Stage 1: Worth it

A steward-owned search engine that can’t be sold and spends its profits on climate projects.

End-to-end encrypted, open-source photo storage paid for by subscribers; the company can’t see your photos.

Paid, ad-free email on open standards, so you can bring your own domain and leave whenever you like.

A DRM-free PC game store: you download offline installers and keep them, no launcher required.

A nonprofit offering free lessons and practice for anyone, with no ads.

The free, open-source office suite from a nonprofit, now chosen by governments leaving Microsoft.

A one-time-purchase iPad drawing app with no subscription, no ads, and a public pledge against generative AI.

A customisable, employee-owned browser that doesn’t track you and has refused to add generative AI.

Open-protocol microblogging with chronological and custom feeds, no ads, and portable accounts—though $100M+ of venture money will eventually want a return.

Chromium fork pushing privacy and optional rewards—fewer trackers by default, but still a product with its own wallet, ads narrative, and ecosystem bets.

Privacy-marketed search with lighter tracking; still a business that must fund results and experiments over time.

Open-source Matrix client; messages federate across servers you control, end-to-end encryption is on by default, and no single company can revoke access to your conversations.

Wholesale marketplace connecting independent brands with independent retailers; net-60 payment terms and free returns lower the barrier for small shops, though take rates remain substantial.

Dating app for open-minded adults; subscription-only with no ads, no dopamine-engineered swipe loops, and identity features built around consent rather than engagement maximisation.

Open-source browser with privacy-forward defaults and no ad-tech parent; Mozilla’s funding model is fragile but the user-facing product still skews toward surplus over extraction.

Developer hosting platform built on open container standards with transparent usage-based pricing; VC-backed but designed to avoid the proprietary lock-in that defines AWS and Vercel's moats.

Open-source publishing platform run by a nonprofit foundation; self-hostable for free, Ghost Pro managed hosting funds the foundation without taking a cut of creator revenue.

Nonprofit digital library behind the Wayback Machine: free, ad-free, and run for preservation—under constant legal and financial pressure rather than profit pressure.

Indie game marketplace where creators set their own price and revenue split—including 0% to the platform; bootstrapped, no ads, and structurally hostile to extraction by design.

Paid, ad-free search funded by subscribers instead of advertisers—you are the customer, so the results are tuned for you.

Event management and ticketing platform popular with tech communities; free for organisers hosting free events, clean UX, no dark-pattern upsells—VC-backed but behavior is still user-aligned.

Federated microblogging with no single owner; rough edges, but user surplus and exit to other instances is real.

Creator-owned streaming platform run by Standard Broadcast; subscription-only with no ads and a revenue share that returns the majority to creators—rare structural alignment at scale.

Local-first note-taking app; files stay on your device in plain Markdown, sync and publish are optional paid add-ons, and the core product is free for personal use with no VC pressure.

Local LLM runner that lets you download and run open-weight models on your own hardware; no API calls, no usage billing, no data leaving your machine—VC-backed but FOSS by design.

End-to-end encrypted email from a Swiss nonprofit-aligned foundation; free tier with no ads or scanning, paid plans fund the service without monetising user data.

Real-time public transit app from Montreal: core trip planning stays free, funded by an optional subscription and agency partnerships instead of ads or data sales.

A nonprofit reader mission with volunteer editors; ads are off by default and the core reading experience still prioritizes users over rent extraction.

International money transfer service built around mid-market exchange rates and transparent flat fees; publicly traded and profitable without resorting to hidden FX spreads.