As far as anyone should be concerned, any company that only offers their software via subscription is not a company that sells software. One might also note that none of the software listed below runs in the browser, because that’s asinine if not insane. Browsers are for browsing the web, not executing arbitrary code (i.e. malware) from some website on the internet that isn’t my bank. I admit that ECMAScript has made some sites easier to use, but 99% of SPAs and Electron apps need to be taken out behind the shed.
None of the following links for paid software are affiliate links, if this changes this notice will be updated.
Black Friday
Almost all single-purchase software goes on sale around Black Friday, sometimes for more than 50% off or bundled with extras. Most companies will run sales a few times a year, but Black Friday is the most reliable. Never hurts to join their mailing list and wait for a sale if you can.
Key
| Icon | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🆓 | Free |
| 💵 | Paid |
| 💾 | Open-Source (linked) |
3D
- 🆓 Blender - 💾 3D modeling and animation software that also supports 2D and hardware rendering. Scriptable and can even be used as a game engine.
- 🆓 Blockbench - 💾 Low poly 3D model editor, supports exporting to Minecraft compatible formats as well as open industry standards.
- 🆓 OpenSCAD - 💾 Open source scripting-based 3D modeller/computer-aided design. Great for parametetric models.
Audio
- 🆓 Audacity - 💾 Easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor that runs on most OSs.
- 🆓 sfxr - 💾 Sound effect generator for creating basic classic-sounding effects.
- 💵 Voicemeeter - Audio routing software range with 1-8 Virtual Audio Devices. Use to separate and duplicate audio channels for streaming or recording. Technically donationware, but certain nag features can be quite disruptive.
Data
- 🆓 DB Browser for SQLite - 💾 Visual browser for creating, searching, and editing SQLite and SQLCipher databases.
File Management
- 🆓 7-Zip - 💾 File archiver with high compression ratio. Handles common formats zip, rar, tar, gz, etc. as well as their namesake 7z format.
- 🆓 Everything - Near-instant system-wide search for Windows with filtering.
- 🆓 FileZilla - 💾 FTP, FTPS, and SFTP client, as well as FTP and FTPS server under the same name.
Image Editors & Graphics
- 🆓 GIMP (GNU Imange Manipulation Program) - 💾 Fully-featured Image/Photo editor with some support for Photoshop files and brushes.
- 🆓 Paint.NET - 💾 MS Paint with more features like layers and brushes.
Office & Publishing
- 🆓 LibreOffice - 💾 Fully-featured office suite with replacements for most MS Office products including Writer (Word), Calc (Excel), Impress (PowerPoint), Base (Access), Draw (Visio), as well as Math, a formula editor
Streaming
- 🆓 Chatterino - 💾 Stand-alone chat client for Twitch, has tabs, chat history, local logging, and more useful features for both streamers and chatters.