This is the 2024 updated list. I replaced the infographics and right after you’ll find download links tutorials and guides on how to use these. I replaced the broken links.
If you need a software for a specific purpose you can just google it right?
But then you’ll have to go through the painstaking task of narrowing down those which:
ARE FREE. As in completely never pay for an upgrade or extra features 100% FREE.
Follow Privacy Compliance. Software that does NOT use your data for other purposes. Goodbye Facebook!
ARE SECURE. All links given here go right into the official site’s download section which are secure , free of viruses and malicious malware.
95% of the software here is open source. The remaining ones will either require you to a student email. There’s no need for upgrades or any payments to get extra features.
Don’t download everything. Bookmark this page and look through the list if you ever need software for anything in your school years.
ESSENTIALS
Note Taking
1. OneNote
OS: Mac, Windows, Linux & Chrome OS (Through Web)
This is one of the many note taking free software which allows you to organize all your notes in a hierarchial order sort of like a textbook. You can save pictures, videos, audio files in every blank page. Note can be taken either through a computer or a tablet that has. stylus. Notes are also synchronized across all devices. It’s not open source but it’s always been free for everyone. Certain features can be unlocked through a MS Office subscription but those are rarely if ever needed.
Similar to One Note however it’s more customizable. You can change the interface your liking and add plugins to customize to your liking. Notes are also synchronized across all devices. This is a free software. Not open source but there’s no need to pay for a premium version.
Similar to Obsidian and One Note with a bit more of “technical” formatting available: you can choose to type in a markdown or a WYSWYG (what you see what you get) editor. Unlike Obsidian and OneNote. You can sync it with Dropbox, one drive, nextcloud or any cloud service of your choice. It’s free software and open-source.
A much simpler note-taking app. It only allows simple formatting kind of like you would on MS Word. There are no advanced features. They can’t be organized into hierarchies either. but with no ability to organise notes in a hierarchy. However, notes can be tagged, searched and synched to the cloud across all devices. Great for temporary and quick note-taking. It’s also 100% free software.
Probably the best alternative for those switching out of Office. Some do so because they can’t afford it or because MS Office does not allow for installation outside the main drive. Free Office has the most similar interface to MS Office with all its features. Perfect choice for newbies like the name implies it’s free software.
It has some problems with cross compatibility. In other words, using libre office docs on MS Office software may not work out sometimes. Thus if you’re writing a document to send it to a professor or.a friend. It may be wise not to use this one. It’s all free software and open source. The advantage of Libre Office is that it has more features and is a lot more similar to the real MS Office.
Likewise OnlyOffice supports most office programs including a word, sheet and a slide editor. It has the advantage of being more compatible with Microsoft Office however it lacks some of the features of Microsoft Office. There’s a enterprise and development edition on the official website which you don’t really need unless you’re a company. Again it’s 100% free software.
A free and simple text-editing program like Microsoft Word. If you don’t need spreadsheets, presentation editor or any of the other Office suite programs, just download AbiWord, save storage, RAM and money. Currently lacks support for Windows available on Linux right out of the box.
PDF reader and editor. Easier to set up, use and edit than Adobe PDF reader. It also supports DJVU files. Free software you don’t need to pay a cent for.
The fastest PDF document reader but it’s just a reader. Some PDF cannot be opened but that’s rare. Updates are still underway. 100% free software no need to pay for upgrades.
You don’t really need a PDF viewer and Editor for Mac. Macs have their own built-in PDF software which is called Preview. However, it can’t read Djvu files. Download this install it and you should be good.
If you know what Latex is and the amazing things it can do for your papers, you’re going to need a document word processor that is based on LaTex. Lyx is something I used to get started, the advtange here is that it’s very user friendly yet capable of outputting complex formats , diagrams, styles and equations.
This is a desktop publishing 100% free software which is what magazine editors and textbook editors use. You can use it to make brochures, posters, newspapers and books. There’s microsoft publisher too but that isn’t free unless you have a MS office subscription or a student email.
It is the go-to-app if you’re writing a novel, journal or screen play. It has a management system which you cana use to sort of organize your writing into chapters, sections and so on.
A very simple free software for distraction free writing. It only supports text with no interfaces and no bells an whistles. It’s full screen with a black background and white text. Definitely useful when you are on a deadline and you need to focus as much as possible. FocusWriter is another alternative. Mac Users can use OnlySwitch in the time management section, it will get rid of all the icons docks and menus so you can have a blank canvas to write.
Zotero will organize all of your sources and make it super easy to make correct citations. It stores your sources, download citations from databases. The web app can also gather your sources and make citations. Alternatives are Jabref, Mendeley, CitaVid,EndNote.
This is also a mindmap free software which can be used for any type of brainstorming graph. It’s mostly used by the social science as well as the management of ideas and arguments.
This is a much simpler mindmap free software which is only available through the web. No installation required. Diagrams can be saved in the cloud or your computer.
The problem with Discord is that most people use it for all sorts of things thus there is sort of a distraction problem while you’re interacting with peers. This is another good option though you can always use Zoom instead. The advantage of TeamSpeak though is the high connection quality (less lag, better audio quality). There’s an option for upgrades but you just need the free softawre version.
Alternative app to Google Docs. All members to edit the same document in real time. Each one will have different text colors so you can differentiate who’s writing what. Plus there’s also a chatting feature.
Take a screenshot then instantly share with just one click. You can also share images, text and audio files through QR Codes, uploading to the web or by generating a URL.
TreeSheet allows you to place text and images into cells which you can then resize and move around to your liking. You can use it for brainstorming, to make a to-do-list , to draft a possible format for a publication, etc. Basically anything that requires a custom structure.
This is sort of like a Wikipedia within your computer. You can write separate pages and then organize them into a tree-like or hierarchial structure. You can use it to simulate what a possible documentation will look like or just to keep notes neatly organized. Just like wikipedia it’s free software for everyone.
The most popular flashcard free software for students. It uses the well-proven spaced reptition system to enhance memorization. A must have for med students.
This is an image recognition app which you can use to “look it up” on google. Say you “lens” a flower, then the app will return similar images which will have a description. You can also use it for text or character,etc.
You can record tasks to have them repeated. Say you want to record every mousemovement and keyboard input when you look for specific items on Amazon. You can use this app to do so. It’s 100% good free software for students.
This is just an app with relaxing and monotone sounds such as wave, forest, air, bird sounds and so on. Useful for relaxation, concentration and sleep.
A timer based on the pomodoro technique. It’s supposed to be set on 25 min of study time with 5 min breaks in between but you can customize it to lower or increase the timings.
Unlike Window’s or OSX NightMode, Redshift will adjust the outgoing blue light according to the sun’s position that is according by the hour so that by night time ~6pm, all blue light will be blocked helping you sleep better at night and making using the computer easier on the eyes.
It is important you look 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds (20/20) rules to reduce eye strains when working with a computer. You can also move around every 20 minutes to avoid back problems.
This is the most popular accounting free software for students to keep track of expenses. Track much money you can expect to have if adjustments are made, etc. Basically an accounting or book keeping free software.
This is a web-based app which includes a graphing calculator, a scientific calculator, an equation solver, a matrix calculator and a geometry tool which you can use to draw figures.
This is free software for students with a Microsoft Account. You can sovle equations through it. You can either type the equations or scan them. You can also graph equations. The cool thing about the equation solver is that you get a step by step solution.
This is a very cool free software for students to use along with Excel or if you have any data in a two colum format. Once you input your data you can visualize patterns and make data analysis.
Another calculator. However this time you can choose to input parameters through a console by typing them out. This is a nice starting point for newbies who might later might move on to MatLab or Python or Sage where pretty much everything needs to be typed for a solution. You are not required to type equations you can also just use an interface.
This built-in free software is available in all Macbooks. If you’ve got an old version of OSX you may need to look it up in the app store. Regarless it is free and an awesome tool even for research. You can graph 3D dimensional graphs through equations too.
You can get 5GB of free storage with One Drive. If you have a student email, you can probably get MS Office too which means you get an extra 1TB (1000GB) of storage.
No MS Office? No problem. If you have an Amazon Account you can get 5GB of free video or photo storage. If you are a Prime member, you get unlimited full resolution photo storage. This is super useful if you are a photographer or you’d like to keep all photo data as most other cloud storage service will compress image data thus you will lose information in the process.
No MS Office? No Amazon Account? No Amazon Prime? No problem. Google gives you 15GB of free storage and unlimited photo storage. Note that photos here will be compressed so although you will be able to save and look at picture whenever you want if you are a photo editor you will lose photo data and will be unable to perform some corrections.
The most complete video player. It includes all codecs in the old CCCP and KCP packages. If you use MPV over any other media player, you’ll save the hassle of installing codecs and worrying whether or not a format can be played out.
Potplayer has a much more intuitive UI. It’s not as sophisticated as MPV but it will probably have everything you’ll ever need. MPV is slightly more powerful if you want support for some obscure formats or rely on custom codec packs.
The most popular audio player. You can customize the interface to your liking. You can also customize the theme and everything in the way it looks. There’s also a volume normalization which will adjust volume to a consistent level . You can also normalize volume across all audio files selected or all audio files in a folder. You can install more plugins (all free software) to add more functions.
Started as an anti-malware but as of 2022 it is a full blown antivitus. It’s free because it comes with a windows license just be sure to keep it on. If you are careful when browsing online and don’t download anything suspicious. You will never catch a virus and defender is all you’ll ever need.
Hands down the best FREE software antivirus you can download. I’ve personally been using it for 10 years and I yet have to catch a virus. Not only that there’s no ads, no pop-ups and no-privacy violations (they won’t collect your browsing data). Again you don’t need to pay for any of the “updated” versions. Install this and windows defender and you’ll be fine.
Works just like Kaspberry. Complete, non-intrusive, ad-free and privacy-driven antivirus. Do not use Avira, Avast and all the others. Either use this one or Kasbperry. All other antiviruses seem to have at least one disadvantage (ads, data-stealing, heavy ,etc).
Antiviruses aren’t usually good at removing ads and preventing you from browsing malicious websites. This is why it’s important you ALSO have an adblocker on. This is the most-well known AdBlock plugin and works in every browser you know of.
Although you can get free WiFi at school, on your workplace and even on the street. They often require you to accept a root certificate. This means that if you accept it, everything you type will be visible to the system administrator. This may not be the best alternative or something the average student will be aware of but the point of making on the list is that so you learn about your right to privacy and then consider using it or not. It also block ads.
This free software will scan throuh the entire computer and tell you where most of your storage is going and which are files are the culprit for taking up sace. Mac users can install Derlien.
This is a disk-imaging and cloning free software. That means you can use it to make back-ups of your computer, USB drives or external drives. I recommend you use this before you try to free up space as you may delete crucial files for your computer to run.
This is a disk-imaging and cloning software. That means you can use it to make back-ups of your computer, USB drives or external drives. I recommend you use this before you try to free up space as you may delete crucial files for your computer to run.
It’s a little dificult to use since you have to rely on a command line however it’s complete free software for university students and it does everything you can think of regarding pdf file manipulation. Use the tutorial linked below to get started. If it’s too hard PDF SAM is a good free alternative, there’s a paid version but there’s no point in buying it. The reason I did not place PDF SAM here is because I don’t want to encourage people buying anything although there is nothing to buy from PDF SAM it’s just that I don’t like their website having a “purchase” tab.
This is a swiss army tool for the conversion of document formats. You can for example convert doc files to pdf files or doc files to publishing software files and so on.
This software will take video files and convert them to other formats , extract audio and saved them into a separate files or make them a GIF file so you can share it on a messaging group. You can also take JPEG (image files) and make them into a video or a GIF file and much much more.
Handbrake is a swiss army tool for the conversion of video files from any format to any other format. It’s totally free and open source, it can take a while dpeending on what computer you have though. There’s no reason to pay for software if you have this, all software will be slow becaue there’s a lot of data to manipulate.
It’s not limited to mp4 to mp3 conversion. It can actually be used for pretty much any multimedia file. I just wasn’t able to find an open free source program dedicated to “mp4” to mp3 conversion.
It will allow you to remote access your own computer through the web. Any user who needs to access a computer must have the address and a given password or the person on the other side of the screen must give access to the user manually. Thus it can be used for someone to help you with troubleshooting as well. .
This is what your favorite streamers use to broadcast their streams. It has a steep learning curve but it has everything you need to start your own stream. Bet you didn’t know it was completely free software.
This is an image viewer. The reason for it being in the list is because both OSX and Windows OSX default image viewer isn’t very useful and not very pretty plus they don’t support all image formats. This a complete and snappy image viewer supports all formats university students may have received from professors and research.
The problem with Irfanview is that it doesn’t scale well with operating systems outside of Windows including mobile devices. HoneyView has a better time dealing with this becase it has a better interface. It has better support for comics and manga.
How many times have you lost text or data from using cut/paste several times consecutively?Yeah we all do. Copyclip will save every “Clip” so you don’t lose any copied or cut data or text. Note that Windows has this feature built-in and can be accessed through WIN+V. There are Windows alternatives like Ditto. and ClipX if you’d like something a little more complex.
Handbrake is a swiss army tool for the conversion of video files from any format to any other format. It’s totally free and open source, it can take a while dpeending on what computer you have though. There’s no reason to pay for software if you have this, all software will be slow becaue there’s a lot of data to manipulate.
This is the alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Although it doesn’t have nearly all the features of Adobe Illustrator. Most graphic designers getting started should find it useful.
This is like PhotoShop without all the fancy features most people don’t use when editing photos and images. It has the interface of Paint with the functionality of PhotoShop. Don’t get it wrong it’s not a MS Paint replacement it actually does much more than that. Another perk is that it’s a lot faster.
GIMP is a little more advanced than Paint.NET and it’s the closesst thing you’re going to get to PhotoShop with a a free open source software. Thus it may be suitable if you have to move on to PhotoShop later.
This is the kind of software you’d use to get started for 2D animation design. Pencil 2D, through a tablet or through the mouse, gives you the tools to make amazing drawings then
refine them and color them to create awesome colorful frames that will be later put up together to make a 2D animation.
Has more features than Pencil 2D but it’s still user friendly and doesn’t have a steep learning curve. Thus it’s also a great starting point for newbies. Unlike, Krita it is more lightweight so it will run a lot better on systems lacking in RAM.
Krita isn’t any different from GIMP and Inkscape and can also be said to be a PhotoShop alternative. Just like Alpaca and Pencil 2D, it’s mostly used for digital painting and animation.
This is a image editing software that’s mostly devoted to 2D Animation thus it has a lot more features and a different interface than Krita and Alpaca. There’s a lack of tutorials and documentations so the learning curve can be a pain.
First choice for advanced and serious video editing. This can be said to be a adobe premiere replacement. It has all of the advanced effects, features and functions like keyframing for animations.
Open shot is a Kdenlive replacement. You can use it whenever suddenly Kdenlive stops working due to updates. Unlike, Kdenlive is has a more appealing user interface. Although it may not have the same functionality and advanced features of Kdenlive, it’s pretty close so casual editor looking for a more professional edition than what a WMM editor will find it useful.
If you’re just getting started and you just want to split/merge clips and applying simple titles and effects then you just need something like Windows Movie Maker which is what ShotCut is all about.
Although this is a free software it still offers all the features paid musical notation software has. It doesn’t really lack the features you find on other Musical Notation software so there’s not much to say. **Linux** users can use flat.io as a web-based alternative.
This is basically a free version of FL Studio without the bells and whistles. Great synthetizers area available there like ZynAddSubFX so you will see no need to go after paid DAWs. Plugins. and more features are also available.
Audacity is more suited for MIDI production although you can develop audio with it, there are better alternatives for it and one of these is Ardour. Surely there are far better DAWs out there but they all require either a subscription or a very high one-time payment.
The only open source and entirely free 3D Creation suite. You can do pretty much anything related to 3D work: modeling, animation, simulation, rendering,rigging, motion tracking, video editing and game development. The software however is mostly designed for 3D animation and it’s the best 3D animation software you can find.
You’ve probably already come across those super highly detailed video game demos uploaded on youtube. The most famous one is Zelda’s Unreal Engine demo. It is highly sophisticated and probably not something you want to start with but it’s always there as a free option as long as you don’t use it for commercial purposes.
This is the most popular game engine used on several of the titles you know of and play. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android games. You get free access however if you make a commercial game title, you will have to pay fees.
This is an open source totally free engine for game development, video production, animation, architecture and engineering modeling. Unlike Unity or Unreal Engine, you don’t need to pay a fee if you make money off whatever you design or make with it.
If you have a valid email address and are currently enrolled at an institution you can use most AutoCAD products including but not limited to Revit, AutoCAD 3D and Maya.
Sketch up has been commercialized now and you have to pay for a license. However, everyone is still using it for free and it’s not something illegal. It’s something the company itself approves of: using the 2017 version. You can draw pretty much whatver 3D model you need to. It’s a lot simpler than AutoCAD but it should still be useful even for your thesis.
This is nowhere near the same level of AutoCAD but it has the necessary basic functionalities to serve its purpose as a great introduction to CAD design and also as a last resort software for the presentation of 3D models if an AutoCAD subscription isn’t available.
It carries the same concept as FreeCAD that is a CAD program with limited functionality. The advantage of TinkerCAD is the fact that it’s available on the web.
SageMath is a Matlab replacement that unlike Matlab is open source and thus it tries to gather functions and resources from all free mathematical code and sources. The developer designed mostly for pure mathematics and theoretical applications however it can be used for all other purposes too.
This is like a MatLab replacement. You’d need to know a bit of the programming language used in C++ or Matlab to use it. Once you do, it opens a whole new world of possibilities for simulation, graphs and any math-related calculation. Octave however lacks a few features MatLab has but unlike MatLab is completely free.
This is a very fast and straight to the point code editor. It’s the perfect choice for beginners. It doesn’t have extra bells and whistles but just enough features and functions for you to get started with programming or something you can used as an advanced programmer for a faster workflow without much need for libraries.
Vim is one of the most popular code editors, if not the most popular, because you can customize the interface to your liking so that not only are you more comfortable with how the program works but also to maximize producitivity.
Visual Code is more of a complete all around IDE that’s also very configurable. This is something you’d use, in my opinion, once you’re quite far into programming to the point that interfaces and customized work environments don’t really improve your workflow but easy acess to LSPs support will.
There are tons of virtual machine softwares to choose from but only two of these are mainstream and FREE. Virtual Box made it here simply because it doesnt have. a paid version. It works equally just as well as VMWare.
If you’re developing apps for Android MOBILE devices you’re not going to get a better IDE than Android Studio. All the features you need to export and test a mobile app are there.
Eclipse is an IDE more suited for Java applications be it android devices, iOS devices or PC devices. I will not use over it over Android Studio for android devices though. Eclipse is more versatile but a lot more RAM hungry (may be low on commodity machines).
Both R and Python are the two pillars you need for Data Science. Anaconda issoftware package management system for both R and python which includes features, tools and plugins to make data science easier and more accesible.
The University of Colorado has simulations on pretty much every introductory physics, chemistry, earth science, biology and math topic. It’s not something you’ll be required to user but it’s definitely handy to either teach other students or get a sense yourself of the concepts you are exposed to in these subjects.
I am physicist and electrical engineer. My knowledge in computer software and hardware stems for my years spent doing research in optics and photonics devices and running simulations through various programming languages. My goal was to work for the quantum computing research team at IBM but Im now working with Astrophysical Simulations through Python. Most of the science related posts are written by me, the rest have different authors but I edited the final versions to fit the site's format.
I am physicist and electrical engineer. My knowledge in computer software and hardware stems for my years spent doing research in optics and photonics devices and running simulations through various programming languages. My goal was to work for the quantum computing research team at IBM but Im now working with Astrophysical Simulations through Python. Most of the science related posts are written by me, the rest have different authors but I edited the final versions to fit the site's format.
18 thoughts on “101 Free Software for Students in 2024”
i can unlock it from other computers, clear your cookies or cache that must be the problem if not use facebook or twitter. If that doesnt work, I’ll send you the entire list to your email. Let me know. But it does work as you can see some ppl have shared it with google plus already.
Weird. I made sure they were all free. The only thing that’s missing from this list is a compatibility check from number 55 to 100 I believe. It’s probably free if you used older versions or was free before for students.
I want to say that the antivirus perfectly protects the computer. Personally, I have been using antivirus software for a long time. I like that I can download the antivirus absolutely free of charge, here https://veadug.com/en/antivirus
Hello. Thank you for the interesting post. I want to say that I have been programming for a long time. I think, to solve this problem, you should look here https://amrama.com/technoexpert/best-printers-for-mac A bug in the firmware is really common.
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So I tried to “unlock” the content by sharing it on G+ but it’s still locked. Thanks! 🙁
I fixed it. Thank you so much for letting me know. I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.
Thanks for following up. Still locked for me. Do I have to share again to access?
Nope. Still can’t get in.
i can unlock it from other computers, clear your cookies or cache that must be the problem if not use facebook or twitter. If that doesnt work, I’ll send you the entire list to your email. Let me know. But it does work as you can see some ppl have shared it with google plus already.
Nope. Locked & stays locked, G+ & Facebook.
Looks like ReadCube is only a free 30-day trial
Weird. I made sure they were all free. The only thing that’s missing from this list is a compatibility check from number 55 to 100 I believe. It’s probably free if you used older versions or was free before for students.
Thanks! But it is still locked after sharing.
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Liked on G+…. still locked. Followed your comments in thread but to no avail.
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thankyou
I shared on google and still cannot access the 100 sites you provide.
it misses Workflowy, Simplenote, Google Drive, Google Photos,, Telegram and Avast
I want to say that the antivirus perfectly protects the computer. Personally, I have been using antivirus software for a long time. I like that I can download the antivirus absolutely free of charge, here https://veadug.com/en/antivirus
Computer science student come here and start learning programming FREE https://www.programmingponds.com/
Hello. Thank you for the interesting post. I want to say that I have been programming for a long time. I think, to solve this problem, you should look here https://amrama.com/technoexpert/best-printers-for-mac A bug in the firmware is really common.