Some of life's best things are free, just like a borrowed book from the library or a digital map that offers the shortest route to any part of the world. However, we tend to pay little attention to them, often taking them for granted.
To remind us of them, people in this online thread were listing free-of-charge items they couldn’t believe were available for free. Scroll down to find the most popular ones that are guaranteed to save you some bucks in the future!
While you're noting them down, don't forget to check out a conversation with the person who started this discussion in the first place.
Public Libraries. They do so much good for their communities, providing safe places to work, learn and read and use the internet. Librarians work so incredibly hard to make their local branches welcoming and fun places to explore and people take them for granted. I know they aren't "free" because we pay for them with taxes, but their budgets are usually incredibly small and they do their best. Most have dvds/blue-rays and video games and audio books as well if you didn't know. 10/10 would recommend.
VLC player for Pc and mobile. The best encoder and decoder ever. It can literally play every audio and video media and is totally free! Wild. The founder refused 55 million dollars for it to keep it free.
Wikipedia!
Smithsonian museums - beautiful, educational, amazing and free .
Google Maps !
Do you realize we had to pay for maps before ? And it didn't even indicate the shortest path, neither for cars nor for bikes or walks ? And it was only maps of area and not the entire freaking world ? What a great time to get lost.
Linux.
Hiking trails (most of them). Maintained, beautiful paths I can just wander whenever I want? Perfect.
The info in photos app that tells what kind of plant/animal/bug you take a pic of.
The internet! We don’t always think of it as free because you have to pay to _connect_ to the internet but you don’t have to pay to access it. It’s just there, for everyone.
WAZE. For those that don’t know it’s a GPS app that has a community of people that allows you to mark the map for hazards (99% cops). It’s saved me many tickets and has gotten increasingly popular over the years and gets more and more reliabl.
Internet Archive.
Canva is a pretty fantastic design program for basic stuff. They have a paid version with more features but even the free version is pretty robust.
I am a professional designer and use it sometimes over other “deeper” design programs for its simple UI.
Blender 3d software.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
Adblockers.
Our neighborhood parks. Walking my dog around a beautiful park is the highlight of my day.
The natural history museum in London.
Go there, it’s awesome.
GPS. It costs millions of dollars a day to maintain.
The radio.
YouTube. It’s crazy how much stuff is on there for free. Sure there’s ads but still.
The Libby app. I know it’s through your library but still, it’s such an amazing resource!
Khan Academy.
Archive of our own. Got me through a lot of pain.
Poison control.
I have adrmiration for Craigslist and how Jim kept it free (with exception from job & apt ads).
