When is the free version enough and when is it worth paying? An overview for each category.
IDE / Editor¶
- ✅ Free: VS Code, Neovim, IntelliJ Community
- 💰 Paid: JetBrains suite ($150-250/year) — worth it for productivity
Git hosting¶
- ✅ Free: GitHub (unlimited private repos), GitLab
- 💰 Paid: GitHub Enterprise — only for large companies
CI/CD¶
- ✅ Free: GitHub Actions (2000 min/month), GitLab CI
- 💰 Paid: CircleCI, Buildkite — for large teams
Hosting¶
- ✅ Free: Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages
- 💰 Paid: AWS/Azure — when you need control
Monitoring¶
- ✅ Free: Prometheus + Grafana, Uptimerobot
- 💰 Paid: Datadog, New Relic — for convenience and integration
Design¶
- ✅ Free: Figma (free tier), Penpot
- 💰 Paid: Figma Pro — for teams
AI Assistants¶
- ✅ Free: GitHub Copilot (students), ChatGPT free
- 💰 Paid: Copilot ($10/month), Cursor ($20/month) — 100% worth it
Rule¶
If a tool saves you >1 hour per week and costs <$20/month, pay for it. Your time is more expensive.
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