Life online gets messy fast—but these seven free tools help me keep things under control and make the internet easier to use, week after week.

Grammarly is easily one of the tools I rely on the most. As someone who writes a lot—whether it’s emails, articles, or even social media posts—having a second pair of eyes is invaluable. At first glance, it might seem like Grammarly only catches typos, but it goes further, helping with tone, clarity, and even word choice, so your writing fits different situations.

I mostly use the browser extension, which works nearly everywhere I write online—Gmail, Google Docs, and social media. If you work outside the browser, there’s also a desktop app and a mobile keyboard.

While Grammarly has a paid option, the free version is surprisingly powerful—it’s one of the best free AI apps you should be using. Grammarly is more like having an editor or a writing coach beside you.

I’m not a designer by profession and haven’t invested time into learning the ins and outs of using professional-grade tools like Adobe’s. As such, Canva is my go-to tool for all design-related tasks. Whether I need to create an image for a blog post, a graphic for social media, or a presentation, I use Canva.

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Canva is made for noobs and is packed with professionally designed templates for different purposes that are easy to customize. Besides the templates, you can also create your designs from scratch. However, what keeps me coming back to Canva is its intuitiveness.

Temp Mail is my secret weapon for keeping my email inbox clean. Whenever I need to sign up for something sketchy, download a freebie, or test a service I’m unsure about, I turn to Temp Mail. The service gives you a temporary, disposable email address that you can use instantly. It’s quick and free, with no signup required.

My job is to copy the provided temporary email address, plug it into whichever platform I’d like to try, and I’m good to go. Once I’m done, I close the browser and walk away. There is no spam and no annoying newsletters. Temp Mail is an essential tool, especially in my work as a writer, which requires testing different apps and services, most of which I never use again.

Remove.bg feels like magic every time I use it. As one of the best AI background removers, it instantly removes the background from any image with just one click—no Photoshop skills required. I often need to isolate images from their backgrounds—whether it’s a logo or a photo I want to reuse—and Remove.bg handles it instantly.

You can upload images of various file types (including PNG and JPG) via drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste, or by inserting the image’s URL. The free version lets you download standard-quality photos, which is usually more than enough for everyday use.

Besides the background removal feature, it also offers tools for replacing the background image in a photo, blurring the background, and more. Plus, it integrates with other apps.

If you’re not using Perplexity, you’re missing out. Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that makes it easy to find answers to your queries from around the web.

Unlike traditional search engines that bombard you with ads and SEO-stuffed articles, Perplexity gives you direct and concise explanations. It also provides you with all the sources of information from which the answers originate for verification.

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Google is still the world’s leading search tool, but Perplexity’s AI-powered alternative is very much worth checking out.

I use Perplexity daily to research, fact-check, summarize long articles, and even brainstorm ideas when I’m stuck. Since it has access to real-time information, it has become my go-to for time-sensitive topics. Perplexity has completely changed how I search for things online.

With so many online accounts to keep track of, I use Bitwarden password manager, so I only have to remember one password—the master password. The rest are stored in my secure password vault. Bitwarden is why I don’t use the same password everywhere or rely on inefficient methods like writing down my passwords in a notebook.

It’s a free, open-source password manager that securely stores all my logins, credit card information, and even notes behind a single master password. Bitwarden automatically generates strong and secure passwords and autofills them across browsers and mobile apps for convenience. However, there are other reasons why I store my passwords in Bitwarden.

Every day, I come across interesting articles online. With no time to go through them, I instantly add them to Pocket for later. Pocket has been around for a while, and even after trying different options, Pocket remains my favorite bookmarking app. Most importantly, it makes storing, retrieving, and organizing bookmarks easy, which is handy as I have many of them.

But besides saving articles, I use Pocket religiously to discover new interesting reads around the web that I wouldn’t have stumbled across on my own.

These tools may not seem flashy, but they’ve quietly become essential to how I navigate life online. And the best part? They’re all free unless you require additional functionality.