Side projects shouldn't require a budget. Many excellent developer tools offer generous free tiers or are completely open source. We curated the best free tools across the development stack for personal projects.
| Tool | Free Limits | Primary Use | Quality | Key Limits | Our Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VS Code | Unlimited | Editor | Excellent | None | 9.5/10 |
| GitHub | Generous | Code hosting | Excellent | Actions minutes | 9.4/10 |
| Vercel | Generous | Deployment | Excellent | Bandwidth | 9.3/10 |
| Supabase | Good | Backend | Excellent | Pauses inactive | 9.1/10 |
| Cloudflare | Generous | Infrastructure | Excellent | Worker limits | 9.2/10 |
| Railway | $5/mo credit | Hosting | Good | Usage based | 8.8/10 |
| Figma | 3 projects | Design | Excellent | File limits | 9.0/10 |
| Postman | Generous | API testing | Good | Collaboration | 8.7/10 |
| Linear | 250 issues | Issues | Excellent | Issue count | 8.9/10 |
VS Code is completely free with no limits. The extension ecosystem covers every language and use case. Microsoft backs it but it's genuinely open source.
GitHub gives you unlimited public and private repos for free. Actions for CI/CD, Pages for hosting. The complete code hosting solution at no cost.
Vercel deploys frontend projects for free with generous limits. Automatic deploys from Git, preview deployments, and serverless functions included.
Supabase gives you Postgres, authentication, storage, and realtime for free. The Firebase alternative that doesn't lock you in. Pauses after inactivity.
Cloudflare offers free CDN, DNS, and DDoS protection. Workers provide serverless at the edge. R2 storage with no egress fees.
Railway gives you $5 free monthly credit for any services - apps, databases, whatever. Simple deploys from Git. Great for full-stack side projects.
Figma's free tier gives you 3 projects with full features. Enough for side project design work. The industry standard design tool, free for personal use.
Postman's free tier covers individual API testing needs. Collections, environments, and basic testing. Paid only needed for team features.
Linear offers free access with a 250 issue limit. The best-designed issue tracker available. Fast, keyboard-driven, and beautiful.
We evaluated free tiers on real side project needs.
VS Code (editor) + GitHub (hosting) + Vercel (frontend) + Supabase (backend) + Cloudflare (CDN/DNS). Complete stack at $0/month for side projects.
Usually when you get real traffic. Supabase pauses after inactivity. Vercel/Railway have bandwidth limits. For hobby projects, you rarely hit limits.
Vercel for frontend with some serverless. Railway for full-stack with databases. Cloudflare Pages for static with Workers. All have good free tiers.
