Top 100 Best Freeware for Windows

We have compiled 100 freeware in various categories for Windows OS that we think will be helpful for you. This list is not comprehensive or authoritative by any means.

However this list has enough freeware for you to play around and pick the one that is suitable your specific usage scenario.

If you think we’ve forgotten to include your favorite Windows free software, or if you think any of the freeware mentioned here should not be in the list for some reason, leave your comment.

We’ll be updating this page frequently based on your feedback. Please bookmark this page to review the latest list from time to time.

Audio and Video:

1. Audacity – Open source software for audio recording and editing. With this audio editor, you can record live audio and change the pitch of recording.
2. CamStudio – This can record the video and audio activity on your computer. This has an user friendly interface and you can record AVI or SWF video of your computer screen.
3. XBMC Media Center – Open source application that can play almost all audio and video formats, even files inside ZIP and RAR archives.
4. Debut Video Capture – This Lets you capture video files directly on your computer using a webcam or external devices. It can also record screen activity or streaming video.
5. Avidemux – Open source video editor. It is compatible with various video formats including AVI, MPEG, DVD and audio formats including MP3, AAC, WAV, etc.
6. VirtualDub – Performs trimming and cleaning up of videos. It also includes batch-processing functionality for processing a large number of files.
7. Nero Kwik Media – Burns and copies all your music, videos or data to a CD, DVD or blu-ray disc. This can also act as a media library.
8. Blender – Open source 3D rendering program that performs animation essentials, interface, modeling, rigging, rendering, animation, UV unwrapping, shading, etc.
9. Freemake Video Converter – Convert your videos to play with any format. You can convert online videos directly from more than 50 websites including Youtube, Facebook etc.
10. AIMP – This music player supports more than twenty formats, and includes an 18 band graphics equalizer. And audio is processed in 32-bit.
11. VLC Media Player – Open source multimedia player. This also plays DVDs, VCDs, and Audio CDs,s well as many other streaming protocols.
12. MusicBrainz Picard – Cross platform music file organizer, and advanced MP3 tagger. This has several plugins to extend the functionality.

Image Editor and Viewer:

13. Jing – This is a screen capture and photo editor by Techsmith. This can also record a screncast.
14. FastStone Image Viewer – View, edit and convert images, save images as PDF files. Batch mode for image editing is also available.
15. Fly Free – Photo viewer and editor. Resize several pictures at once, upload pictures directly to social media sites.
16. IrfanView – View, edit, play video as well audio files, convert image files, optimize, create slideshows etc. It is expandable with plug-ins.
17. Pos Free Photo Editor – Perform various photo editing functions including crop, resize, contrast, rotate, remove red eye, increase/decrease contrast, sharpness, etc.
18. GNU GIMP – Open source photo editor to view, edit, and enhance your photos. You can perform anything from basic to complex photo manipulation tasks.
19. Photoscape – Image editor that can perform all basic photo editing and enhancing functionalities.
20. Paint.NET – Photo editor to view, edit and enhance your photos. You need .NET framework for this to work on your system.
21. PhotoPlus – Image editing software. The free version is called “PhotoPlus Starter Edition”, and it includes all the typical photo editing features.
22. Google Picasa – Photo organizer and editor from Google. Very intuitive and easy to use user interface.
23. XnView – Image viewer that can also convert your image files to different formats and perform basic image editing functions.
24. NConvert – Convert your image files to different formats, supporting over 400. You can change the format of several image files using the batch mode.
25. Image Resizer – Resize an image directly by right-clicking on the image file from your Windows Explorer. You can also select multiple files and resize them at the same time.

Security Software:

26. Zone Alarm Free Firewall – Complete PC protection solution that gives you protection against spyware, malware, virus, trojans, hackers, etc.
27. Avast! 7 Free Antivirus – Reliable antivirus utility gives you effective protection against spyware, viruses, etc.
28. AVG Anti-Virus – Effective program which protects your PC against spyware, virus, rootkits, spam etc. Its database is frequently updated
29. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – It detects viruses, trojans, spyware, worms, rootkits, dialers and other malware. No real-time protection.
30. Avira – It gives your PC basic protection against malware like viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, adware and spyware.
31. Microsoft Security Essentials – Free antivirus program from Microsoft to protect your computer against trojans, virus, worms and spyware.
32. Moon Secure Antivirus – Open source antivirus solution licensed under GPL. Offers multiple scan engines, net shield, firewall, exec scanner, rootkit prevention, etc.
33. Online Armor – Protects your PC from unwanted intruders like hackers, malicious programs, etc.
34. Panda Cloud Antivirus – Detects viruses, trojans, spyware, worms, hacking tools, dialers, and other malware. This is cloud-based and draws from Panda’s collective intelligence.
35. Comodo free firewall – This uses default deny protection rather than letting malware enter your system, then detecting it and removing it.
36. Ad-Aware Free Antivirus – It gives you two way protection with antivirus and anti-spyware engines.
37. FortiClient Lite – Complete end point protection suite which includes virus and other malware detection, VPN, parental web control and rootkit removal.
38. Clearsight Antivirus Lite – Offers realtime resident protection from malware. Scans for viruses, worms, trojans, backdoors, macro viruses, etc./li>
39. Spyware Blaster – Initially designed to block ActiveX-based attacks. But later expenaded to protect against spyware, adware, dialers, etc.
40. Spybot Search And Destroy – The program comes with a plain and clear interface which is quite easy to use.

Backup and Disk Utilities:

41. GFI Backup – Fast and simple backup with volume shadow copying. Backup to FTP, network drive or external drive. Compress and encrypt the backup
42. Cobian – Perform scheduled backup, backup to FTP, network drive and external drive. Unlimited backup size. Compress and encrypt the backup
43. FBackup – Backup automatically to USB or Firewire device in either a local or network location. Compress backup files in zip format.
44. WinDirStat – Disk space analyzer and cleanup application. Performs disk check or scan operations and colorfully displays the space occupied by files and folders.
45. SpaceSniffer – Analyzes disks and finds lost space. It has smart cached scanning engine, multiple views, single scan, etc.
46. Auslogics Disk Defrag – Disk defragmentation is a process which reduces the amount of fragmentation for files on your hard disk.
47. Disk Space Fan – There are both pro and free versions of this. Free version has basic features that you would expect from disk scanning software.
48. MyDefrag – Disk defragmenter and optimizer that makes your hard disk better and faster.
49. Auslogics Duplicate File Finder – This increases the disk space by removing worthless duplicate files, identical pictures, documents and any other files.
50. Bulk Rename Utility – This will rename multiple files quickly according to certain flexible criteria. Rename photos using EXIF metadata, rename MP3 using ID3 tags, etc.

System Utilities:

51. Glary Utilities – Powerful software package that consists of various utilities to increase your PC performance and maintain your system.
52. Comodo System Cleaner – Efficient utility which cleans up unwanted files that causes system slowdown and other issues.
53. CCleaner – System cleaning and optimization utility. Cleanup unwanted files, registry clean-up, remove browsing history, etc.
54. SlimCleaner – Cleans and optimize your system by using user aggregated cloud data using crowd-source approach.
55. FreeRAM XP Pro – Free up and optimize the RAM by means of very detailed RAM releasing and optimizing features such as threaded memory freeing and autofree options.
56. PC Wizard – System information software which gives you detailed information about computer components and system configuration.
57. RegAlyzer – You can browse and modify the registry using this tool.
58. Registrar Registry Manager – This can manage your local registry as well as the registries of other windows systems in your network.
59. WhoCrashed – Identifies drivers that are responsible for the system crash which displays the blue screen of death.
60. Advanced SystemCare – Repair, protect and optimize your computer. Clean your registry, execute a basic malware scan, repair and erase broken shortcuts, etc.
61. WinRAR – This is a file archiving utility which can compress and decompress most archive formats, including RAR, ZIP, 7-Zip, BZIP2, GZip, TAR, ACE
62. DriverMax – This scans all the drivers on your system and identifies which ones need to be updated.
63. Free Registry Defrag – Compacts your registry by removing the gaps and wasted space, which will speed up registry related actions.
64. DevManView – Alternative to the Windows standard Device Manager. This can also display the devices of any networked computer on which you have administrator access rights.
65. BlueScreenView – This scans all the minidump files which are created during BSOD crashes and displays the crash information in a table view.
66. BatteryInfoView – This displays the current status and additional information about your battery.
67. System Explorer – This allows you to view services, processes, IE add-ons, protocol filters and handlers for Explorer. You can also compare file and registry snapshots.
68. WinLaunch – WinLaunch gives your Windows a perfect Mac-style interface to use.

Internet:

69. Chrome – The popular browser from Google is significantly faster than most other browsers, and pretty much has all the features and add-ons that you might need.
70. Find Favorites – This allows you to search your Internet Explorer bookmarks.
71. Google Toolbar – This is for your IE browser lets you can directly search Google, share on Google+, and add custom buttons.
72. Pegasus Mail – Feature rich and secure email client for Windows. It can support multiple users on a single computer.
73. Thunderbird – This email client from Mozilla includes just about all the features which are required in a popular email client.
74. Kompozer – That can be used to design and edit HTML pages. Tt combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.
75. Skype – You can communicate with anyone in the world by voice, instant messaging, and video.
76. Instantbird – Instant messaging application which can connect nearly all your different IM accounts, including Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Twitter, Yahoo, etc.
77. Filezilla – This is the best FTP client. Easy to use, support FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol.
78. uTorrent – Torrent client for windows to download and share files over the internet.

Office Suites, Document Utilities:

79. PrimoPDF – The best free PDF creator. You can convert any existing file into PDF with a single click.
80. PDF24 Creator – Apart from the PDF creation, you can also merge multiple PDF files into a single file, split an existing PDF file, etc.
81. LibreOffice – The best comprehensive and professional quality office suite like Microsoft office.
82. SSuite Personal Office – Office suite which has word processor, spreadsheet, email client, PDF creator, etc.
83. IBM Lotus Symphony – Office suite from IBM that is based on open source OpenOffice.org code base
84. Kingsoft Office – This is yet another free office suite that is based on OpenOffice.org.
85. OpenOffice – Open source office productivity suite which works on multiple operating systems.
86. OOo4kids – This is a simpler and easier version of the popular open source OpenOffice suite geared towards kids.
87. OxygenOffice – Based on OpenOffice.org office. It has additional templates, cliparts, samples, and fonts, etc.
88. Adobe Reader – View and print PDF files. View, fill-out, save and print interactive PDF contents that has forms.
89. Office Viewers – View and print Microsoft office files that you receive from others
90. Open Workbench – Superior open source project management software
91. OpenProj – Another alternative to Microsoft Project for Windows based desktop project management.

Misc Utilities:

92. TeamViewer – Remotely control your Windows, Mac, and Linux systems when you are not physically in front of the computer.
93. FreeMind – Mind-mapping software with all the features that you would expect from a typical mind mapping software.
94. Universal Viewer – Advanced file viewer which supports a lot of file types.
95. InstantStorm – This is a Screensaver creator. Flash screensaver creator can change SWF files into professional screensavers.
96. ReProfiler – Attach or detach Windows accounts with their corresponding user profiles.
97. WizMouse – Scroll through documents and windows even when they are not currently focused.
98. Mute on Lock – This simple and helpful utility will turn off your speakers when you lock your Windows system.
99. Truecrypt – Open source disk encryption software which protects your data by creating a virtual encrypted disk within a file but mounting it as a real disk.
100. Password Dragon – Last, but not least, Password Dragon is a password manager utility developed by us. The advantage of this program is that it works on Windows, Mac, and Unix

I’m sure you’ll find at least few freeware from the above list very useful.

If you think we’ve forgotten to include your favorite freeware, or if you think any of the freeware mentioned here should not be in the list for some reason, leave your comment.