Best Free Productivity Apps for Work & Life

There are tons of productivity apps that are free to use for more than just notes, calendars and tasks that come installed on devices. We're going to speak about free productivity apps from third-party providers that will extend your productivity further, for little cost.

Free & Paid Productivity Apps

Nothing is free in this world. The majority of tools are not totally free, even some of the tools within this list, most require a premium subscription to get the full benefit of the tool.

You can always use the free version of a lot of apps, but sometimes if you want to take the experience further, you will have to pay.

Essentially, most tools have limitations and aren't always truly free.

Best Free Productivity Apps: Summarised

Let's give you a short window into the list ahead and what they can offer you:

• Raycast - this is a keyboard-based productivity app that saves times with quick tasks
• Zoom Mail - inside the popular video conferencing tool Zoom Mail handles your emails
• Apple Freeform - collaboration tool for iPad and macOS users to bring ideas together
• Everyday Habits - great to tracking habits on the web or on new Chrome Tab
• Clay - a personal CRM tool for managing relationships with other people
• Miro - a great way to visually bring ideas together as a team or individual
• Loom - save time with meetings and send a Loom recording to save energy

Hopefully this list spans the various areas of productivity workflows for you.

1. Raycast - for handling tasks with your keyboard

Raycast

A macOS command center designed for saving time and speeding up your commands.

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Best For

Keyboard Command Centre

Availability

Mac

Pricing

$

Type of Tool

Freelance Productivity ToolsAI Productivity ToolsWorkflow Automation Tools

Raycast is a keyboard shortcut tool, much like the Spotlight tool you have on Mac, Raycast allows you to navigate your Mac using just keyboard shortcuts, creating a super-fast experience. You can open apps inside Raycast to save time instead of clicking around and looking for certain apps you need.

2. Zoom Mail - for handling your emails

Zoom

The all-in-one meetings, documents, whiteboard, mail and calendar hub.

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Best For

Calls & Meetings

Availability

Web

iOS

Android

Mac

Windows

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

All-In-One Productivity ToolsCalendar AppsEmail Clients

Zoom Mail is an added experience for Zoom users. It's great for checking and working through emails whilst in the Zoom application, so you can manage meetings, notes and mail all in one place. Therefore providing a more productive, and faster experience.

3. Apple Freeform - for collaborating with other Apple users

Apple Freeform

Freeform is a collaborative whiteboard app for your team/friends with FaceTime.

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Best For

Team Collaboration

Availability

iOS

Mac

Pricing

$

Type of Tool

Whiteboard Collaboration AppsNote Taking Apps

Apple Freeform provides a free collaborative experience for teams to work on projects together in real-time. With Apple Freeform you can see who is doing what, and you can also be on Facetime whilst working together. It's an open whiteboard creative experience.

4. Everyday Habits - a great habit tracking application

Everyday Habits

Score your best streak and manage all your good and bad habits in one place.

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Best For

Habit-tracking lovers

Availability

Web

iOS

Android

Chrome Extension

Pricing

$

Type of Tool

Habit Tracking Apps

A beautiful habit-tracking application that uses science to create a visually appealing space for creating habit streaks. This app helps you create healthy habits and break the bad ones. You can customise this to use different colours and analyse your progress visually.

5. Clay - for managing your business relationships

Clay

Keep all your contacts inside a digital rolodex to stay up to date.

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Best For

Personal & Work CRM

Availability

Mac

Windows

iOS

Web

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

CRM Tools

Clay is like a Rolodex app for managing relationships across different business-type platforms. This is useful for freelancers and others who need to stay in the loop. You can connect this with your LinkedIn to receive updates and reminders on what to do, and when you should contact someone.

6. Miro - for collaborating and bringing ideas in one place

Miro

Collaborate with your team in all settings using a collaborative whiteboard app.

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Best For

Collaborative Whiteboard

Availability

iOS

Windows

Android

Mac

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Whiteboard Collaboration AppsAI Productivity Tools

Miro provides an interesting experience for collaborating, organising and managing tasks all in one place. It's a very visual application and has these open board spaces to add things like images, notes, videos and more. You can collaborate in real-time with your team, or use Miro to organise and store your knowledge.

7. Loom - reduce daily meetings for remote teams

Loom

An async, remote method of communication with your team through video recordings.

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Best For

Reducing Meetings

Availability

Web

iOS

Android

Windows

Mac

Chrome Extension

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Team Communication Tools

Loom is an asynchronous application for sending videos to your team. It cuts out the need for arranging meetings to talk about issues or problems. Instead, you can create a short video about how to do something, send it to your team and it can be watched over and over again.