How we pick and refresh listings

What gets listed

• A real, public repository. Every project must have a GitHub repository we can look up through the GitHub API. If we cannot verify it, it is not listed.
• A genuine replacement. The project has to cover the main job of the paid tool, not just one small feature. When an option only covers part of the job (for example, a whiteboard listed as a Figma alternative), the page says so.
• Usable today. Released software with documentation, not a concept or an early prototype.
• At least three options. A paid tool only gets its own page when we can list three or more real alternatives.

Where the numbers come from

• Stars, license, website, last code push, archived status: the public GitHub API.
• Short descriptions: taken from each GitHub repository, cleaned up (links and duplicate text removed). Where the GitHub text was boilerplate or pure marketing, we wrote a neutral one-line summary instead.
• Latest release: the project's public GitHub releases feed (or latest tag if there are no formal releases).
• Hosted plan and app type: checked by hand. "Not confirmed" means we have not verified an official hosted plan, not that none exists.

GitHub stars measure popularity on GitHub. They are not reviews, ratings or user counts, and we do not publish any of those.

Licenses

We show the license GitHub detects. When GitHub cannot identify a single standard license (common when a project mixes open-source code with paid "enterprise" features), we label it Mixed or custom. When a project uses a "fair-code" or source-available license that is not approved by the Open Source Initiative, we say that plainly.

Activity flags

• Active: a code push or release in the last 180 days.
• Slowing down: nothing in 180+ days.
• Inactive: nothing in over a year.
• Archived: the maintainers archived the repository.
• Active (moved off GitHub): the GitHub repository is archived only because development moved to another host. We check the new host and explain the move, with sources, on the project page.

See every project in the maintenance tracker, and recent price changes in the price increases tracker.

How often it is refreshed

An automated job re-pulls GitHub data and flags status changes. The last refresh was on Oct 29, 2026.

Featured listings

Projects may pay to be featured in the future. Featured placements will always be labeled, and paying never changes a project's data, license label or activity status. See Get featured.

Corrections

If something is wrong or out of date, or you know a project we missed, use the form on the Get featured page.