Prices

Each paid app's price is copied from the vendor's own pricing page, loaded in a headless browser with US and English settings on the date shown. The yearly cost is the stated annual price, or 12 times the displayed monthly price. Each app page quotes the exact text the price came from and links to the page.

Right now 96 of 113 prices are verified. 15 couldn't be read automatically (the page blocked the browser, showed no price, or rendered in another country's currency), and 2 use usage-based pricing. Those are labelled on their pages, left out of every total and the calculator, and never estimated.

Prices change. Check the vendor's page before you cancel anything.

Licenses: open source vs source-available

Licenses come from repository metadata (GitHub and ecosyste.ms) plus the LICENSE file in the repository root. A tool is called open source only when its license is OSI-approved. Licenses like the Business Source License, the Elastic License and the Sustainable Use License are labelled source-available: the code is public, but the license isn't open source. Of the 149 alternatives, 139 are OSI open source and 7 are source-available; the rest are marked as not verified.

Linux, Arch and self-hosting

Desktop apps are looked up in the Arch Linux repositories, the AUR and Flathub, and the package name is shown with its install command. Server apps run on Linux by design and are marked self-hostable; where the repository includes Docker files, we say so. If no Linux build could be found, the alternative is marked “Linux unverified”.

GitHub data

Stars, last push and archived status come from each repository's GitHub page and ecosyste.ms metadata on the check date. Repositories that redirect or were renamed are flagged on the alternative's card.

What money can't buy

Listings marked Featured are paid placements and are always labelled. Some links may become affiliate links. Neither changes prices, licenses, Linux or self-host flags, or the order of the free alternatives.

Privacy

There are no ads and no trackers. The newsletter form stores your email address and the page you signed up from; the suggestion form stores what you type. The Cancelled List stores the apps you add and the name you choose, if any. To stop spam, each submission also stores a hash of your IP address mixed with the day's date, which changes daily and can't be turned back into your address.

Corrections

Spotted a wrong price, license or package? Tell @itsMattGuenther on X, or submit a better alternative. Stop Renting is built and checked by Matt Guenther.

For AI agents and developers

Everything here is meant to be read, quoted and linked, by people and by machines.

/llms.txt: an index of the site for language models, and /llms-full.txt with every app in one Markdown file.
Every app page has a Markdown copy: /apps/notion.md.
The full dataset: /data/apps.json, /data/apps.csv and /data/alternatives.csv.
Directory filters are plain URLs: /apps/?q=notes&osi=1&self=1&linux=1&arch=1&sort=price.
A savings receipt is a URL too: /calculator/?c=notion,spotify:96 (app ids from the dataset; :96 overrides the yearly amount).

The dataset is licensed CC BY 4.0: you can reuse it, including commercially, as long as you credit Stop Renting and link to the app page the data came from, so readers can see the source and the date.