10 GitHub repos that have no business being free

Every so often you install an open-source project, use it for ten minutes, and think: this should cost money. Not because it's missing anything — because it's better than the paid thing you were about to buy. Here are ten repos that have no business being free. Star them now; clone them this week.

1. immich-app/immich

github.com/immich-app/immich — a self-hosted photo and video library that is, frankly, a better Google Photos. Automatic phone backup, face and object recognition, shared albums, multi-user — all running on your own box, with your memories never leaving it. It replaces a storage subscription you'd otherwise pay for every month, forever, and it's free.

2. ollama/ollama

github.com/ollama/ollama — run Llama, Mistral and dozens of other models locally with one command. No API bill, no data leaving your machine, no rate limits. It quietly replaced a whole category of paid inference for anyone doing local or private work.

3. oven-sh/bun

github.com/oven-sh/bun — a JavaScript runtime, bundler, package manager and test runner in one binary, with cold starts several times faster than the incumbents. It collapses a toolchain people stitch together from four products into a single free download.

4. n8n-io/n8n

github.com/n8n-io/n8n — a workflow-automation engine that does what Zapier and Make charge per-task for, except you self-host it and run unlimited workflows. Connect APIs, add a function node, ship. The "task pricing" model looks absurd next to it.

5. supabase/supabase

github.com/supabase/supabase — a full backend (Postgres, auth, storage, realtime, edge functions) you can self-host, positioned squarely against Firebase. Open Postgres underneath means no lock-in. It's a backend-as-a-service you simply don't have to rent.

6. coollabsio/coolify

github.com/coollabsio/coolify — a self-hosted Heroku/Vercel/Netlify. Point it at a server, connect a Git repo, and it builds and deploys your apps and databases with a dashboard on top. The PaaS bills it replaces are some of the easiest money in software.

7. comfyanonymous/ComfyUI

github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI — a node-based interface for image and video generation pipelines. The control it gives over diffusion workflows beats most paid generators outright, and it runs on your own GPU. Hobbyists and studios use the same free tool.

8. microsoft/playwright

github.com/microsoft/playwright — browser automation and end-to-end testing across Chromium, Firefox and WebKit, with auto-waiting and a recorder that writes the test for you. It's the backbone of paid testing-cloud products — and the library itself is free.

9. excalidraw/excalidraw

github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw — a hand-drawn-style whiteboard for diagrams and architecture sketches that loads instantly and stores nothing on a server unless you ask. It does the 90% of paid whiteboard tools that anyone actually uses, with zero account required.

10. langchain-ai/langchain

github.com/langchain-ai/langchain — the framework a huge share of LLM apps are built on: chains, tools, retrieval, agents, the connective tissue between a model and your data. An enormous amount of paid "AI app builder" tooling is a thin wrapper over what this gives you for free.

How to try three of them in five minutes

You don't need to read docs to feel why these matter. Run these:

# Local LLM, no API key, no bill
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh && ollama run llama3.2

# Bun: install and run a TS file with zero config
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash && bun init -y && bun run index.ts

# Excalidraw: nothing to install — open it, sketch, done
# → https://excalidraw.com

Three commands, three categories of paid software replaced, total cost zero.

Why it matters

The lesson here isn't "open source is free labor." It's that the tools are no longer the moat. When a Firebase, a Zapier, a Heroku and a local GPT all have a free, self-hostable equivalent one git clone away, the advantage isn't owning the software — it's being the person who knows these exist and can wire them together. The repos are free. Knowing the stack is the edge.