Every row below is one open-source project, the expensive thing it stands opposite with a real price attached, and a liveness verdict with evidence behind it. Star counts and licences are on a hundred auto-generated repo sites. The priced comparison and the liveness check are the parts nobody else does.
The index below is alphabetical. The priced rows under it are grouped by the category of thing being replaced, because that is the shape of the question people actually ask. Figures are dated, because figures age.
Every entry, A to Z
Twenty-two entries so far. Each name goes straight to its record.
AI Job Search · Archify · Authentik · Awesome GPT Image 2 · better-documents · Blackbird · browser-use · FreeLLMAPI · God's Eye View · go-whatsapp-web-multidevice · Kubescape · Material UI · Open Executive · OpenAI Codex · OpenLogi · OpenScreen · OpenSEO · Planka · RustDesk · Securo · System Design Primer · VeraCrypt
Identity and access
The open-source alternative to Okta Workforce Identity Starter.
Authentik — self-hosted single sign-on. SAML, OAuth2/OIDC, LDAP, RADIUS, SCIM.
Alternative to: Okta Workforce Identity Starter, $6/user/month billed annually, with a $1,500 annual contract minimum — so a five-person team pays $1,500 either way. Microsoft Entra ID P1, $7/user/month.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — commit 2026-08-17 · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Cloud and Kubernetes security
The open-source alternative to Wiz Essential.
Kubescape — scans clusters, manifests and images against CIS, NSA-CISA and MITRE ATT&CK, then watches runtime.
Alternative to: Wiz Essential at $24,000/year per 100 cloud workloads, the base tier exposed on AWS Marketplace. Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security at $0.028 per vCPU per hour. Prisma Cloud, Aqua and Sysdig publish no price at all.
Licence: Apache-2.0 · Liveness: very live — commit 2026-08-17, CNCF Incubating · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Disk encryption
The open-source alternative to Symantec Endpoint Encryption.
VeraCrypt — full-disk and container encryption with no key held by anyone else.
Alternative to: Symantec Endpoint Encryption at $41.24/device/year; ESET Full Disk Encryption at $33.80/seat/year at 1-10 seats; Sophos Central Device Encryption at $24.57/seat/year retail. BitLocker is free only on Windows Pro — Pro lists at $199.99. FileVault is free on every Mac.
Licence: Apache-2.0 + TrueCrypt 3.0 · Liveness: live, with a caveat — 54 weeks between the last two stable releases, and one person wrote 76% of the last year's commits · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Project management
The open-source alternative to Trello Premium.
Planka — self-hosted kanban boards.
Alternative to: Trello Premium at $10/user/month billed annually — $1,200/year for a team of ten. Asana Starter $10.99/user/month. Monday.com bills in blocks of three seats minimum.
Licence: not OSI open source — PLANKA Fair Use License, free inside your own organisation, forbidden for reselling access · Liveness: live — security release 2026-08-10 · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Messaging APIs
The open-source alternative to Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform.
go-whatsapp-web-multidevice — a REST and MCP server over WhatsApp, self-hosted.
Alternative to: Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform at $0.004 per utility message in the US, plus a provider on top: Twilio adds $0.005/message, Wati Growth is $59/month annually with a three-user cap, 360dialog is €49 per number per month. At 5,000 utility messages a month that is $45-79 versus $5-20 self-hosted.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — v9.1.0 on 2026-08-15. Read the entry before you run it: this violates WhatsApp's Terms of Service and numbers get banned. · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Front-end components
The open-source alternative to Telerik KendoReact.
Material UI — a React component library, 8.7 million npm downloads a week.
Alternative to: Telerik KendoReact at $649-$1,199 per developer per year; Tailwind Plus at $299 personal or $979 team, one-time. The closer comparison is MUI's own line: MUI X Pro $299/developer/year, Premium $599.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — commit 2026-08-17, 1,377 open issues against 19,130 closed · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Interview preparation
The open-source alternative to Educative Premium.
System Design Primer — a free guide to system design and the system design interview.
Alternative to: Educative Premium $199/year, ByteByteGo $189/year, Design Gurus $149.20/year. It does not replace interviewing.io mock sessions at $225 each — nothing in the repo tells you your answer was wrong.
Licence: CC BY 4.0 · Liveness: slow — nothing merged since 2026-03-19, and 332 open pull requests, the oldest from April 2017 · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
Agent skills
Replaces a default, not a product.
better-documents — a SKILL.md file that applies five review passes to any business document Claude writes or reviews.
Alternative to: nothing you can buy. It replaces a default, not a product. The nearest paid market is AI deck generation — Beautiful.ai Pro at $14.50/month billed annually, Team at $40/user/month — but that sells generation, and this sells judgement.
Licence: GPL-3.0 · Liveness: slow — content unchanged since 2026-05-28; the only commit since added the licence. For a one-file prompt artifact that reads differently than it would for software · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
OSINT
The open-source alternative to Maltego Professional.
Blackbird — checks 716 sites for a username. Listed as an autopsy, not a recommendation.
Alternative to: Maltego Professional at €7,500 per seat per year. Spokeo at $19.95/month after a $0.95 trial, with "all sales are final" in its own payment policy.
Licence: none — there is no LICENSE file · Liveness: stalled — no commit since 2025-07-13, no release ever tagged, and the issues that close are closed by a bot · Figures as of 2026-08-18.
God's Eye View — live aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, fires and public cameras on one photorealistic 3D globe you can fly, track targets on, and talk to.
Alternative to: nothing you can buy. No single product sells this. The nearest priced neighbours each do one slice: Flightradar24 Business at $499.99/year, the only tier its own pricing page licenses for commercial use; MarineTraffic Essential at $100/month, which buys satellite AIS for exactly one vessel; Maltego Professional at €7,500 per seat per year. Those are four different jobs and this row does not add them up.
Not free to run: most layers need no key and no signup. The one metered line is OpenAI realtime voice, which the app caps itself at $5 a session. Commercial use routed through Cesium ion triggers their $149/month licence, so the free tool can hand you a paid dependency.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: live, but barely started — 22 of its 24 total commits landed in the last 30 days; public release 2026-08-24 · Figures as of 2026-09-08.
SEO and keyword research
The open-source alternative to Ahrefs Lite.
OpenSEO — self-hosted SEO suite: keyword research, rank tracking, backlinks, site audits and AI visibility, plus an MCP server so a coding agent can query it directly.
Alternative to: Semrush's SEO plan at $139.95/month billed monthly, $117.33/month billed annually, covering 5 websites and 500 keywords tracked daily, with a second seat at $45/month on top. Ahrefs Lite at $129/month for one user, 1,000 credits and 750 tracked keywords. Moz Pro Starter at $49/month for a single website.
Not free to run: you bring your own DataForSEO key. Minimum top-up $50, no expiry, no monthly floor, drawn down only when a request returns a result. Google SERPs cost $0.60 per 1,000 top-10 results on the standard queue. The hosted option is $10/month and adds 28% to every DataForSEO call, which the project states in its own README. These figures do not subtract from the subscriptions above: DataForSEO's backlink index is not Ahrefs' index.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — 82 commits in the last 30 days, 19 authors in the last year, v0.1.7 on 2026-09-02 · Figures as of 2026-09-08.
Fractional executives
The open-source alternative to hiring a fractional executive.
Open Executive — one executive persona backed by eight specialist Claude agents, over a 96-file knowledge base, reachable from Slack, Discord, Telegram, email or the web.
Alternative to: one fractional executive seat. Go Fractional’s published 2026 CFO benchmark: average $176/hour, typical scope 23 hours a week, starting retainer from $11,500/month — for one function, not eight. The licence is free; the compute is not, and no per-turn figure is published anywhere.
Licence: Apache-2.0 · Liveness: slow — last commit touching code 2026-06-30, no tags and no releases · Figures as of 2026-08-27.
Remote desktop
The open-source alternative to TeamViewer Premium.
RustDesk — remote desktop access you can point at your own relay server instead of somebody else’s cloud.
Alternative to: TeamViewer Premium at US$120.90/month billed yearly — $1,450.80/year, and that buys 15 licensed users but only one concurrent connection.
Licence: AGPL-3.0 · Liveness: very live — 91 commits in 30 days, last commit 2026-08-27, stable 1.4.9 on 2026-07-06 · Figures as of 2026-08-27.
Screen recording
The open-source alternative to Screen Studio.
OpenScreen — GPU-accelerated screen recorder and demo editor. No watermarks, no subscription.
Alternative to: Screen Studio at $9/month billed yearly — $108/year, or $20/month if you pay monthly — and it is macOS only. OpenScreen runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — 989 commits in 30 days, v1.10.0 on 2026-08-24 · Figures as of 2026-08-27.
Browser agents
The open-source alternative to Browserbase Startup.
browser-use — lets an AI agent drive a real browser, on your own machine or your own container.
Alternative to: Browserbase Startup at $99/month for 100 concurrent browsers and 500 browser hours. The Developer tier is $20/month, and there is a free tier at 3 concurrent browsers and one browser hour.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — 131 commits in 30 days, 0.13.8 on 2026-08-16 · Figures as of 2026-08-27.
Job hunting
The open-source alternative to TopResume.
AI Job Search — a Claude Code framework that reads postings, tailors the CV and cover letter and tracks the applications. Its author used it to get hired in 69 applications.
Alternative to: TopResume, whose own page lists one-time packages at $179, $229, $349 and $599. Those are one-time fees, not a subscription — so this avoids a purchase, not a recurring bill.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — 108 commits in 30 days, v1.6.0 on 2026-08-19 · Figures as of 2026-08-27.
Peripheral configuration
Replaces a default, not a product.
OpenLogi — a native, local-first app for Logitech mice, keyboards and Litra lights, over HID++.
Alternative to: nothing you can buy — Logi Options+ is $0, but wants a Logi ID for Smart Actions and runs 400–500MB. The nearest paid like-for-like is BetterMouse at $7.99, once.
Licence: Apache-2.0 or MIT · Liveness: very live — 542 commits in 30 days, v0.8.3 on 2026-08-30 · Figures as of 2026-08-31.
Personal finance
The open-source alternative to YNAB.
Securo — a self-hosted finance manager: accounts, budgets, net worth and optional bank sync, in Docker.
Alternative to: YNAB $109/yr; Monarch Core $99.99/yr; Copilot Money $95/yr; Tiller $99/yr — though the bank sync is not free either, at $15/yr for SimpleFIN in the US.
Licence: AGPL-3.0 · Liveness: very live — 103 commits in 30 days, v0.14.5 on 2026-08-27 · Figures as of 2026-08-31.
LLM API routing
The open-source alternative to OpenRouter.
FreeLLMAPI — stacks the free tiers of 34 providers behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with failover and quota tracking.
Alternative to: OpenRouter, which takes no markup on inference but charges 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum on credit purchases, and caps its own free models at 50 requests a day until you have spent $10.
Licence: MIT — but its live model catalog is $19/yr, and free installs run 30 days behind · Liveness: very live — 182 commits in 30 days, v0.9.0 on 2026-08-26 · Figures as of 2026-08-31.
Coding agents
The open-source alternative to Cursor Pro.
OpenAI Codex — a terminal coding agent that reads your repo, edits files and runs commands.
Alternative to: Cursor Pro $20/mo; GitHub Copilot Pro $10/mo; Claude Code in Claude Pro $20/mo — though Codex itself needs a ChatGPT plan from $8/mo, or API credits.
Licence: Apache-2.0 · Liveness: very live — 1,217 commits in 30 days, rust-v0.151.0 on 2026-08-29 · Figures as of 2026-08-31.
Prompt libraries
Replaces a default, not a product.
Awesome GPT Image 2 — 544 structured, reusable prompt cases and 20+ templates for GPT-Image-2.
Alternative to: nothing you can buy — a 165,000-prompt bundle sells for $0.00 on Gumroad. The only priced product in the category is the maintainer's own site, at $9 to $49 a month.
Licence: MIT for the scaffolding — the repo's own disclaimer says the prompt cases may not be free for commercial use · Liveness: live — 13 commits in 30 days, cases still landing 2026-08-28 · Figures as of 2026-08-31.
Architecture diagrams
The open-source alternative to Ilograph Pro, and to a cloud service that shut down.
Archify — turns a codebase or a plain description into an interactive architecture, sequence or data-flow diagram, delivered as one self-contained HTML file.
Alternative to: Ilograph Pro at $18/month billed annually, where exporting a self-contained HTML file is itself the paid feature. Eraser Starter at $15/member/month billed annually, metered at 40 AI credits a month. Structurizr, the architecture-diagrams-as-code incumbent, has retired its cloud service entirely; the surviving self-hosted licence is £300/month for 1 to 20 users, billed annually, and counts viewers and embeds as users, not just editors.
Cost to run: free. The rendering and validation are local Node, with no inference bill of its own.
Licence: MIT · Liveness: very live — 105 commits in the last 30 days, v2.16.0 on 2026-08-30 · Figures as of 2026-09-08.
How to read a row
"Alternative to" is not "replaces." A bill only stops if you were already paying it. If you are not currently paying Okta, adopting Authentik does not save $3,600 a year — it means you never start. Both are worth knowing; they are not the same sentence, and this directory keeps them apart.
Liveness is a verdict with evidence, not a vibe. Very live means commits this week. Live means shipping, with the caveat named. Slow means the maintainer is present but the queue is not moving. Stalled and abandoned mean what they say. Every verdict carries the date it was checked, and any row older than 90 days gets re-checked before it is trusted.
Some rows say "nothing you can buy," and they mean it. Most entries here stand opposite a product with a price. A few stand opposite a default — the way something behaves when nobody configured it. Those rows are not a failure to find the incumbent. They are the honest answer, and inventing a competitor to fill the column would make the whole directory less trustworthy.
Free software still costs something. Hosting, a database to back up, an engineer's afternoon, a feature behind the project's own paid tier. Every entry states what does not disappear.
New entries are added here as they ship. If a row looks stale, it probably is — the date on it is the honest answer.