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15 best free Android apps available right now

Believe it or not, you can get some sweet apps without spending a dime. Here are the best free Android apps.
By
May 1, 2023
Google Play Store Update Apps
Joe Hindy / Android Authority

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, plenty of amazing options don’t cost you anything. These services are usually supported by advertising, sponsorship of some sort, or something else.

However, there are still some truly excellent apps out there that you can use for free. After all, good functionality shouldn’t always involve spending money. These are the best free Android apps for Android as of right now.

This is a best-of-all-time list, so the contents of this list won’t change very often until something better comes along. You should also recognize most of the apps on this list. You can check out the best Android apps released in 2023 if you want to see more great apps.

The best free Android apps ever:

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 also gorgeous, and the app includes fairly decent and somewhat configurable widgets.

There is a single $1.99 in-app purchase to remove advertising. However, all the features are available in the free version, and the ads are inoffensive, so it’s largely worth buying it. You can also check out our list of the best weather apps if you want an alternative. We also quite like AccuWeather, especially since AccuWeather’s redesign in mid-2020.

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, which is entirely open source.

It hits all of the checkboxes for a good, free password manager. The app saw a spike in popularity after LastPass reduced the features on its free tier. KeePassDroid is another excellent option in this space, but we like Bitwarden’s UI just a bit more. You can also check out our list of best password manager apps for more options.

Blue Mail

Price: Free/ $6.99

Blue Mail screenshot 2021
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 many email providers, color coding for organization, app theming, Android Wear support, and widgets. Various smart features, such as blocking notifications during certain times (per account), also help customize your experience.

Really, there aren’t many email apps that are 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; we recommend reading it if those things concern you. Here’s a list of more excellent email app options as well.

Cookmate

Price: Free / $20 per year

Cookmate is arguably the best individual cookbook app on mobile. A lot of people have a lot of dietary wants and needs, so the use of a personal cookbook app benefits a lot of people. This one is particularly nice to use. You can create custom recipes from scratch with instructions and an ingredients list. Additionally, you can import recipes from virtually any website.

The UI is clean and easy to use, plus there is cloud backup, even in the free version. The premium version is a yearly subscription, but all it does is increase the number of recipes you can sync or use the Dropbox option. 

Credit Karma

Price: Free

Credit Karma screenshot 2022
Credit Karma is a fun little financial app. What it does is let you check your credit score 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’s happening. The notifications also let you know if a new account was opened in your name. NerdWallet is a great alternative to this. Additionally, Intuit (owner of Turbo Tax) purchased Credit Karma back in 2020. Check out some budget apps for Android for some other money stuff, too.

Gboard

Price: Free

Gboard screenshot 2022
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 there are other great Android keyboards here as well.

Google Drive

Price: Free / $12 per month

Google Drive screenshot 2020
The Google Drive suite is a group of applications that are all directly integrated into Google Drive. The apps include Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Photos, Google Keep, and 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. You can also find more office app options here if you need more choices.

Google Opinion Rewards

Price: Free

Google Opinion Rewards screenshot 2022
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 about where you go, what you do, and what Google products you use. 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. It is only available in some regions, so our International readers may be unable to use it.

Google Maps

Price: Free

Google Maps screenshot 2021
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. You do have more options, so here’s our list of the best navigation apps for Android.

Imgur and Giphy

Price: Free

Imgur screenshot 2023

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 is 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. There are other funny apps on Android, but we like these two the best. 

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 lyrics (LRC) support. You also get an equalizer, a sleep timer, widgets, lock screen controls, Android Auto support, and more.

It covers all standard use cases and 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. You can check out other music app options here as well if you need to or here for music streaming apps if you want that instead.

Resilio Sync

Price: Free / Varies

Resilio Sync is one of the best free Android apps
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 trusting your data with a third party.

The desktop and mobile apps are easy enough to set up, and the UI is functional. There is a pro version with some extra features, but the free version does the basics just fine as long as you don’t need anything excessive. Other great cloud storage services exist, but Resilio Sync is excellent for people on a budget.

TickTick

Price: Free / $35.99 per year

TickTick screenshot 2022
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 others, 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 great for small teams or families. 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 large selection of all those things available in various genres, including fantasy, mainstream, funny, and whatever else you can think of. Zedge’s users add most of the content themselves. The only downside is the hilarious number of ads that bother you while you are browsing the app. They are forgivable, but only just so.

Thanks to this, there is quite a bit of variety. There is also a premium option for wallpapers, which are pretty decent. Abstruct, Walli, and Tapet are better wallpaper options, but Zedge’s premium content isn’t half bad, and Zedge is basically the only truly great app left for ringtones. There are other great wallpaper apps and ringtone apps, but Zedge is the only one that can reliably do both.

Zoom

Price: Free / Varies

Zoom was one of the definitive apps of 2020. When the pandemic hit and everybody started working from home, Zoom became the app to beat for video conferencing. It has a fairly robust free version. You can do unlimited one-on-one video chats and 40-minute meetings with up to 100 people. That’s good enough for most use cases.

You can pay to remove many of those restrictions. The app lets you screen share and use a whiteboard to write stuff down, and it even includes end-to-end encryption. The app could be better, and Zoom quickly adapted to its new popularity. However, it managed to persevere.


If we missed any of the best free Android apps, tell us about them in the comments.