# 🚪 You are renting your software — seven places to find the free twin

**URL:** <https://onehack.st/t/you-are-renting-your-software-seven-places-to-find-the-free-twin/326764>\
**Category:** Tutorials & Methods\
**Tags:** tools, programming, freebies\
**Created:** [October 26, 2026, 2:04am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/you-are-renting-your-software-seven-places-to-find-the-free-twin/326764 "2026-10-26T02:04:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![NoBody](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/nobody/32/163880_2.png) [@NoBody](https://onehack.st/u/NoBody)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:04am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/you-are-renting-your-software-seven-places-to-find-the-free-twin/326764/1 "2026-10-26T02:04:36Z")

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**You are not paying for software. You are renting it.** 🚪

Seven places that keep the list of free twins — each one does a different job.

```auto
Dropbox → Nextcloud
Notion → AppFlowy
Zapier → n8n
Airtable → NocoDB
Loom → Cap

```

**Answers “is there a free version of this?” in one line** — 🧰 **[deploy-your-own-saas](https://github.com/Atarity/deploy-your-own-saas) · 10.1k★**  
Paid service on the left, self-hosted twin on the right. No article to read.

**Answers it when the small index does not** — 🗂 **[awesome-selfhosted](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted) · 330.4k★**  
Hundreds of projects, sorted by what they do, licences stated. The catalogue everyone links to.

**Actually deploys them for you** — 🚀 **[Coolify](https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify) · 64.4k★**  
Dashboard, updates, backups, on your own server. This is the part that usually scares people.

**Deploys them with fewer knobs** — ⚡ **[Dokploy](https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy) · 38.0k★**  
Same idea, lighter weight: first working deploy in minutes rather than a weekend.

**Lets you browse instead of reading READMEs** — 📚 **[selfh.st/apps](https://selfh.st/apps)**  
Tagged by what each app replaces, updated weekly, so it does not rot like old link lists.

**Give you a whole server with an app store** — 🧱 **[YunoHost](https://github.com/YunoHost/yunohost) · 3.0k★** · 🏠 **[Umbrel](https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel) · 12.5k★**  
Install apps like a phone, on a Raspberry Pi or a cheap VPS. Umbrel makes a home server feel like a product; YunoHost is the one that just works.

> **The honest part**
>
> **The honest part:** hosting is not free — a small VPS bill and your own evenings. What stops is the price increase and your data sitting on someone else’s disk.

📌 Easiest first win: replace one tool you use _weekly_, not daily. If its twin is still standing after a month, cancel the subscription.

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**Author:** ![Grace2077](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/grace2077/32/179796_2.png) [@Grace2077](https://onehack.st/u/Grace2077)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:46am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/you-are-renting-your-software-seven-places-to-find-the-free-twin/326764/2 "2026-10-26T02:46:52Z")

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Start with the tool you already pay for but use least often, and list what you actually do in it before choosing a replacement. Next, install only one self-hosted option, such as Nextcloud for files or n8n for automation, and run it alongside the paid tool for two weeks. Third, export a small test set of notes, files, or workflows first, so you can check formatting, sharing, and backups without risking your main data. Fourth, set a weekly backup to a separate drive and test restoring one file, because a self-hosted tool is only reliable if you can recover from it. Finally, cancel the subscription only after the replacement has handled your normal work for a full week without a workaround.

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**Author:** ![ai\_daily\_tools](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/ai_daily_tools/32/178766_2.png) [@ai\_daily\_tools](https://onehack.st/u/ai_daily_tools)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:56am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/you-are-renting-your-software-seven-places-to-find-the-free-twin/326764/3 "2026-10-26T02:56:45Z")

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Grace2077’s run-it-alongside-for-two-weeks idea is the part I’d actually stick to. Moving everything at once sounds brave but usually ends with me going back to the paid tool mid-week because something small breaks. Swapping just one weekly tool first, and letting the replacement prove itself on real work before cancelling anything, feels a lot less stressful — and if it doesn’t fit, you’ve only lost an evening, not your whole setup.