Best Freeware Download Sites

Once you use Gizmo's to find the best freeware for your purposes, you need to download it from somewhere. Generally, I recommend that you use the software developer's site but that is not always possible. In that case, you have to go to one of the many repositories of freeware to be found on the web.

Here I list six of the largest and best. The ranking is subjective so keep in mind that your personal experience may be different. There are a lot of download sites and you may know of one worth a mention. Let us hear your ideas in the comments.

FileHippo  This is currently out top recommendation as they offer a wide collection of clean software with fast download rates without requiring a proprietary downloader. A unique and useful feature is they offer a full version history of most products.

MajorGeeks This site carries only tech tools and utilities. Guidance is limited to brief reviews and user ratings.  However, if you are looking for tech tools this is THE place to go. One of our favorites.

SnapFiles  Offers a huge collection, great organization and a refreshingly clean presentation. Products are briefly reviewed and carry site ratings, user rating and user comments.

Softpedia  A huge commercial site with an excellent collection organized by platform. It features site and user star ratings for products and user comments. The search engine doesn't display any  ratings and this limits its use when selecting. The real selling point for this site is its "100% clean" guarantee.  For many that is a winning feature but remember it easy to claim a 100% guarantee but much harder to achieve it!

FileForum-Betanews  Not the largest download collection, but if you're looking for the very latest products you'll find them here long before other download sites.

FreewareFiles.com  Good collection of software with user ratings and number of downloads listed. Quite a few ads scattered throughout.

In addition to the generalized sites with freeware of many sorts, there are numerous places with freeware in specific categories. Here are some of my favorites.

NirSoft  Developer Nir Sofer has created a large assortment of small useful utilities for helping with many of the tasks of managing Windows systems. A treasure-trove of useful free apps can be found on his site.

Free Microsoft Downloads The Microsoft site is full of free stuff but finding it isn't always easy. Fortunately, there is a an article here at Gizmo's that tells what there is and where to find it.

Last Freeware Version  If one of your favorite programs has gone commercial, you may be able to find the last free version at this site. Some of the things there are so old that they won't work on more recent versions of Windows so be careful about what you try.

The Portable Freeware Collection Do you like programs and utilities that don't have to be installed and can be run from anywhere? Then head over to this site for a big selection of portable freeware.  

These two sites are just different faces of the same site, which is the the biggest collection of software on the web. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it unless there is no other option. The site is laden with misleading ad download links and often requires you to install their proprietary downloader. This downloader is not only unnecessary but also intrudes into your privacy. See our information page at this link.

This category is maintained by volunteer editor Vic Laurie. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or suggestions they might have by clicking here.

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