The Best Websites For Downloading Free Stuff

There are plenty of resources that let you download stuff for free – but most of them aren’t legal. To save your eternal soul, we’ve compiled a list of the best (mostly) copyright-free freebies that the internet has to offer – from books and artwork to music and video games.

“What are some cool websites where you can download free stuff?” asked redditor howtoadvanced. He got over 5,000 answers. We’ve gone through and categorized the best ones, identifying each resource. You could spend the rest of your life just entertaining and educating yourself with the free books, music, games, apps, and other freebies available on the sites listed here. (Don’t go cancelling your Netflix, but maybe stop paying Amazon for books that Project Gutenberg hands out for free.)

Unless noted (and with the possible exception of some “abandonware” sites) these are legal and legitimate resources, but some are only for personal use.

Always check before you use a resource commercially or publicly.

Books

• LibriVox: Public domain audiobooks read by volunteers. Redditors particularly like LibriVox’s versions of The Count of Monte Cristo, 1984, and Moby-Dick.
• Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks: Public domain ebooks
• The Magic Catalogue: Ebook catalogue linking to all of Project Gutenberg’s titles
• OverDrive/Libby and Hoopla: Ebooks, audiobooks, and other materials available through your public library
• NoiseTrade Books: Self-published ebooks and audiobooks

Data

(special thanks to redditor chinchalinchin)

• Quandl: Free and paid financial data
• American FactFinder: Searchable data from the U.S. census
• Last10K.com: SEC filings, including annual and quarterly reports
• BEA: Economic data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
• NASA’s Open Data Portal: Every public NASA dataset
• OECD Data: International economic data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
• Sexualitics: Performance data from a large portion of uploads to porn sites xHamster and Xnxx
• Project EUCLID: Mathematics papers
• arXiv.org: Academic papers in the sciences
• Vertex42: Spreadsheet templates for Excel and Google Sheets

Video Games

• Game Jolt and itch.io: Free and cheap indie games
• Vimm’s Lair: Classic console games
• My Abandonware: Old video games “abandoned” by the developer
• Internet Arcade and Console Living Room: Web-playable versions of classic video games on the Internet Archive
• Game-Owl and GOG Games: Downloadable video games (caution: one redditor warns of possible malware)

Design and Art

• Resource Cards: Catalogue of free resources including stock photos, icons, and tools for Photoshop, Boostrap, WordPress, web development, and SEO
• Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, FreeImages, and Stockio: Free stock photos, all suggested by redditor NerdFerby. We use a lot of these at Lifehacker.
• Librestock: Metasearch that combines several of the above image libraries
• Awesome Images: A list of over 30 more image libraries
• Subtle Patterns: Background pattern images
• Placeholder.com: Simple placeholder images marked with their width and height, at any measurement
• Flaticon, Iconfinder, Noun Project, and Font Awesome: Free and paid icon sets
• DaFont, Font Squirrel, and Google Fonts: Downloadable and embeddable fonts
• Lost Type Co-op: Small collection of pay-what-you-want fonts
• Creative Market: Cheap and free design elements
• Loading.io: Customisable loading animations

Development

• GitHub: Open source code
• SourceForge: Open source software
• blender.org: Open source 3d modelling, animation, compositing and motion tracking
• QGIS: Open source mapping system
• RStudio: Applications for the open source statistical coding R
• OpenGameArt.org: Video game art assets of varying styles
• Freesound: Rights-free sound effects
• BBC Sound Effects: Free for personal and educational use

Music

• DatPiff: Hip-hop mixtapes
• Galbadia Hotel: Video game music
• OverClock ReMix: Originals and covers of video game music, much of it legal for reuse
• NoiseTrade Music: Indie albums
• Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio: Guide to mixing music, and sample tracks to use
• Cymatics: Royalty free sounds and presets for music production
• UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive: Public domain music, speeches, and other audio recorded from wax cylinders
• IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Public domain sheet music

Apps

• Ninite: Select from a list of free essential apps (like Skype, Evernote, GIMP, Malwarebytes, and Chrome) to install and update at the same time
• WinWorld: Classic PC software
• Ubuntu: Open-source operating system
• KiCad EDA: Open source electronics design app
• Pouët.net: “Demoscene” computer art and coding demos
• Windows Sysinternals: PC utilities and diagnostic tools
• LibreOffice and OpenOffice: Open source alternatives to MS Word
• Krita: Open source painting app
• MuseScore: Open source music notation app
• OpenShot: Open source video editor
• Audacity: Open source audio editor

Etc.

• XOWA: Download all of Wikipedia
• Archive.org: A motherlode of collections of music, videos, images, games, and written materials from non-profits, schools, government organisations, and the public domain. See top collections on the front page. Also home to the Wayback Machine.
• NYPL Digital Collections: Digitised ephemera from the New York Public Library
• Library of Congress Digital Collections: Digitised ephemera from the Library of Congress
• Library of Babel: Technically contains every book up to a certain length — because it contains every combination of characters, almost all of them gibberish, only generated the moment you load the page

• Textfiles: Collection of old online text files, under categories like Conspiracy, Ham Radio, and Science Fiction.
• #ColorOurCollections: Black and white drawings from museums and libraries, suggested as printable colouring books
• Hubble Space Telescope: Images of space from NASA’s orbiting telescope
• OpenLearn: Free online academic courses
• No Excuse List: Catalogue of free online courses, how-to guides, and and educational sites
• CommonLit: Reading passages, lessons, and other literary education tools for teachers
• Cheatography: Cheat sheets, mostly for software
• Lego Building Instructions: Building instructions for every Lego set
• Ana White: Woodworking plans
• Cubeecraft: Patterns for paper-folding models
• Thingiverse: 3D models that you can print on your own 3D printer (or a rental or library model)

Basically Just Pirating

Probably illegal. Proceed with caution and/or guilt.

• Zooqle: Directory of film and TV torrents
• VK English Bookland, B-OK and Bookfi: Pirated ebooks
• Audiobook Bay: Pirated audiobooks
• Open Directories: Subreddit collecting open file directories on the web
• Sci-Hub: Millions of pirated academic papers
• GetComics: Pirated digital comic books
• Library Genesis: Pirated books, comics, magazines, scientific articles, and textbooks
• Remuz RPG Archive: Pirated sourcebooks for role-playing games

Find more free (and legal) resources at allOPEN.org, a collection curated by redditor corydave.

What are some cool websites where you can download free stuff? [AskReddit]