I Replaced 7 Paid SaaS Tools with Free APIs — Saving $2,400/Year

Last year I was spending $200/month on SaaS tools for my side projects. Weather data, email verification, geolocation, currency conversion, uptime monitoring, analytics, and PDF generation. Then I realized: free APIs exist for literally all of these. Here's every tool I replaced, what I replaced it with, and how much I saved. 1. Weather Data: Dark Sky → Open-Meteo Was paying: $0 (Dark Sky shutdown) → Switched to OpenWeatherMap at $40/month for commercial use Replaced with: Open-Meteo (completely free, no key needed) \ `python import requests def get_forecast(lat, lon, days=7): r = requests.get(' https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast ', params={ 'latitude': lat, 'longitude': lon, 'daily': 'temperature_2m_max,temperature_2m_min,precipitation_sum', 'timezone': 'auto', 'forecast_days': days }) return r.json()['daily'] ` \ Savings: $480/year 2. Email Verification: ZeroBounce → AbstractAPI Was paying: $40/month for 5,000 verifications Replaced with: Abstract Email Verification API (free: 10