10 Free Tools I Recommend to Every Web Developer in 2025

Let’s be honest — web development in 2025 is no walk in the park. Between writing clean code, testing responsiveness, optimizing for performance, and making it all look good, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Over the past few years, I’ve built up a personal toolbox of free resources that I keep going back to — tools that genuinely save me hours and keep my workflow smooth. If you’re serious about building better websites, bookmark this list. You’ll thank me later.

1. CodePen

A playground for frontend developers. I use it to quickly test ideas or share code snippets with friends. The real-time preview is a lifesaver when experimenting with tricky CSS or JavaScript behavior.

2. Responsively App

Testing responsiveness used to be a pain. Responsively lets you preview your site on multiple device sizes at once. It’s open-source and surprisingly fast.

3. Google Fonts

Design lives or dies by typography. Google Fonts gives you access to hundreds of well-crafted typefaces with easy embedding options. My current go-to? Inter and Space Grotesk.

4. Google PageSpeed Insights

If you care about SEO or user retention (and you should), performance matters. This tool gives you real feedback on what’s slowing your site down — and how to fix it.

5. TinyPNG

Heavy images = slow site. TinyPNG compresses JPEGs and PNGs without ruining their quality. It’s usually my first stop before uploading assets to a blog or landing page.

6. GetWaves

Sometimes, I want a soft, flowing design element — like a divider or section background. GetWaves helps me generate SVG wave patterns that are lightweight and modern-looking.

7. Can I Use

Before using any new CSS property or JS API, I quickly check browser support on CanIUse. Saved me from production bugs more times than I can count.

8. Carbon

I love sharing little code tips on Twitter, and Carbon helps me turn boring code into clean, colorful image snippets. It’s like Instagram for developers.

9. unDraw

Stock photos are overused and expensive. unDraw offers unique SVG illustrations that are free to use and customizable to match your site’s color scheme.

10. JSDelivr

If you’re loading libraries like jQuery or Bootstrap, JSDelivr offers a super-fast CDN with no downtime and detailed analytics. It’s now my default over Cloudflare.

Final thoughts

These tools aren’t just “cool finds” — they’re part of my daily workflow. Some help with speed, others with design, and a few with collaboration or testing.

Don’t feel like you have to use all of them at once. Try a few that match what you’re working on right now, and build your own personal stack from there.

Got a favorite tool that’s not on this list? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

More toolkits and tutorials coming soon — follow the blog or bookmark this post!