25 GitHub repos that replace your paid subscriptions

Your SaaS bill is a choice, not a fact of life. Most tools people pay for monthly have open source equivalents that are just as capable, fully self-hostable, and free to run on your own infrastructure.

Here are 25 repos worth knowing about. I've grouped them by category so you can see exactly where your subscription budget is going and what you can replace it with.

Productivity and notes

Obsidian is a local-first Markdown note-taking app that turns your plain files into a connected knowledge base with plugins and a graph view. It solves Notion's vendor lock-in and subscription costs by giving you complete ownership of your data on your own device or server. This is the one I use daily.

AppFlowy is a self-hosted Notion alternative built for teams. It has databases, Kanban boards, wikis, and real-time collaboration, all running on your own infrastructure. If you're paying per seat for Notion and the bill is growing, AppFlowy gives you a fully controllable workspace without the SaaS pricing model.

Cal.com is open source scheduling infrastructure. You get booking links, availability management, payment handling, and workflow automation. Calendly's customisation is limited and the per-seat pricing adds up fast. Cal.com lets you self-host a fully branded scheduling tool you can extend however you need.

Communication

Mattermost is a self-hosted Slack alternative with channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and enterprise-grade security. Slack's per-user pricing becomes a serious cost at team scale. Mattermost lets you run the same functionality on your own servers with full control over your data.

Chatwoot is an open source customer engagement platform that unifies email, chat, WhatsApp, and social messaging in one inbox. It solves Intercom's high SaaS costs by giving you a complete self-hosted helpdesk and live-chat solution where your customer data never leaves your infrastructure.

Analytics

Plausible is a lightweight, privacy-first analytics platform that tracks website visitors without cookies or personal data. It solves Google Analytics' compliance complexity by delivering simple, clean stats that are easy to host yourself. No GDPR headaches, no consent banners required.

Umami is another self-hosted web analytics option with real-time stats, event tracking, and a clean dashboard. It gives you full ownership of visitor data without third-party scripts loading on your site. For anyone who wants something simpler than Plausible with a slightly different interface, it's worth a look.

PostHog replaces three separate paid tools in one platform. It covers product analytics (Mixpanel), session replay and heatmaps (Hotjar), and feature flags with A/B testing (LaunchDarkly). If you're running all three separately, consolidating into a single self-hosted PostHog instance will cut your tooling bill significantly.

Design

Penpot is a free, open source design and prototyping tool built for teams. It has vector editing, component libraries, and design systems support. It solves Figma's seat-based subscription costs by offering a fully self-hostable workspace with no limits on collaborators or file size.

Security and passwords

Bitwarden is a secure, open source password manager with vault sharing, autofill, and end-to-end encryption. It solves 1Password's high annual fees by providing a self-hosted or cloud solution with zero-knowledge security. For teams managing shared credentials, the cost difference over a year is substantial.

Vaultwarden is a lightweight, Rust-based Bitwarden-compatible server that runs on minimal hardware. It solves Bitwarden's heavier resource requirements by providing a tiny, efficient self-hosted password vault that works with all official Bitwarden clients. If you have a Raspberry Pi or a low-spec VPS, this runs comfortably on it.

Development and hosting

Coolify is a self-hosted platform-as-a-service that deploys apps, databases, and websites from Git with one click. It solves Vercel and Heroku's vendor lock-in and rising egress costs by giving you full deployment control on your own servers or any VPS. The savings become material as traffic scales.

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative built on Postgres. It covers database, authentication, file storage, and real-time subscriptions, with a clean dashboard on top. It solves Firebase's proprietary lock-in by giving you a complete, self-hosted backend stack that you fully own and can migrate off at any point.

Gitea is a lightweight, self-hosted Git service with issues, pull requests, and CI/CD pipelines. It solves GitHub's pricing and data-privacy concerns by letting you run a full GitHub-like platform on your own infrastructure. For teams with private repositories who don't need GitHub's social features, Gitea covers everything.

Automation

n8n is the one I'd prioritise from this entire list. It connects over 300 apps and APIs through a visual editor and self-hosted deployments have no per-task cost. Zapier charges per task and those charges compound quickly at any serious automation volume. n8n gives you unlimited workflows on your own server for the cost of the VPS.

Activepieces is a no-code automation platform with a friendlier interface and around 100 integrations. It solves Zapier's cost and complexity for teams that need solid business workflow automation without requiring n8n's depth or technical setup. If n8n feels like overkill, Activepieces is a good starting point.

Documents and office

OnlyOffice is a self-hosted office suite with docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and collaboration tools. It solves Google Workspace's subscription fees and data-privacy concerns by letting you edit Office-compatible files on your own server with no per-user licensing.

Nextcloud is a self-hosted file sync and share platform with productivity apps, calendar, mail, and video calls built in. It replaces a significant chunk of Google's ecosystem in one deployment. You get file storage, shared drives, calendar sync, and video conferencing, with your data sitting on infrastructure you control.

Email and newsletters

Listmonk is a self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager with a clean dashboard and built-in analytics. It solves Mailchimp's subscriber-based pricing by letting you send unlimited emails from your own server. Mailchimp's cost scales with your list size; Listmonk's doesn't. At 10,000 subscribers, the annual savings are enough to cover your server costs many times over.

Project management

Plane is an open source project management tool with issues, cycles, modules, and roadmap views. It solves Linear's SaaS pricing by offering a fast, self-hosted alternative with full customisation and no seat limits on the self-hosted version.

Vikunja is a self-hosted to-do list and project manager with Kanban, Gantt, and calendar views. It solves Trello and Asana's subscription costs by providing a lightweight, privacy-first task platform that covers most project management needs without the enterprise pricing overhead.

Monitoring and secrets

Grafana is an open source observability platform for dashboards, metrics, logs, and alerts. It solves Datadog's expensive per-host licensing by letting you visualise and monitor everything on your own infrastructure. The open source version covers most of what teams actually need, and the ecosystem of data source connectors is extensive.

Infisical is a secrets management platform with end-to-end encryption and access controls. It solves HashiCorp Vault's complexity and cost by offering a simpler, self-hosted solution for managing API keys, credentials, and environment variables. Most teams can get it running in under an hour.

CMS and e-commerce

Ghost is a professional open source blogging and newsletter platform with membership tools and SEO features built in. This blog runs on it. It solves Substack's revenue cut and platform lock-in by letting you run your own fully branded publication for a flat server fee. You keep 100% of subscription revenue.

Medusa is a headless, open source e-commerce engine for building custom online stores. It solves Shopify's high transaction fees and rigid architecture by giving developers a flexible, self-hosted commerce backend. If you've outgrown Shopify's constraints or can't justify the app store costs, Medusa is where teams typically land.

Practical takeaway

You don't need to migrate everything at once. Pick the one tool where your subscription cost hurts most and start there. Most of these have Docker images and clear documentation. Getting any one of them running takes an afternoon.

The monthly savings compound. The data ownership is permanent.