M events/month, unlimited data history, funnels, retention analysis, flows, and cohort analysis. Up to 5 team members.
Why startups need it: Mixpanel excels at tracking user behavior within your product. While GA4 focuses on acquisition and page views, Mixpanel tracks in-app events: button clicks, feature usage, conversion funnels, and retention curves. The 20M events/month free tier is extremely generous.
Get Mixpanel FreeWhat you get free: 35 daily session recordings, automatic heatmaps for any page, feedback widget, and basic survey tool. Unlimited team members on the free plan.
Why startups need it: Hotjar pioneered session recording and heatmaps for product teams. The free tier gives you enough recordings to understand user behavior patterns and enough heatmap data to optimize your most important pages.
Get Hotjar FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Performance audit for any URL, Core Web Vitals scores, Lighthouse reports, mobile and desktop analysis, and specific recommendations for improvement.
Why startups need it: Page speed directly impacts conversion rates and SEO rankings. Google's own tool tells you exactly what is slowing your site down and how to fix it. Run it on every page before launch. Read our speed optimization guide for detailed fix instructions.
Get PageSpeed Insights FreeWhat you get free: 50 monitors, 5-minute check intervals, HTTP/HTTPS/ping/port/keyword monitoring, status pages, and email/Slack/webhook alerts.
Why startups need it: You need to know when your site goes down before your customers notice. UptimeRobot checks your site every 5 minutes and alerts you immediately via email or Slack when something breaks. 50 free monitors is enough for most startups.
Get UptimeRobot FreeAI tools are the biggest force multiplier for small teams. These ten tools help you write, code, design, analyze, and automate — all on free tiers.
What you get free: Access to Claude Sonnet 4.5 with approximately 10-25 messages per 5-hour window, 200K token context window, file uploads, projects, and Claude Code for terminal-based coding.
Why startups need it: Claude is the best AI for long-form writing, code generation, and complex reasoning. Its 200K token context means it can process entire documents, codebases, and research papers in a single conversation. See our full AI tools guide for more details.
Get Claude FreeWhat you get free: GPT-5.2 Instant model (10 messages per 5-hour window), unlimited GPT-5.2 Mini, web browsing, file uploads, and conversation history with free account.
Why startups need it: ChatGPT is the most versatile AI assistant. Use it for drafting emails, brainstorming product names, writing marketing copy, summarizing meeting notes, analyzing competitor data, and hundreds of other daily tasks.
Get ChatGPT FreeWhat you get free: 2,000 code completions per month, 50 chat messages per month, support for all major languages, and integration with VS Code, JetBrains, and Neovim.
Why startups need it: Copilot autocompletes your code as you type. It handles boilerplate, suggests implementations, and answers coding questions in context. The free tier is enough for a developer writing code a few hours per day. See our vibe coding guide for getting the most out of AI coding tools.
Get Copilot FreeWhat you get free: Unlimited basic searches with cited sources, 3 Deep Research sessions per day, and file analysis up to 5MB.
Why startups need it: Perplexity replaces hours of Google research. Ask a question, get a comprehensive answer with citations. Use it for market research, competitor analysis, technology evaluation, and any research task that would normally take an afternoon.
Get Perplexity FreeWhat you get free: Gemini 2.5 Pro (100 requests/day), Flash (250/day), 1M token context window, Google Workspace integration, multimodal input (text, images, video, code).
Why startups need it: Gemini's integration with Google Workspace makes it particularly useful for startups living in Google's ecosystem. Analyze spreadsheets, summarize documents, draft emails, and process data directly within the tools you already use.
Get Gemini FreeWhat you get free: Everything. Open-source speech-to-text model that runs locally. Supports 99 languages, handles accents and background noise, and produces accurate transcripts for meetings, interviews, and podcasts.
Why startups need it: Transcribe meetings, customer interviews, and user research sessions automatically. Run it locally for free on any modern laptop. Saves hours of manual transcription and creates searchable records of important conversations.
Get Whisper FreeWhat you get free: Limited free generations via Discord. Creates stunning AI-generated images for marketing, social media, and product mockups from text descriptions.
Why startups need it: Professional visual content without hiring a photographer or illustrator. Generate hero images, blog illustrations, social media graphics, and product concept art. Even limited free generations can produce enough assets for a launch.
Try MidjourneyWhat you get free: 10,000 characters/month of AI text-to-speech, 30 voices, speech-to-speech, and sound effects generation. Studio-quality audio without recording equipment.
Why startups need it: Create voiceovers for product demos, explainer videos, and marketing content. The free tier produces enough audio for several short videos per month. The voice quality is indistinguishable from professional voice actors.
Get ElevenLabs FreeWhat you get free: 500,000+ open-source AI models, inference API (rate-limited free tier), Spaces for hosting AI demos, datasets library, and a collaborative model hub.
Why startups need it: If you are building AI features into your product, Hugging Face is your starting point. Access state-of-the-art models for text, image, audio, and video tasks without building from scratch. The Spaces feature lets you deploy AI demos for free.
Get Hugging Face FreeWhat you get free: 100 tasks/month, 5 Zaps (automations), single-step Zaps, and access to 7,000+ app integrations including AI tools.
Why startups need it: Zapier connects your tools and automates repetitive workflows. When someone fills out a Tally form, automatically add them to Mailchimp, create a Notion page, and send a Slack notification. The free tier handles basic automations that save hours per week.
Get Zapier FreeHere is a recommended stack that covers everything a startup needs, using only the free tiers listed above:
Total cost: $0/month. This stack can support a startup from idea through thousands of active users.
Every SpunkArt property — spunk.codes, Spunk.Bet, and all 16 Predict Network sites — runs entirely on free tiers. GitHub Pages for hosting, Cloudflare for CDN, Firebase for real-time data, and GA4 for analytics. Zero monthly software costs, serving thousands of users daily.
Everything you need to launch: templates, checklists, prompt libraries, and playbooks. Built for bootstrapped founders.
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