People often think good software has to be expensive, or that you need to turn to pirated versions that are risky and illegal. That is simply not true. To write, calculate, edit an image, cut a video, or get organised, there are free, legal tools that fully match the paid solutions. Whether you are a student on a tight budget or a professional who wants to equip a workstation without blowing the costs, here is our selection of the best free software, sorted by use. They are all legal to download and, for the most part, available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

1. Office and Documents

This is the basis of all work. Good news: you can write, calculate, and present without paying for a single licence, and with no compromise on quality.

• The full suites: LibreOffice replaces Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, free and offline. Online, Google Docs and Sheets add real-time collaboration, ideal for group or team work. ONLYOFFICE and WPS Office are excellent alternatives if you want perfect compatibility with Word and Excel formats. Discover, by the way, 5 powerful features of Google Workspace that most people ignore.
• Handling PDFs: tools like PDF24 or Xodo let you read, annotate, merge, and compress your PDFs without spending a cent. Enough to replace most of Adobe's paid features. To sign a document or fill in a form, they do the job just as well.

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2. Creation, Image and Video

Where you would expect to pay crazy amounts, free software actually offers tools worthy of professional studios. Many are used daily by real creators and real companies.

• Image and design: GIMP is a serious alternative to Photoshop, Inkscape handles vector drawing, and Canva lets you create posters, resumes, and presentations from templates in minutes, with no special skills. Krita is perfect for digital painting, and Photopea recreates Photoshop right in your browser, with nothing to install.
• Audio and video: DaVinci Resolve offers professional-grade video editing for free, Audacity takes care of audio, and OBS Studio records your screen or streams live. Enough to produce polished content with no subscription at all. HandBrake converts and compresses your videos, while Shotcut offers a lighter editor for beginners.

3. Productivity and Organisation

The best tools in the world are useless if you are disorganised. These programs help you stay on track, for free.

• Get organised: Notion centralises notes, tasks, and projects, Trello visualises your progress, Todoist manages your deadlines, and Obsidian will delight fans of linked note-taking. They naturally extend the apps that change your daily life. Anki, for its part, helps you memorise for the long term through spaced repetition, a precious ally before exams.
• Store and share: keep all your files reachable everywhere with Google Drive, an ideal companion to the digital essentials for back-to-school. Just remember to turn on syncing so your documents follow you from one device to the next.

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4. Security and System Tools

A well-equipped workstation is also a protected and smooth one. These free essentials round out the kit. They are often the little tools you install last but never let go of afterwards.

• Protect: a good free antivirus is enough in most cases, as our comparison of free or paid antivirus shows. Add Bitwarden, a free and secure password manager, so you never reuse the same password again. Malwarebytes nicely complements an antivirus for an occasional clean-up when in doubt.
• The Swiss army knives: VLC reads absolutely every video format, 7-Zip compresses and extracts your archives, and a well-chosen modern browser, fitted with a few useful extensions, rounds it all off perfectly. ShareX, finally, turns the screenshot into a real working tool.

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Free, but far from cheap

From office work to video, this free software covers the essential needs of a student and a professional alike, without a single subscription. All you are missing is a machine that can run it smoothly: discover our computers, and let our services install and configure them for you, ready to use from day one. You save time, you stay legal, and you only pay for what is truly worth it.