15 best free Android apps available right now
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Android’s biggest strength is its app ecosystem. There are tons of Android apps and thousands of people have 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. Not interested in apps? There are a bunch of great free Android games as well.
The best free Android apps
1Weather
Price: Free / In-app purchases from $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.
You can remove advertising with in-app purchases. 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 that app’s redesign in mid-2020.
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Let’s be real, Firefox is one of the best browsers to have. There are multiple reasons for this. From a privacy-based perspective, it is better than most browsers and offers security with enhanced customization. This one blocks trackers and scripts, cross-site cookie trackers, crypto-miners, and fingerprints. With the enhanced tracking protection mode, you won’t even have to manually set it up; it’ll automatically configure itself to protect you. It’s pretty fast too, user-friendly, and looks very neat and minimalistic. If you still have an issue with how it looks, don’t worry; you can customize it to your preferences. And this one still supports ad-blocking extensions, which is great. There are also a ton of great extensions, add-ons, and themes available on the Mozilla Store.
Blue Mail
Price: Free / In-app purchases from $6.99
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 supports many email providers, color coding for easy organizing, app theming, Android Wear support, and widgets. Various smart features, such as blocking notifications during certain times (per account), also help customize your experience.
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 / In-app purchases from $2.49
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 ingredient list. Additionally, you can import recipes from virtually any website.
The UI is clean and easy to use, and there is cloud backup, even in the free version. The premium version is a yearly subscription, but it only increases the number of recipes you can sync or use the Dropbox option for.
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 (the owner of Turbo Tax) purchased Credit Karma back in 2020.
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. If your phone keyboard is giving you fits, you’ll want to try this one out. It’s one of the best free Android apps, for sure.
Google Drive
Price: Free / In-app purchases from $0.99
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
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 if you need more choices.
Google Opinion Rewards
Price: Free
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 on 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.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
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.
Giphy is an image database. It’s a great place 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. Giphy is completely free to download and use. There’s another app, Imgur (download here), that works in the same way; you can give that a try too. Both of these apps have your back, whether you want to kill a few minutes slacking off or are looking for the perfect reaction GIF for your posts and replies. They’re two free Android apps worth having. Plus, you can upload your images to Imgur without limits for sharing in various places. There are other funny apps on Android, but we like these two the best.
Musicolet
Price: Free / In-app purchases from $0.99
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.
Microsoft OneNote
Price: Free
One Note by Microsoft is one of the most popular and best free Android apps to have. Firstly, we have to admire the neat and clean UI of the app, the color scheme, and everything about it that looks great. You have the option to type, hand-write, draw, or insert clips. It even supports voice recognition. The customization options and the variety it gives you to organize your notes — it’s just phenomenal. There’s even the option to scan physical pages; how great is that?
TickTick
Price: Free / In-app purchases from $0.99
TickTick is among the best to-do list apps on Android. 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, and 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 / In-app purchases from $0.49
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 / In-app purchases from $15.99
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
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.
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