Guides
Free apps for students: language practice, resumes, PDFs and more
Free apps for student life, with no trial or subscription: language practice, a first resume, PDF tools, lecture transcripts, splitting rent and group projects.
Good free apps for students do one job well, with no trial that turns into a subscription. From the OpenApps store: Lingo for language practice, Resume for a first resume with a free PDF, PDF for merging and splitting files, Dictate for lecture transcripts on your device, Split for roommates and trips, Still for focus sounds and breathing, and Forms, When and Paste for clubs and group projects. Every one is free, with no ads and no student email needed.
For class
Lingo: practice for your language class
Lingo is bite-size lessons in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. You tap the right words, build sentences, listen, type and speak. Spanish and French have full beginner courses. German, Italian and Portuguese have their first units, with more coming.
Mistakes are unlimited: no hearts, no energy and no waiting, so a long practice session before a quiz is never cut short. Practice brings back the words you miss. Streaks with free streak freezes, XP, daily goals and weekly leagues help if you like a nudge. You can start without an account, and sign in with your email only if you want your progress on both your phone and your laptop.
Be realistic about what it is: practice, not a replacement for your class or your teacher, and no app can promise fluency. It works best as a few minutes a day alongside class.
Duolingo's courses are free too, and it is a good app. On phones, its free version runs on Energy that every exercise uses, and ads play between lessons, as reported in 2026. More in a free Duolingo alternative with no hearts and the best free language learning apps.
Dictate: lecture transcripts that stay on your device
Dictate turns a recording into a transcript with timestamps, and exports plain text or .srt subtitles. Speech recognition runs on your own device, so your audio is never uploaded. There are no word or minute limits, and after the first visit it works offline.
The simplest way to use it: record the lecture with your phone's voice recorder, then drop the file into Dictate. Ask first, though. Many schools and teachers have rules about recording class.
Dictate uses Whisper, an open speech model, with a Fast setting and a slower, more accurate one. A big lecture hall with echo and a distant speaker is hard for any transcriber, so read the transcript next to your notes rather than trusting every word. Long lectures also take a while on older phones. See how to transcribe audio for free without uploading it.
PDF and Sign: forms, readings and handouts
PDF merges PDFs, splits out pages, reorders, rotates and deletes pages, turns images into a PDF and adds page numbers. That covers a lot of student paperwork, like combining scanned readings or turning phone photos of a worksheet into one PDF to hand in. It all happens in your browser, so your files are never uploaded. No daily limit, no watermark, no account.
PDF does not sign documents. For an internship agreement or a form that needs your signature, use Sign: upload the PDF, add yourself as the signer, sign from your private link and download the signed copy. The steps are in how to sign a PDF for free.
For your first job or internship
Resume: a first resume with a free PDF download
Many resume builders let you fill everything in, then ask for a trial or a subscription at the download button. Resume does not. Fill in your contact details, summary, experience, education, skills and projects, pick one of three clean templates, and download a PDF with real, selectable text. No trial, no subscription, no watermark. You also get plain text and JSON copies.
The templates read well in applicant tracking systems, the software many employers use to sort applications. Short on work history? Use the projects section for class projects, clubs and volunteering.
Your resume saves on your device as you type, and is only uploaded if you share it by link.
For living with other people
Split: roommates and trips
Split keeps track of who paid for what. Make a group for the apartment or the spring break trip, share the link, and everyone adds expenses from their own phone. No account and no app to install. Split equally, by shares or by exact amounts, with each group in its own currency. Split shows who owes whom and the fewest payments that settle everything. There is no limit on groups or expenses, and no daily cap.
Split never moves money. It tells you the amounts, and you pay each other however you already do. For worked examples, see how to split rent with roommates.
For exam weeks
Still: focus sounds and a breather before exams
Still has a mixer of rain, ocean, wind, fire and white, pink or brown noise, which many people use to block out a noisy dorm or library. It also has guided sessions for focus, stress, sleep and mornings, box breathing and 4-7-8 breathing with a gentle guide, and a sleep timer that fades out for the night before an exam. After your first visit it works offline, and it installs like an app, so a weak library connection does not matter. See box breathing and 4-7-8, a free guide and free white noise and brown noise.
Breathing exercises help many people relax. Still is not therapy or medical care, though. If stress starts to feel like more than stress, your school's counseling service is a good place to start.
For comparison: Noisli's free plan has 16 sounds and 1.5 hours of streaming a day, with Pro listed at $12 a month or $10 a month billed yearly. Headspace's student plan is listed at $9.99 a year, a fair price if you want its full library. Both as of 2026, and prices change.
For clubs and group projects
Forms: club sign-ups and surveys
Forms makes forms and surveys with no cap on forms, questions or responses. See results as they come in, with a summary for each question, and export to CSV. People filling it in need no account. Google Forms is free too, and many schools already use it. Forms is there when you want one without a Google account.
If your club needs people to claim limited spots, like who brings what to a bake sale, Sheets fits better: each slot fills to the number you set and never goes over.
When: find a time for the group project
Five people, five schedules. When lets you suggest a few times and share the link. Everyone marks yes, if need be, or no, and the best time is highlighted as people answer. Times show in each person's own time zone, which helps when a teammate is studying abroad. Add the chosen time to any calendar. No accounts and no ads. More in a free Doodle alternative.
Paste: share code with your lab partner
Paste shares text and code by link, with highlighting and line numbers. Pick when it expires: never, in an hour, a day, a week, or after the first view. Pastes are always unlisted, so only people with the link can read them, and you can encrypt a paste in your browser. Each paste has a raw text link and a download, and can be up to 512 KB from the web app. No account and no daily limit.
One honest note: check your course's rules before you share code from an assignment.
Questions
What are the best free apps for students?
From the OpenApps store: Lingo for language practice, Resume for a free PDF resume, PDF for merging files, Dictate for private transcripts, Split for roommates, Still for focus sounds, and Forms, When and Paste for clubs and group projects. All are free with no ads.
Are these apps really free, or a free trial?
Really free. OpenApps apps have no trial, no subscription and no paid tier. OpenApps pays for hosting, and only things with a real cost each time you use them, like AI, would ever be charged, at cost.
Do I need a student email or an account?
No. None of the apps asks for a student email. Lingo starts without an account, and you sign in with any email only to keep your progress on more than one device.
Can Lingo replace my language class?
No. OpenApps Lingo is free practice with short lessons, listening, typing and speaking. Use it alongside class. Spanish and French have full beginner courses, and German, Italian and Portuguese have their first units.
Can Dictate transcribe a recorded lecture?
Yes. Drop the recording into OpenApps Dictate and it makes a transcript with timestamps, on your own device, with no minute limit. Ask before recording a class, and read the transcript over, since echo and distance make any transcriber less accurate.