licensing
Open source vs paid developer tools
Of the 1,297 active tools in the catalog, this is how many you can actually read the source of — and what the open-source ones still charge for once you stop self-hosting.
68.9%
of active tools are open source
- Open source
- 894
- source available, self-hostable
- Proprietary
- 403
- closed source, vendor-hosted
- Median open-source plan
- $20/mo
- cheapest paid tier, where one exists
- Median proprietary plan
- $20/mo
- cheapest paid tier
by category
Where open source actually wins
Ranked by the share of a category that is open source. Categories with fewer than 8 tools are left out — a 100% share of three tools is a coincidence, not a finding.
- Shell Enhancements100% of 27
- System Prompts & Rules92.3% of 26
- MCP Servers90.4% of 94
- Self-Hosted Platforms89.7% of 97
- Agent Frameworks88.3% of 154
- Agent Skills & Prompts88.2% of 246
- Terminal Emulators87.5% of 8
- Kubernetes Tools85.7% of 35
- Traditional Editors83.3% of 12
- AI Data Tools83.1% of 83
- Terminal & CLI Tools82.7% of 104
- PostgreSQL Tools80% of 15
by pricing model
How the catalog monetizes
Open source is a licensing fact, not a business model. Each row shows how many of that model's tools are open source — which is why 894 open-source tools appear across several models, not only under the legacy "Open source" one.
- Open source623 tools · 621 open source
- Freemium560 tools · 247 open source
- Paid82 tools · 0 open source
- Free32 tools · 26 open source
the cost question
Open source is not the same as free
Both medians below are the cheapest plan with a real monthly cost. A tool whose only priced tier is $0 is counted as free rather than as a $0 plan, because averaging free tiers into a price makes the whole catalog look cheaper than it is.
The median open-source tool with a paid tier charges $20/mo for it, against $20/mo for the median proprietary tool. The licence removes a software fee; it does not remove the hosting, the operations, or the model provider bill.
822 active tools carry no comparable monthly price at all — free products, pure usage-metered products, and quote-only enterprise tiers.
How this was computed
- Counted across every active tool in the catalog (1,297 records). Discontinued tools are excluded — their licence is history, not a live option.
- Open source is the editorial isOpenSource flag on the tool record. The "Open source" pricing model is a separate, older classification, which is why the two counts differ — the flag is the one used everywhere above.
- A category is only listed once it holds 8 tools.
- Prices are the cheapest plan with a real monthly USD cost. Non-USD plans, usage-metered plans, one-time purchases and quote-only tiers have no monthly equivalent and are excluded rather than converted.
- Of the 475 priced tools, 148 come from editor-entered plan rows with a source URL and a check date; the rest are read from the editorial pricing summary.
Recomputed August 31, 2026 · scoring rubric & evidence rules · open dataset (CC-BY 4.0)
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