Our Top 100 Budget Buys: Affordable, Tested Tech That’s Actually Worth It

If our favorite budget pick is out of stock, or you want something a little different, we suggest our second-favorite budget laptop of the moment: the Acer Aspire 5 (model A515-57-56UV). With decent performance from a 12th Gen Intel CPU and more than 11 hours of battery life, it’s excellent for daily use. Throw in a comfortable keyboard and touchpad, reasonable memory and storage capacities, and an affordable price, and it’s the easy pick as the understudy to our favorite budget laptop.

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Flex 5i 14-inch is a well-built, low-cost convertible laptop with a snappy keyboard and a bright screen. It offers decent performance for its price and includes both HDMI and USB Type-C ports. While the battery life and display aren’t front-line strengths, it is a solid option for general office work, internet browsing, and webcam sessions. If you want a modestly priced, versatile, and fairly portable convertible, this is our current low-cost favorite.

When it comes to affordable Windows 2-in-1 laptops, the top cheap detachable 2-in-1 is Lenovo’s IdeaPad Duet 5i. With the option to use it as a slim, sturdy tablet, or a capable laptop with an included keyboard cover, it’s ideal for grab-and-go use, whether it’s for productivity or entertainment. Highlights include a sharp, 2.5K resolution display with vivid color, a surprisingly snappy Intel Core i3-1215U processor, and a day’s worth of battery life. The end result: better value than most competitors, and a perfect alternative to more expensive 2-in-1 laptops.

Looking for a fantastic budget Chromebook without skimping on the essentials? The 16-inch Lenovo 5i Chromebook is a massive deal at less than $500, delivering decent speed and lots of useful features through a big and bright 1080p screen. The whole laptop is driven by a punchy Intel Core i3 processor, and it can last for up to 12 hours on battery. Complete with a Wi-Fi 6E radio, a 1080p webcam with a privacy shutter, and a lot of USB ports, the Lenovo 5i Chromebook holds our Editors’ Choice award for low-cost Chromebooks for good reason.

The Samsung Galaxy A14 5G offers a lot more than you’d expect from a $200 phone. It has admirable performance, support for the major 5G bands, and an industry-leading upgrade path that’ll keep the phone functioning smoothly for years to come. We also like that it has a large, sharp display, a reliable fingerprint reader, solid battery life, and good everyday performance for the price.

Apple’s 2022 iPhone SE keeps the crowd-pleasing small design and Touch ID fingerprint sensor of the previous model. It also now has 5G, which gives it better reception than its predecessors, especially as T-Mobile and Verizon expand their 5G networks. Of course, if you can find a 2020 model of the SE around, you can get similar app performance for even less money.

The $100 Amazon Fire HD 8 is a simple media consumption slate that costs less than most other 8-inch tablets. It won’t wow you, but it doesn’t need to.

Affordable all-in-one (AIO) desktops continue to be a shrinking portion of the PC market, and really good ones are hard to find. In our recent tests, we found the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 3i to be one of the sleekest-looking budget AIOs of recent memory. For the money, the IdeaCentre delivers in the screen department, backed up by decent speakers for an all-around enjoyable multimedia experience in the low-cost category. With reliable day-to-day productivity performance in our test model, the IdeaCentre AIO 3i gets enough right to top this small class.

Prices on AMD’s Ryzen 5000-series processors have fallen to all-new lows after the launch of Intel’s 13th Gen “Raptor Lake” and AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series chips. Though the Ryzen 5000 CPUs are officially outdated, they remain capable, workable options for everyday PCs. AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600G, in particular, stands out, thanks to the inclusion of a relatively capable integrated graphics processor (IGP)…and thanks to it dropping from its launch price by almost half. It now sells regularly from some outlets for as low as $130.

IGPs aren’t as fast as dedicated graphics cards, but powerful ones like you’ll find inside the Ryzen 5 5600G can run a wide selection of games. You may have to turn down the graphics settings and stick to 720p resolution for demanding titles, but older, less-demanding titles should be playable at 1080p with midrange settings or better. And if you aren’t gaming, the Ryzen 5 5600G eliminates the need to buy a separate graphics card for basic video output, which puts it among the best options in its price range for any budget-oriented PC builder.

The very cheapest PC cases can come in under $50, but do you really want to build your modest PC dream machine into a flimsy, cheap-looking box? Fractal Design’s styling seldom disappoints, and while the Pop XL Silent at $99 is right on the border of midrange pricing, it’s worth the slight extra spend. This big, bold ATX chassis gives you some basic soundproofing, with bitumen lining on some of the panels, as well as a huge, attractive glass window for showing off your case’s innards. (A solid left side panel is an option if you don’t want that kind of visibility but do want more muffling.) Plus, you get four quality preinstalled fans for effective air cooling, and the roomy interior lives up to the XL in the name, with space for large liquid coolers and even certain oversize motherboards.

Like with most other components, motherboard prices have trickled upward in recent years. But budget options with solid features still do exist. ASRock’s B760 Pro RS is the best budget Intel motherboard that we’ve reviewed recently. Based on Intel’s B760 chipset, this board features support for Intel 12th Gen “Alder Lake” and 13th Gen “Raptor Lake” processors, as well as DDR5 memory. And it has a solid feature set for just $179.99 MSRP, or as low at this writing as $139.99 on sale.

You don’t give up too much for that price, either. The B760 Pro RS can’t overclock, lacks 20Gbps USB support, and doesn’t have a Wi-Fi controller (the last, nothing that a cheap USB Wi-Fi adapter can’t fix if you need it). It’ll get you in on the ground floor of Intel’s latest desktop chips, with their dual Performance and Efficient core designs, for a fine price, and you won’t feel under-served.

The Crucial P3 may seem to be just a PCI Express 3.0 drive adrift in a world of 4.0 models. But plenty of PCs out there simply need an inexpensive 3.0-compatible M.2 drive for a quick-and-dirty upgrade from a small SSD or (heaven forbid!) a hard drive. The P3 uses economical QLC memory, so it isn’t designed for your video-editing workstation or web server, but it’s a fine value for your average PC and a cheap drop-in drive if you have an extra slot on your desktop to let you expand, say, your Steam game library. Plus, it performs well enough to squeeze the reasonable max out of the PCI Express 3.0 bus. And a 4TB top-end capacity means you can go huge for under a dime a gigabyte, if you have the need for that much space.

We’ve been fans of ADATA’s Elite SE SSDs for a while; they’re rugged and compact, and get you lots of gigs on the cheap. (What more to want from a basic external SSD?) The thing about the SE880 is that it has a hidden bonus—support for the uncommon USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 spec—that promises excellent, Thunderbolt-like transfer speeds, but you likely won’t be able to leverage it. (Reason why? Gen 2×2 ports are rare.) Still, even at ordinary speeds, the SE880 is a good value, coming in at 13 to 15 cents per gigabyte at list price, and likely cheaper from resellers. As long as 500GB or 1TB is enough space for your needs, it’s a fine, economical pick—it even includes discrete cables for USB Type-A and Type-C system-side hookups.

The $159.99 Brother MFC-J4335DW offers paper handling suitable for a micro/home office or personal use and stands out for its speed and low cost per page (0.9 cent for monochrome pages, 4.7 cents for color ones). As a four-function all-in-one or multifunction printer, the MFC-J4335DW prints, copies, scans, and faxes. It offers a 150-sheet input tray, plus a single-sheet bypass feeder and has a 20-sheet ADF for copying or scanning multipage documents. It can connect to your computer via USB, Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi Direct, and it prints from iOS and Android mobile devices using the Brother mobile app. (See more cheap printers.)

This low-cost all-in-one inkjet model is suitable for both homes and home offices, so long as your emphasis is on the printing side of things, not scanning or copying multipage documents. (It has a flatbed scan surface, but no automatic document feeder.) You get impressive output quality for just a bit over $100, and the printer itself is compact for what it is. We’d opt for this model over some closely matched, similarly priced competitors if your print jobs tend to include some photos in the mix.

Move over, Canon and HP! Pantum’s M7102DW mono laser all-in-one is compact enough to serve as a personal printer, but capable enough for a small office or workgroup, delivering fast output and solid text quality. It’s not a feature powerhouse, and you’ll want to reserve it for document printing, as opposed to graphics output.  But it’s competitively fast for its price range, and ideal if you want all the advantages of an AIO without paying a lot in cash or desk space.

Kodak’s line of snapshot printers is a solid-value budget photo-printing option, and the Step Instant Mobile Photo Printer cranks out quick, high-quality snapshots using Zero Ink (Zink) paper, which uses crystals embedded in the surface to generate the image. Zink printers can’t match the image quality of dye-sublimation models, but this Kodak is a small-format pocket photo printer that’s easy to like primarily because of its extraordinary value, at just $70. Or, you can opt for a $120 starter bundle that includes a 20-pack of paper, a carrying case, a small photo album, markers, thousands of stickers for a host of occasions, and even an improvised clothesline for drying your creations. An optional battery lets you print on the go, too—it’s rated for up to 25 prints on a charge.

The Monoprice Mini Delta V2 3D Printer costs a pittance for a full-size 3D printer (list price is $199.99, and we’ve seen it for less), yet it proved a cinch to set up and use—it requires no calibration and provided nearly misprint-free printing in our testing. The V2 uses the “delta 3D” printing architecture, which is quite different from the Cartesian architecture found in the vast majority of filament-based printers. It supports a variety of filament types, including PLA, ABS, and TPU. Its print size is small, and print quality is only average, but it’s a great way for 3D printing newbies to dabble in the hobby on a budget. (See more cheap 3D printers.)

The Epson Perfection V39 has been on the market for a long time. This moderately priced ($99.99) flatbed scanner specializes in photographic prints; it outdoes the general-purpose scanners built into all-in-one printers when it comes to high-quality photo scanning. The V39 can also scan pages into searchable PDF and other formats, although its lack of a sheet feeder limits it to scanning short documents for non-photo work. One note: It can’t handle film or negatives. (You’d need a pricier scanner for that.)

Vankyo’s Performance V700W is a 1080p projector that’s designed for home entertainment. It delivers surprisingly robust audio and high brightness for its price class, plus good input lag for casual gaming. Plus, its use of a single LCD and a white-LED light source guarantees an image that’s free of rainbow artifacts, which will be a big deal for those users who are prone to seeing them. (Not everyone is.)

The Kodak Luma 75, at around $180, is a tiny, finely crafted yet minimalist take-anywhere portable projector. Weighing just 5 ounces and measuring 0.8 by 3 by 3 inches, it easily slips into a coat pocket. Its native resolution is 640 by 480 pixels, though it can display 1080p input without introducing scaling artifacts. A built-in battery lets you project for 90 minutes between charges. This easily focused projector handles photo and video content well and can mirror PowerPoint presentations; its 1-watt speaker is adequate for a small room. Its rated 30 lumens of brightness limits your image size, but for such a tiny device it does a more than credible job.

The Stream Wireless is a branded, basic keyboard from Cherry. Now, Cherry is the most recognizable key-switch brand around when it comes to gaming and enthusiast productivity keyboards. But while the company’s iconic mechanical key switches are second to none, how does Cherry’s general-use, non-mechanical keyboards fare?

The answer: extremely well. The Stream Wireless works over a 2.4GHz connection protected by 128-bit AES encryption. Designed for everyday work and outfitted in sober style, it features a silent keystroke, and the comfortable SX scissor key switches deliver an immaculate typing feel. It may have limited support for macOS (keep it to Windows) and modest customization software, but it delivers the basics on an attractive low-profile platter that’ll run you just $50.

The $24.99 Ocean Plastic Mouse represents Microsoft’s continued sustainability effort. Made from 20% recycled ocean plastic and shipped in 100% recyclable packaging, this budget mouse delivers quality tracking for a mobile clicker and impressive battery life. The Ocean offers the basics, nothing more and nothing less, but it’s easy to forgive its lack of extra features considering its attractive design and ease of use. That, and you can feel good knowing that you’ve made the earth a little bit greener—or should we say, bluer?

The Archer AX10 is a trifecta: For starters, it’s about as inexpensive as Wi-Fi 6 routers get, with an MSRP of just $80 and often on sale for less. But the low price is only part of its appeal. Unlike other cheap routers, the AX10 actually delivers decent performance where you need it most, on the 5GHz band. And while you don’t get the 160MHz channel bandwidth that’s the hallmark of flagship routers, you do get almost everything else, from parental controls to easy web- or app-based setup.

Yes, it’s possible to cover your entire home in a blanket of Wi-Fi for less than $100. We know this because the Vilo Mesh Wi-Fi system can do it. This ensemble isn’t the fastest mesh system on the market, but it significantly undercuts any other three-piece mesh network we’ve tested on price. The Vilo kit is sure to eliminate any dead spots a midsize house could have, and it’s an unbeatable value as long as you’re not looking to stream 4K video or download huge amounts of data. (See more budget routers and mesh systems.)

With smartphone cameras as good as they are, there’s little reason for budding photographers to grab a compact. If you want to get started with a full-frame model, the same type of sensor format the pros use, we recommend starting with the Canon EOS RP. It’s the best way for beginners and price-sensitive shoppers to get started with a full-frame sensor, either for $999 as a body only or $1,299 with the RF 24-105mm STM kit lens. Additional lenses start at $199.99 if you want to expand your kit.

Canon may have been initially slow to release affordable lenses for its EOS R mirrorless system, but it has done a good job playing catch-up. The $300 RF 16mm F2.8 is our favorite affordable lens for the EOS R. Its ultra-wide angle of view is perfect for interiors and landscapes, and it should be a hit with the vlogging crowd too.

Sony started with full-frame mirrorless cameras before anyone else, and as a result has the biggest library of lenses with robust support from third parties. The Rokinon 35mm F2.8 AF (also sold under the Samyang brand) is one of the low-cost superstars, available for around $200 in a favorite moderately wide focal length. What really wins us over are its featherweight build and sharp optics. 

Instant cameras are always a hit at parties, and a breath of fresh air from the smartphone photos that dominate our social feeds. The $80 Fujifilm Instax Mini 12 is the latest in a long-running series that prints glossy, high-quality instant photos on either color ($7.50 for a 10-shot pack) or black-and-white ($8.25 for a 10-shot pack) Instax film. It couldn’t be easier to use—there’s just one button and a nifty twisting lens collar for mode selection.

Adding a screen to a smart speaker to make it a smart display lets you see more information and even watch videos on it. Of course, it can also make the device much pricier. The Amazon Echo Show 5 thankfully remains affordable at a starting price of $85, with sales often cutting it to as little as $55. It can do everything an Echo Dot can, plus it lets you watch movies on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, check your Ring doorbell and home security cameras, and make video calls with friends. It works well as a bedside clock radio, too.

The Wyze Bulb Color is a refreshingly affordable smart light bulb you can control with your phone and voice. At $39.99 for a four-pack, it’s a small investment that delivers a big impact, with the ability to display 16 million colors. It also supports device-triggered automations, schedules, sleep routines, and more.

The iRobot Roomba 675 offers a lot for its sub-$300 price, including Wi-Fi connectivity for app control, scheduling, and voice support in addition to excellent cleaning capabilities. It automatically adjusts to different floor surfaces, rarely gets stuck, and works quickly.

At $15 for a pack of two, the Wyze Plug is easily the most affordable smart plug we’ve tested, but that doesn’t mean it skimps on features. With this little device, you can turn anything that plugs into a wall outlet into a connected gadget you can control from your phone. It has a built-in Wi-Fi radio, supports Alexa and Google voice commands, and works with other Wyze products and loads of third-party smart devices using the IFTTT protocol.

Don’t let the Wyze Cam OG’s small size and rock-bottom price fool you: This is a highly capable indoor/outdoor camera that offers clean 1080p video, color night vision, intelligent sound and motion alerts, local storage, and flexible voice controls. If you need higher-resolution 2K video, you can look to the Wyze Cam v3 Pro, but it costs more than twice as much.

The Chromecast With Google TV finally adds a remote and on-screen interface with a new and simple menu system to the popular media streamer.

With long battery life, a color touch screen, and all the basic activity and sleep features you need, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is the best fitness tracker you can get for less than $100. The tracker’s simple interface and well-designed companion app make it easy to monitor key fitness and health metrics, including your activity, blood oxygen saturation, breathing rate, sleep, heart rate, and more. Its Exercise app supports up to six activity shortcuts on the device at a time, and you can customize the list via the Fitbit app.

The Puro Sound Labs JuniorJams hit a number of sweet spots for kid-friendly headphones. Sonically, they feature a volume-limited wireless experience that still delivers solid bass depth, so that their relatively low volume doesn’t feel like a punishment to your child. There’s also a cable included for wired listening, and it too limits volume levels. At $69.99, the price is slightly high for this category, but the JuniorJams offer the best value for the price.

Budget-priced mechanical gaming keyboards are hard to come by and often aren’t worth your time, but IOGear scraped together a solid mechanical model with some snap. The Kaliber Gaming Hver Stealth may lack some of the features found on higher-priced keyboards, but its key switches, a crossbreed type that falls somewhere between linear and tactile switch designs, deliver a sensitive key press that’s ideal for first-person shooters and similar twitchy titles. And given that the Hver is just $50, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better deal on some seriously solid gear.

Introduced in 2020, the SteelSeries Rival 3 is a little older than some of the choices on this list, but that speaks to the enduring value of this bargain clicker. At just $29.99, this is a no-frills mouse with a quality sensor that delivers fast movements at a respectable DPI. The three-part RGB rim adds some flair to the mouse’s subtle curves, while the low weight and solid build quality ensure long gaming sessions without issues. It favors a claw grip over a palm grip, but its value proposition might just be enough to sway noobs and hard-core gamers alike.

Curved monitors are an excellent way to immerse yourself in whatever you’re watching or whatever you’re playing, and today, the barrier of entry has never been lower. Enter the NZXT Canvas 32Q Curved Gaming Monitor, the first monitor release from boutique PC vendor NZXT. The curved monitor impressed us with its bold, clean design, good color range, and low input lag. It straddles the line of affordability, coming in at $339.99 with a stand and $289.99 without. This affordable curved panel does mandate some concessions, such as built-in speakers and tolerating a shaky HDR implementation. But the 165Hz refresh rate and wide, swooping panel makes up for it. If you’re looking to save some cash while maintaining high-frame-rate performance, the Canvas 32Q Curved Gaming Monitor is a worthy choice.

The Razer Barracuda X offers wireless game audio for the PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and even many Android phones with its USB-C transmitter (plus wired connectivity for everything with a headphone jack). It feels and sounds good, with a clear microphone for voice chat, recording, and streaming. It’s a lot of gaming headset for $99.99, and we’ve seen it on sale for way less.

Now, cheap is relative here. We’ve seen cheaper chairs than the $299.99 Razer Enki X, but none built well enough for us to recommend. The Enki X feels like a premium gaming chair, with an attractive design and good materials such as diamond-quilted faux leather. The chair is as comfortable as more expensive seats, and its back reclines—a nice touch. On the negative side, it sacrifices a full-chair tilt mechanism to hit its wallet-friendly price. But it’s still a commendable value.

Developers Flying Wild Hog and Leonard Menchiari blend Japanese history, mysticism, black-and-white visuals, and fantastic sound design to create a highly cinematic game that pays homage to classic samurai films from the 1950s and 1960s. However, Trek to Yomi’s simple, satisfying sword-based combat is what drives you through its five-hour runtime. This $9.99 indie game isn’t particularly difficult or complex, but it’s hard not to recommend this stylish budget title to anyone looking for a short, fulfilling actioner. (See our roundup of favorite PC games.)

Vampire Survivor has all the hallmarks of a cheap Steam shovelware title that’s worth no one’s attention outside of YouTube mockery. However, this survival game’s $3 price, early-access status, and suspiciously familiar sprites hide an amazingly addictive retro-shooter that’s similar to Robotron. It’s filled with surprising strategic depth and lots of unlockables, plus it receives regular updates that add more characters and weapons.

Imagine a fast and frantic one-on-one sports game that features potent special moves, unique playable athletes, and tight defensive options. Now imagine said sports game as a weirdly addicting cross between Pong, flying disc, and volleyball. That’s Windjammers 2. The $19.99 sequel to the classic Neo Geo arcade sports title has all of the original game’s intense action, plus new mechanics and near-flawless rollback netcode. If you’re tired of Madden NFL’s stale annual releases, give this thrilling alternative a try.

Witness the origins of the Kazuma Kiryu, the Dragon of Dojima, with Yakuza 0 ($19.99). Come for the thrilling, melee-brawling action, but stay for the engrossing story, hilariously quirky side characters, and wacky mini-games. There are mundane activities to explore, such as buying Japanese snacks from convenience stores or hitting up the batting range. Conversely, the more involved side quests see you recruit real estate agents or manage a cabaret club for massive profits. Yakuza is a story about beating up gangsters, but it’s also a hyperbolic slice of Japanese life.

When you graduate to a full security suite, you get much more than basic antivirus protection. In addition to the firewall, vulnerability scan, and other bonus features found in K7 Antivirus, K7 Total Security adds spam filtering, parental control, system tuneup, ransomware protection, and more. Listing for $27 per year, it costs considerably less than most competitors. Its features don’t all perform on par with the best, but if its strengths match your needs, it can be a good choice.

Like the company’s antivirus and entry-level security suite, K7 Ultimate Security costs a good bit less—in some cases a whole lot less—than competing products. Its usual price of $38 per year was discounted to $21 at this writing, while rivals cost anywhere from $60 to over $100. This security mega-suite is loaded with features and extends security protection to macOS, Android, and iOS as well as Windows devices. Besides enhancing the system tuneup and parental control components found in the entry-level suite, it adds a full local-only backup system.

At $60 per year, Sophos Home Premium doesn’t sound like a cheap antivirus solution—until you realize that that subscription lets you install and manage protection on up to 10 PCs or Macs. That brings the price per device down to $6, undercutting even K7 Antivirus Premium’s discounted price. Only one of the testing labs we follow includes Sophos in its regular reports, but that lab awards it AAA certification. And the program earned an excellent score in our own hands-on malware protection test. Best of all, you can manage your installations remotely, even from your smartphone. No more driving across town to sort out an aging relative’s antivirus woes.

When you purchase a security mega-suite, especially one that covers Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices, you’re not looking for a single license. Rather, you want enough to protect all your gear. Avast Premium Security gives you 10 licenses for $89.99 per year, which is less than $10 per device. All the antivirus labs we follow consider Avast important enough to test, and it routinely earns perfect or near-perfect scores. It also performs well in our hands-on tests. On Windows, you get a full-fledged suite with antivirus, firewall, secure deletion, ransomware protection, and more. Avast also boasts a rich feature set on Android, though it doesn’t do as much to protect your macOS and iOS devices.

All VPNs do essentially the same thing: They encrypt your web traffic so your ISP can’t see what you’re up to, and they make it harder for snoops to track you as you move around the web. Mullvad(Opens in a new window) is no different. It uses a privacy-protecting account system and accepts cash deliveries if you don’t want to use an online payment method. Mullvad also takes a strong stance on privacy and transparency. This VPN service stands apart with its flat, cheap pricing: Five euros per month ($5.48 USD at this writing) gets you access to all the service’s features, including multi-hop connections. It’s close to half the price of what most competitors charge while offering most, if not all, of the same functionality.

Adobe has made significant strides at transforming its professional-grade digital art tools into something more affordable for hobbyists. For example, if you can’t afford everything Photoshop has to offer, you can always try Photoshop Express. It’s free to a point and the paid version costs just $4.99 per month or $34.99 per year.

Digital audio workstations (DAWs), which let you record, edit, mix, and master music, tend to cost hundreds of dollars. And although Apple’s GarageBand is free, it works only on Macs, and it lacks a proper mixing board (among other things). Enter Cockos Reaper, a full-blown, cross-platform DAW with multichannel recording, mixing, music notation, scoring for video, plenty of customization options, and other facilities normally associated with software that costs much more than its paltry $60. For that price, Reaper offers nearly all of the features and flexibility, if not the ease of use or visual appeal, of powerhouse digital audio workstations like Avid Pro Tools and Apple Logic Pro X.

The $54.99 Affinity Designer from Serif costs just a little more than you’d pay for a single month’s use of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. Sure, it’s not the industry standard that Illustrator is, but it’s a full-featured vector image editor with a familiar-feeling interface that’s snappy to use. You do lose some pattern-making ability, and you don’t get perfect compatibility with non-Serif software document formats. But for basic and intermediate use, you’ll find a tremendous amount of value here among graphic design packages.

If you write movie and TV scripts, you need a writing app that can help you appropriately format your work. The screenwriter’s fave Final Draft is the one you’ll hear mentioned most often, but Fade In’s $79.95 is a lot more palatable than that app’s $249 (even if Final Draft is often discounted to around $200). Despite its bargain price, Fade In is a competitive screenwriting package that helps scriptwriters work efficiently and in an organized fashion. It helps you keep track of all the details of your scripts, such as locations, character names, and scene numbers. Fade In is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and you can use the same license to install the software on as many personal desktops as you own. Once you pay for the software, you get free upgrades to any new versions. And you can add the mobile apps for just $4.99.

IDrive is one of the fastest and most full-featured online backup players around. It’s also among the cheapest. Clear interfaces in the IDrive apps for all major platforms let you store, sync, and share cloud files easily. You also get a significantly higher storage quota than any major competitor, with plans starting at 5TB for under $80 per year (and that’s frequently discounted). IDrive also offers full disk-cloning software and remote web-based backup management.

Counter-Strike began as a humble Half-Life mod, but has become a foundational text for tactical, multiplayer shooters. Since 2012, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has continued the legacy as one of Valve’s most vibrant team esports titles. Other shooters come and go, but Counter-Strike’s finely tuned counter-terrorism firefights are forever—and free!

The free League of Legends combines role-playing stat progression, tower defense, and real-time strategy to produce one of the most revered games in the genre. Every playable champion is rich and varied, and new ones get added regularly to shake up the meta. To top it off, the League’s competitive ranking system is perfectly designed to fire up your tier-climbing addiction.

Featuring fantastic combat, great visuals, and expansive endgame content, Lost Ark will fuel your loot-grinding obsession for months to come. The game launched in other regions in 2019, so the Western release comes with two years’ worth of polish, content updates, and balance adjustments. The game uses a top-down, Diablo-esque camera perspective that’s different from other MMO titles, but once you get used to the look, there’s no shortage of brawl-heavy gameplay. And it’s free, unlike the $9.99 Black Desert Online.

A free mobile multiplayer card game based on Marvel superheroes sounds like something most serious gamers can safely ignore. However, the designers behind Hearthstone turned Marvel Snap into a deckbuilding masterpiece thanks to sublime strategy mechanics. Once you annihilate your opponent with Hulk or ruin their day with Hobgoblin, you’ll be ready to dive into another matchup. You can battle for free and unlock cards at a steady clip, too. Of course, you can turbocharge the experience by purchasing a battle pass that lets you quickly receive cards and bonus goodies.

For many years, Avast has been a mainstay of free antivirus protection. With Avast One Essential, you get Avast’s powerful antivirus protection along with some elements of the Avast One security suite. All of the testing labs we follow test Avast, and it regularly posts perfect or near-perfect scores. This free tool extends protection to macOS, Android, and iOS devices, though not at the same level as its Windows protection. It earns excellent scores in our own hands-on tests, and its features include ransomware protection, a simple firewall, and a bandwidth-limited VPN. 

Sending a message using traditional email is about as private as sending a postcard or thumb-tacking it to a community bulletin board. Even when your email travels over HTTPS channels, it’s still exposed to the email provider. With PreVeil, you get full-scale, business-grade email encryption at a cost of exactly zero. You don’t have to spin up a new email address, and the service integrates automatically with Apple Mail, Gmail, and Outlook. Forgot your all-important encryption password? A unique and sophisticated key recovery system lets you get it back with a little help from your friends.

Bitwarden is an open-source password manager with a generous free tier and inexpensive premium plans. Under the free personal plan, you can store an unlimited number of passwords and sync them across all your devices. Bitwarden offers native apps for Windows (including a Microsoft Store app), macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Bitwarden’s browser extension supports Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari, as well as the less common Vivaldi, Brave, and Tor browsers. The free version also lets you enable multi-factor authentication via an authenticator app.

It’s hard to beat free, and if you’re looking to start a podcast or record music, or just need a tool to assemble and convert some audio samples, Audacity is your program. Now owned by Muse Group, this venerable software started life as an open-source, two-channel stereo editor, but it has grown and expanded to include multitrack recording, many effects, and spectral and spectrogram views for sample-level editing. Despite unlimited undos and redos and a new clip editor, Audacity is destructive at heart, with no support for VSTs or other real-time plug-ins. But if you’re careful with your edits, Audacity will get you where you need to go with no money down—or ever, in fact.

When you need Photoshop but you don’t have Photoshop, you turn to GIMP. GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is the longtime open-source photo editing alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It’s not nearly as slick or powerful as Photoshop, but it’s free. GIMP includes many of the same tools, features, and functionality as Photoshop, like layers, plug-ins, painting, text, filters, selection, and masking. It’s often slow and a little clunky, but if you need Photoshop but can’t afford it, use GIMP.

Coursera is one of the best online learning sites, and it excels at giving you access to real courses from prestigious institutions such as Yale University, National University of Singapore, Sciences Po, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and others—all at no cost. In other words, you can get all the lectures and reading materials from a real class at, say, Princeton University without paying a dime. Coursera partners with private companies, too, to offer free classes for personal enrichment. You can also pay for courses that result in a professional certificate or bachelor’s or master’s degree. If there’s something you want to learn about, from arts and sciences to programming, but you don’t have the funds, Coursera may make it possible.

Where can you go to learn the basics of something from school you’ve since forgotten? For most academic subjects, the best place is Khan Academy. Khan Academy is a free online learning service with course material covering math, science, art history, and other subjects. The lessons contain videos, readings, and interactive components, which are sequenced so you can start from square one with any subject and slowly build your knowledge. The site focuses on kindergarten through early college courses, making it an ideal help source for students. Given what it offers and the fact that it’s entirely free to use, Khan Academy is the best learning site for academic subjects.

Duolingo(Opens in a new window) is one of the best apps for learning a language, and it just happens to be free. You’re unlikely to become fluent using only Duolingo, but it’s an excellent way to learn the ins and outs of a language that’s new to you or to improve your grasp of a language you’ve studied before through practice and exposure. Because it offers close to 40 languages, there’s a good chance it includes the one you want to learn. It’s appropriate for adults and children alike, with mobile apps and a web app that works more like a short video game than what you might expect of a language app.

Considering that to-do list apps are a dime a dozen, it’s downright shocking that so few of them are truly helpful, well designed, and affordable. Todoist, however, is all that. Whether you use the wonderful free version or pay to upgrade to an inexpensive Premium account, Todoist is clearly the best to-do list app on the market. It works on all your devices, tracks your productivity, and lets you geek out on organizing and analyzing your life. If you need an app to organize your tasks, either by yourself or in collaboration with others, you need Todoist.

A dating app like Tinder, which prioritizes fast hook-ups over drawn-out relationship analysis, needs to have as many users as possible. That’s why it costs you nothing to sign up and instantly start swiping to let people know whether you find them hot or not. If you want to pay money for perks such as profile boosts and Super Likes, you can do that, too. Still, free Tinder promises plenty of potential romantic rewards, unlike eHarmony’s no-cost tier.

Wix is an excellent website builder—and unlike many of its competitors such as Gator or Squarespace, you can use it for free. You won’t get a custom domain, and you’ll need to be okay with ads appearing on your site, but in return you’ll enjoy powerful tools for building fantastic desktop and mobile sites. Besides, there’s nothing stopping you from upgrading later on.

Spotify is king of the streaming music service hill. Sure, it faces steep competition from the feature-rich Apple Music, but Spotify’s deep catalog, early-access albums, collaborative playlists, video, and renowned podcasts are second to none. Even better, Spotify offers ad-supported accounts with limited skips, which is something that Apple Music lacks once you exhaust that service’s free 30-day trial.

Tubi doesn’t offer a limited free tier that simply acts as a teaser for a premium video streaming plan. Instead, it serves up its entire library of major studio releases—for free! Sure, it has ads, and certain movies and TV shows may come and go without warning. Still, Tubi proves you can enjoy great streaming video content without paying for a subscription.