Tech glossary · Costs

What the tools cost.

Approximate list prices for every paid or freemium service in the glossary, in each vendor's own currency. Prices change often, so every line links to the vendor's own pricing page, which is the one to trust before you commit. Taxes such as GST or VAT are usually extra.

111 services · checked September 2026

111 services

Programming languages

Free or open source in this area: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, WebAssembly, PHP, Python, Java, Kotlin, Dart, Rust, Go, C and C++, SQL, Shell scripting.

Frontend

Free or open source in this area: React, Vue, Angular, Svelte and SvelteKit, Nuxt, Astro, React Router and Remix, Vite, Create React App, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, Radix UI, Zustand, Redux, TanStack Query, React Hook Form, Zod.

Mobile apps

Free or open source in this area: Jetpack Compose, Android Studio, Material Design 3, Coroutines and Flow, Gradle, Hilt and Dagger, KSP, Room, DataStore, WorkManager, Glance, OkHttp and Retrofit, kotlinx.serialization, Credential Manager, R8 and ProGuard, SwiftUI, TestFlight, Flutter, React Native, Kotlin Multiplatform, Capacitor, Ionic, Trusted Web Activity (TWA), WebView.

Desktop apps

Free or open source in this area: Electron, Tauri, Tokio, reqwest, sysinfo and hardware sensors, macOS.

Building blocks and outside APIs

Free or open source in this area: CodeMirror, Recharts, uPlot, Vico, cmdk, Sonner, Pyodide, Octokit.

Maps and location

Free or open source in this area: Leaflet, OpenStreetMap.

How the web works

Free or open source in this area: Browser APIs, localStorage and sessionStorage.

Networking

  • VPNPricing model: Free tier

    WireGuard and OpenVPN are free to run yourself. Tailscale is free for personal use (up to 6 users) and about $8 per user a month for businesses. Proton VPN has a free plan; Mullvad costs a flat €5 a month.

    Pricing page for VPN (opens in a new tab)

Free or open source in this area: Firewall, SSH.

Backend and APIs

Free or open source in this area: Node.js, Bun, Express, Fastify, Hono, FastAPI, Django, Flask, Spring Boot, Ktor, Uvicorn and ASGI, Pydantic, GraphQL, tRPC, gRPC, WebSockets, Server-Sent Events (SSE).

Auth and identity

Free or open source in this area: Magic links, Two-factor authentication (2FA), Passkeys, OAuth 2.0 and social login, Auth.js.

Security

Free or open source in this area: OS keychain, DOMPurify, YARA rules.

Payments

Email and notifications

Free or open source in this area: Web push, Telegram bots and Discord webhooks.

AI and LLMs

Free or open source in this area: ONNX Runtime, Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Databases and storage

Free or open source in this area: SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB, IndexedDB, Drizzle ORM, sqlx, better-sqlite3, PostgREST, pg_cron.

Backend platforms

Free or open source in this area: PocketBase.

Hosting and cloud

Free or open source in this area: Wrangler, Nginx.

Dev workflow and DevOps

Free or open source in this area: Git, pnpm, Yarn, VS Code, ESLint, Prettier.

Testing and quality

Free or open source in this area: Vitest, Jest, pytest, Testing Library, Playwright, Puppeteer.

Analytics, SEO and growth

Free or open source in this area: Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, Conversions API (CAPI), Google Search Console, IndexNow, Lighthouse.

Crafted in the dark. Shipped to the world.

Tell us what you are building. You get a private project space with a proposal and a line-by-line quote within a day.