Android’s biggest strength is its app ecosystem. There are tons of digital Android apps. People have downloaded them billions of times. Some make money, and some don’t. Usually, the best apps will cost you a few dollars. However, there are many amazing options that do not cost anything. These services are usually supported by advertising, sponsorship or something else.
However, there are still some great apps that you can use for free. After all, a good deed doesn’t always have to involve spending money. These are the best free Android apps for Android right now.
This is an all-time greats list, like a Hall of Fame, so the contents of this list won’t change very often until something truly great comes along. You should also know most of the apps on this list. If you want to see more great apps, you can check out the best Android apps of 2021.
Best Free Android Apps, Ever:
1 weather
Price: Free / $1.99
1 Weather is as good a weather app as you can get. It comes with all kinds of stuff, including current conditions, forecasts, radar, forecasts, fun facts about meteorology, graphs, and sun and moon trackers. The design is very elegant and the app includes fairly decent and somewhat configurable widgets.
There is a $1.99 in-app purchase to remove ads. However, all the features are available in the free version, and since the ads are annoying, you have to buy it. You can also check out our best weather apps if you want an alternative. We love AccuWeather, especially since its redesign in mid-2020.
Bitwarden password manager
Price: free
Bitwarden Password Manager is one of the best free password manager apps. It works like most password managers. You will get a container with all your usernames and passwords. You can store as much as you want without worry and retrieve it as needed. In addition, the application has 256-bit AES encryption, and is completely open source.
It ticks all the boxes for a good free password manager. The app has seen a rise in popularity since LastPass reduced the features on its free tier. KeePassDroid is another great option in this space, but we like Bitwarden’s UI a bit more. You can check out our list of the best password manager apps for more options.
In fact, there aren’t many email apps that are more customizable. It does many things right and very few things wrong. This is as good as it gets without a price tag. There are some questions about the privacy policy, and we recommend that you read it if these things concern you. Here’s a list of great email app options as well.
cooking
Price: Free / $20 per year
Cookmate is arguably the best personal recipe app on mobile. Many people have many dietary needs and wants, so using a personal recipe app can benefit many people. This is especially good to use. You can create custom recipes from scratch, complete with instructions and ingredient lists. Additionally, you can import recipes from almost any website.
The UI is clean and easy to use, plus there’s cloud backup, even in the free version. The premium version is an annual subscription, but all it really does is increase the number of recipes you sync, or you can just use the Dropbox option. Of course, there are many other great recipes and cooking apps here if you want to see more.
It’s a simple and easy way to check your credit and fix things if necessary. It is one of the underrated free Android apps. Credit Karma isn’t 100% accurate, but it gives you a good idea of what’s going on. The notifications will also let you know that a new account has been opened in your name. NerdWallet is a great option for this. Intuit (owner of TurboTax) also bought CreditCarman in 2020. For more financial stuff, check out some budget apps for Android.
Want to see more apps? Try these:
It can also be synced between devices, so your saved words go with you. It’s effective, simple and 100% free. If your phone keyboard suits you, you might want to try this. It is one of the best free Android apps for sure. SwiftKey is great in a different way, and there are other great Android keyboards here.
Google Drive
Price: Free / $1.99-$299.99 per month
These apps are primarily focused on office use for documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows, but they also work for note-taking, backing up your photos, and storing just about any file you can think of. The best part is that they are all free unless you need more than 15 GB of storage on Google Drive. Most people don’t. These are all the best free Android apps. If you want more choice, you can find more office apps options here.
Google Opinion Awards
Price: free
It’s a great way to expand your collection without spending real money. At worst, everyone should install this app. It’s only available in some regions, but our international readers may not be able to use it.
Imgur and Giphy
Price: free
Imgur and Giphy are two image databases. They are great places to find things like funny GIFs, funny pictures, trivia facts and all kinds of entertainment purposes. Most of the amazing images you see on Facebook, Twitter, etc. come from here. Imgur is the image uploading service most people use on Reddit.
Both Giphy and Imgur are completely free to download and use. They have your back to kill a few minutes procrastinating or looking for the perfect response GIF to that Twitter or Google+ post. Here are two free Android apps that you must have. You can also upload your images to Imgur without restrictions to share them to different places. There are other funny apps on Android, but we like these two the most.
Check out more apps here:
Musicolet is an amazing alternative for local music playback. It does all the basics, including playlists, tag editing, organizational features, file browsing, and embedded lryics (LRC) support. You also get an equalizer, sleep timer, widgets, lock screen controls, Android Auto support, and more.
It basically covers all standard use cases and still piles more on top of it. Plus, it’s completely free with no in-app purchases and ads. We also really like the simple and effective UI. You can check out other music app options here, or here for music streaming apps instead.
Resilio Synchronization
Price: Free / Varies
The desktop and mobile apps are easy to set up and the UI is functional. There’s a pro version with some extra features, but the free version does the basics just fine, as long as you don’t need anything extra. There are other great cloud storage services out there, but Resilio Sync is great for people on a budget.
TickTick
Price: Free / $27.99 per year
There is a Pro version, but it adds more features like calendar support and more. This free version is much better than most other to-do list apps. It’s also clean, easy to use and great for small groups or family use. It’s not technically a free app. However, the free version works better than most free to-do list apps. Don’t worry, you don’t need the premium version except for extreme cases. There are also other great options for making detailed applications.
Citizen
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Zedge is a one-stop shop for things like wallpapers, ringtones, notification tones and alarms. There is a huge selection of all those things, available in different genres including fantasy, mainstream, comedy and anything else. Zedge users add most of the content themselves.
Thanks to this, there is a very small difference. There is a premium option for wallpapers and those are great. Abstract, Wally and Wallpaper are better options for wallpapers, but the premium content in Zedge isn’t bad and Zedge is basically the only great app left for ringtones. There are other great wallpaper apps and ringtone apps out there, but only Zedge can do both reliably.
Zoom in
Price: Free / Varies
Zoom was one of the critical apps of 2020. When the pandemic hit and everyone started working from home, Zoom became the go-to app for video conferencing. It has a fairly robust free version. You can have unlimited one-on-one video chats and 40-minute meetings with up to 100 people. That’s enough for most use cases.
You can pay to remove many of these restrictions. The app lets you share your screen, use a whiteboard to write things down, and even includes things like end-to-end encryption. The app could be better and Zoom has taken its sweet time adapting to its new popularity. However, he was able to persevere.