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I was a broke student who couldn't afford software subscriptions so I spent 4 months building free alternatives to all of them.

DEV Community·ToolsMatic·21 days ago
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Smallpdf wants $12/month. Adobe Acrobat wants $20/month. Password managers want subscriptions. Color tools, dev utilities, file converters - everything has a paywall now. I'm a student. I couldn't afford any of it. So I started building my own. One tool at a time, every weekend, for 4 months straight. Today ToolsMatic has 76 free browser tools: 36 PDF tools - merge, split, compress, sign, protect, annotate, convert Writing - word counter, text diff, case converter, lorem ipsum generator Developer - JSON formatter, JWT decoder, regex tester, UUID generator Design - color picker, gradient generator, contrast checker, image compressor Data - CSV to JSON, Base64 encoder, markdown previewer Utilities - QR code maker, unit converter, pomodoro timer, timezone converter Everything runs in your browser. No account. No uploads. No subscriptions. Your files never touch a server. Is it as polished as the paid tools? Not yet. But it's free. Actually free.…

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