Android’s biggest strength is its app ecosystem. There are a digital ton of Android apps. People downloaded them billions of times. Some of them cost money and some of them don’t. Usually, the best apps will cost you a few bucks. However, there are plenty of amazing options that don’t cost you anything. These services are usually supported by advertising, sponsorship of some sort, or some other kind of financial arrangement. Here’s your chance to stock up on some truly excellent stuff. These are the best free Android apps for Android! These are the best of all time, so most of these shouldn’t surprise you.
1Weather
Price: Free / $1.99
1Weather is about as complete of a weather app as you can find. It comes with all kinds of stuff including current conditions, forecasts, radar, predictions, fun facts about meteorology, graphs, and even a sun and moon tracker. The design is gorgeous as well and the app includes fairly decent and somewhat configurable widgets. It’s free to use and the $1.99 charge is simply to remove advertising. As long as you don’t mind the occasional banner add, you get all of the features in the free version.
Bitwarden Password Manager
Price: Free
Bitwarden Password Manager is one of a few decent free password manager apps. It works like most password managers. You get a vault with all of your usernames and passwords. You can store as many as you want without worry and retrieve them as needed. In addition, the app has 256-bit AES encryption and it is entirely open source. It hits all of the check boxes for a good, free password manager. KeePassDroid is another excellent option in this space, but we like Bitwarden’s UI just a little bit more.
Blue Mail
Price: Free
Blue Mail is one of the best free Android apps for email. It features a simple design that helps you keep your emails in line. Additionally, it comes with support for a ton of email providers, color coding for organization, app theming, Android Wear support, and widgets. There are also a variety of smart features such as blocking notifications during certain times (per account) to help customize your experience. Really, there aren’t many email apps more customizable than this one. It does a lot of things right and very few things wrong. This is about as good as it gets without a price tag. There are some questions about its privacy policy, though. We recommend checking that out if things like that matter to you.
Credit Karma
Price: Free
Credit Karma is a fun little financial app. What it does is let you check your credit score once per year for free. On top of that, the app will notify you when there are major changes to your credit score. The app offers some other things too, such as potential credit cards that you may qualify for based on your credit score. You don’t have to accept those if you don’t want to. It’s a simple, easy way to check out your credit and start fixing things if needed. It’s one of the more underrated free Android apps. Credit Karma is not 100% accurate, but it gives you a good idea of what your credit score might be. The notifications also let you know if a new account was opened in your name. Mint by Inuit (the developers of TurboTax) and NerdWallet are also great alternatives.
Feedly
Price: Free
Feedly is one of the best news apps out there and one that you should definitely try out. It’s an RSS reader which means you can subscribe to tons of different websites and get news from all of them at once. It also has support for podcasts, YouTube channels, and more. The major good thing about using an app like Feedly is being able to bring all of your interests into one spot and read about the latest news. It’s completely free and super easy to use once you get it set up. It’s definitely one of the best free Android apps. The app itself is undergoing some big redesign efforts right now. Those who want to use the old school Feedly can try out Feedly Classic in the Google Play Store.
Gboard or SwiftKey
Price: Free
Gboard is Google’s official keyboard app. It’s a simple keyboard that doesn’t have too many frills. It does have gesture typing (swiping), light theming, voice typing, emoji search, GIF support, and more. Its most unique feature is the built-in Google search that lets you search the web without leaving the keyboard or app that you’re in. It can also sync between devices so your saved words go with you. It’s effective, simple, and 100% free. You’ll want to try this one out if your phone keyboard is giving you fits. It’s one of the best free Android apps for sure. SwiftKey is also great in a different sort of way and we recommend it if Gboard isn’t working for you.
Google Drive
Price: Free / $1.99-$299.99 per month
The Google Drive suite are a group of applications that are all directly integrated into Google Drive. The apps include Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Photos, and Google Keep along with the actual Google Drive app itself. These apps focus primarily on office use for documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows but also work for note taking, backing up your photos, and storing whatever file you can think of. The best part is that they’re all free unless you need more than 15GB of storage on Google Drive. Most people don’t. These are all great free Android apps.
Google Opinion Rewards
Price: Free
Google Opinion Rewards is easily one of the best free Android apps in the Google Play Store. To use this app, you simply download and install it, then open it one time. After that, the app will periodically notify you to ask you some questions. You’ll get credit for use in the Google Play Store every time you answer a survey. That credit can go toward buying yourself apps or games in Google Play. It’s a great way to expand your collection without spending real money. At worst, everyone should have this app installed.
Google Maps and Waze
Price: Free
Google Maps and Waze are two navigation apps. Google Maps will give you turn-by-turn directions, let you view businesses (and their reviews), and all kinds of other stuff. Waze is another navigation app. It lets you check out the traffic along your route. Google Maps is definitely the more powerful of the two. Waze is a little bit more fun to use, though. That makes it a good option if you’re looking for something simple. Both apps get heaps of new updates and features all the time. You can’t go wrong either way.
Imgur and Giphy
Price: Free
Imgur and Giphy are two image databases. They’re great places to find things like funny GIFs, fun images, little facts, and all kinds of other entertainment purposes. Most of those awesome pictures you see on Facebook, Twitter, etc come from here. Imgur also happens to be the image upload service that most people use on Reddit. Both Giphy and Imgur are completely free to download and use. They have your back whether you want to kill a few minutes slacking off or looking for the perfect reaction GIF for that Twitter or Google+ post. They’re two free Android apps worth having. Plus, you can upload your images to Imgur without limits for sharing to various places.
Musicolet
Price: Free
Musicolet is an intriguing option for local music playback. It does all of the basics, including playlists, tag editing, organizational features, file browsing, and embedded lryics (LRC) support. You also get an equalizer, a sleep timer, widgets, lock screen controls, Android Auto support, and more. It covers basically all standard use cases and it still piles more on top. In addition, it’s entirely free with no in-app purchases and no advertising. We also quite like the simple, effective UI.
ProtonVPN
Price: Free / Free / $4-$24 per month
ProtonVPN is one of the few VPNs with an entirely free option that also doesn’t have bandwidth restrictions. It features encryption, a home base in Switzerland, and a strict no logging policy. Those are all great things for a VPN. Additionally, the free version has servers in three countries. You don’t get the full speed with the free version, but the unlimited bandwidth makes up for it. We recommend it for airport visits, checking your email at Starbucks, or any other situation where having some privacy is a good thing. There are paid options that improve the speed, number of servers, and number of features. However, it’s rare to see a free VPN with no ads and unlimited bandwidth. The site occasionally closes down registrations so if you can’t get in one day, try again next week.
Resilio Sync
Price: Free / Varies
Resilio Sync is a cloud storage solution for people who don’t trust cloud storage. It creates a cloud storage server on your personal computer. The app lets you sync your files, photos, videos, audio, etc from your computer to your phone and back again. Thus, you get the cloud storage experience without having to trust your data to a third party. The desktop and mobile apps are easy enough to setup and the UI is functional. There is a pro version with some extra features, but the free version does the basics just fine.
TickTick
Price: Free / $27.99 per year
TickTick is among the best to do list apps on Android. It works a lot like Wunderlist, actually. You can make lists, share tasks with other people, organize your tasks in various ways, get reminders, set recurring tasks, and more. It’s also highly modular. That helps with organization. The widgets aren’t half bad either. There is a pro version, but it adds things like calendar support and other additional features. The free version of this is far above what most other to do list apps offer. It’s also clean, easy to use, and it’s great for small teams or family use. It’s technically not a free app. However, the free version functions better than most free to-do list apps. Don’t worry, you won’t need the premium version except in extreme cases.
Zedge
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Zedge is pretty much a one-stop-shop for things like wallpapers, ringtones, notification tones, and alarms. There is a very large selection of all of those things available in a variety of genres including fantasy, mainstream, funny, and pretty much whatever else you can think of. Zedge’s users add most of the content themselves. Thanks to this, there is quite a bit of variety. There is also a premium option for wallpapers and those are pretty decent. Abstruct, Walli, and Tapet are better options for wallpapers, but the premium content in Zedge is definitely a step above its free stuff. You can get premium content by paying for it or by filling out various surveys for Zedge credits.
If we missed any of the best free Android apps, tell us about them in the comments! To see our complete list of best app lists, click here.