About
Why Repo Radar and Stack Radar exist
Every small business runs on software, and most of it is paid for every month. For almost every one of those tools there is a free, open-source project that does the same job. I am collecting both, checking them, and putting them side by side, so you can decide quickly whether the free one is good enough to replace what you pay for.
Why I am doing this
I am a passionate product person. Over the past eight years, I’ve built several startups from the ground up, pivoting and re-pivoting along the way. Today, I build on my own, using AI where developers used to be. Like every founder, I pay for software every month before I earn anything.
My earlier startups closed. As a bootstrapped single founder, I could build a good product, but I neglected to tell anyone it existed — which, it turns out, is the important part. I did come away an expert in one thing: monthly software bills.
AI is changing how software is made faster than anything I have worked through. Something new is released every day, and some of it genuinely makes the work better. Keeping up is no longer something I do now and then; it has become a daily routine. I look at what is new every morning, because the tool that changes how I work may have appeared overnight. Repo Radar is that routine, written down.
The software bill is the first problem almost everyone starting a business runs into. Email, sign-in, hosting, analytics, a help desk, a newsletter: each one is a monthly subscription, and together they cost more than many new businesses earn. Yet for most of them there is a free project on GitHub that does the same job, often just as well.
The hard part is sorting through them and making comparisons. Free projects are buried among hundreds of thousands; some stopped moving years ago, and others claim to be open source but aren’t. Meanwhile, paid tools hide their real pricing behind tiers, seat requirements, and “contact sales” buttons. Researching and comparing these features and options takes an afternoon per tool, which is something most people never get to do.
So I built the other half. Stack Radar puts paid against free, one job at a time: sending email, signing users in, hosting, backups, analytics. For each job it lists the paid tools worth knowing, with their prices read from their own pricing pages, next to the free projects that do the same work. A table then shows, feature by feature, where they match and where they do not. Repo Radar finds and checks the free tools. Stack Radar shows whether they can replace the paid ones.
I do this reading every day and write it down in a form anyone can use in a few minutes: what each option does, what it costs, what it takes to run. A picture summary for the quick look, the full detail for the careful one, and links straight to the source.
This is not only for people who write code. A shop owner, a consultant, a two-person agency or someone with an idea and no budget yet all need the same software, and all pay the same bills. If a free alternative can save them money, they should be able to find it, see what it involves, and decide in minutes — not after a week of searching.
I am not against paying for software. Often the paid tool is the right choice: it saves time, it comes with support, and someone else keeps it running. Sometimes a free project does the same job for the price of a small server. Either answer is fine. Paying without knowing there was a choice is what I want to end.
Growing every day. Each morning twelve more open-source projects are reviewed, and each one is matched with the paid tools it could replace.
Since 21 Aug 2026. These figures are recounted every time the site is rebuilt — last on 25 Oct 2026.
Repo Radar — the free side, checked
What it is. A new edition every day: twelve open-source projects, each one opened and checked by hand, chosen from the best that turned up that morning. Every project is then matched with its paid counterparts, so it becomes the free alternative on Stack Radar for the jobs it can do.
One morning, one edition
About twenty candidates every morning. Every one is opened and checked; twelve are written up, and the rest are published too, with the reason they were left out.
How an edition is made
- 1
Find
About twenty candidates: projects that fit the day’s theme, projects waiting from earlier days, and repositories readers suggest.
- 2
Open
Every one of them: the project itself, not a search result.
- 3
Check
The facts that decide whether you can rely on it, read directly and never guessed: the date of the newest release, the licence, the star count. No release in eighteen months means stopped.
Release date · Licence · Stars
- 4
Keep or set aside
Both are published, the set-aside ones with the reason.
182 set aside so far
- 5
Write it up
The same way every time, then give each project its own page, an area and tags, and its place on Stack Radar.
182 set aside, to scale
Most of what is set aside is not rejected at all: it passed and is waiting for its edition.
What you find in each entry
- What it does, in plain words, and why it matters
- Three good things and three honest drawbacks
- The newest release date, the licence (read, not assumed), and the star count
- The exact commands to install it
- A one-picture summary, and similar projects
What makes it different
Every project was opened. The projects that failed the check are published too, with the reason — 182 so far. Licences are read one at a time: 29 projects here look open source and are not. Mistakes are corrected in public, never quietly edited (3 so far, on the corrections page). And 190 of 725 published projects have under 3,000 stars: small tools that work, which lists ranked by stars never show.
Stack Radar
The paid side, against the free one
What it is. One page per job a business needs done — sending email, signing people in, hosting, voice, analytics — with the paid tools for that job on one side and the free projects from Repo Radar on the other.
How a paid tool is reviewed. From its own website, documentation and public pages: what it does, its plans and prices, who it suits, what it connects to, the company behind it, what independent reviewers say, and how its own website performs in search — traffic, keywords and technical health. Every review carries the date it was checked and is refreshed when the tool changes.
One job, both answers
What you find on each tool page
- A one-picture summary and the key numbers up front
- Every section of the review: features, pricing (with a screenshot of the real price page), who it is for, integrations, reviews, company and trust, technical signals
- The search and traffic analysis: monthly visits, the six-month trend, where visitors come from, ranking keywords, competitors, a site audit
- Every free alternative from Repo Radar beside it, with stars and one line on what each does
- Other paid tools for the same job, with their starting price
Where the free side comes from
Only from Repo Radar, so every free project has already been opened and checked. Direct alternatives do the same job. Related alternatives cover part of it, or are a building block for it.
Paid against free
Why paid and free side by side
A free project is not automatically the better choice, and a paid one is not automatically safer. They cost different things: one costs money, the other costs time and a server. The point of putting them side by side is to make that trade visible, so you can see in one place whether the saving is worth it for you.
| Paid tool | Free open-source alternative | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay | A monthly subscription, rising with usage | Nothing for the software; a server, often from a few dollars a month |
| Getting started | Sign up and go, usually in minutes | Install it yourself: from an hour to a few days |
| Who keeps it running | The vendor: updates, security, uptime | You, or someone you trust |
| Your data | On the vendor’s servers, under their terms | On your own server, under your control |
| Changing it | Within the settings the vendor offers | Anything: you have the code |
| Help when it breaks | A support team and documentation | Documentation, the community, the issue tracker |
| Risk | Prices rise, plans change, the product is discontinued | The project slows down or stops; Repo Radar checks for this |
| Best when | Time matters more than money, or you need guaranteed support | The monthly bill matters, you want control, or you can run a server |
Stack Radar does not rank and does not pick for you. It collects information, organizes it into an easy-to-read layout, shows both sides with their respective costs, and provides links to the details.
Feature by feature
Price is only half of a comparison. The other half is what each tool actually does, so every job on Stack Radar is getting a feature table. It is built the same way every time: one list of features gathered from all the paid reviews for that job, then every paid tool marked against it, then every free project marked against the same list, from its own documentation. Read across a row and you see at once where the free side matches the paid one, where it only partly does, and where you would still need to pay. Not everything can be confirmed: where the evidence is missing the cell says ?, which means unknown, not absent.
How a job’s feature table is built · illustration
1 · One list of features, from every paid review
| Feature | Paid tool A | Paid tool B | Paid tool C | Free project 1 | Free project 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Send by API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Send by SMTP | ✓ | ✓ | Partly | ✓ | — |
| Templates | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Partly | — |
| Inbound email | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | ? |
| Event webhooks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? |
| Run it on your own server | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ has it · Partly: on some plans or with work · — confirmed not available · ? not confirmed either way
Who this is for
Anyone running a small business on a small budget: founders and startups, freelancers and agencies, shop owners, people building a product on their own with AI, and people with an idea who have not spent a cent yet. If you pay for software every month and wonder whether you have to, this was written for you.
It is free. There is no tracking. The whole archive stays open whether you subscribe or not.
What I want it to become
The place you check before you pay for software: every common job a business has, the best paid tools for it, the best free alternatives, and an honest comparison of the two — kept current, and quick to read. 61 editions in, it has already saved me money and weeks of work. I am building it so it can do the same for you.