Why free research software?

Licences for SPSS, Stata, MATLAB and NVivo can cost students and early-career researchers hundreds of pounds a year, and university site licences usually end the day you graduate or change institution.

Open-source tools keep working after you leave, run on your own laptop, and make your analysis easier for others to reproduce, because anyone can install the same software for free.

Every tool here is free to use. Most are fully open source; where a tool is free but not open source, or has paid tiers, the listing says so.

Free tools are not always drop-in replacements. Check that a tool supports the file formats, tests and methods your supervisor, journal or ethics board expects before switching mid-project.

How tools are chosen

Each listing links to the official website, states its licence and whether it is fully open source, free but proprietary, or free with paid tiers, and shows stars, last-commit date and licence from the project's public repository where it has one. Top Pick listings are clearly labelled and never change the facts shown about a tool.

Spotted something wrong or missing? Tell us.