How is this development tools ranking decided?

Mechanically. The 20 approved development tools listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.

Is this list re-ordered for freelancers?

No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the freelancers framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.

How much does development tools software cost?

Across the 20 development tools tools listed here, paid plans start between $3.65 and $5,000 a month, with a median entry price of $10. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $5,000 a month (Ansible). 6 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.

What is the cheapest development tools software?

4 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Bitbucket has the lowest published entry price at $3.65 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.

Is there free development tools software?

Yes, 6 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 4 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.

How is development tools software usually billed?

freemium (7), open-source (4), subscription (2), usage-based (2), plus 2 less common arrangements, counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not.

How many pricing tiers do development tools tools offer?

3 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 1 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.

How many development tools tools are listed on Softwr?

20 approved development tools listings appear on this page, including Ansible, Argo CD, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/development-tools, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Development Tools · ranked shortlist

Best Development Tools software for Freelancers in 2026

20 approved development tools listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.

Tools ranked: 20
Entry price range: $3.65-$5,000
Publish a $0 plan: 6 of 20

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.

Where the ratings come from

No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.

What the pool is

Approved development tools listings, capped at 20 per page; 20 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the development tools category page.

The ranking

Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.

#1
Ansible
Highest rated here
Simple, agentless IT automation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $5,000 a month.
Billing
open-source
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
automation, configuration-management, devops, agentless
Ansible breakdown Compare with Argo CD
#2
A
Argo CD
A declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
open-source
Argo CD breakdown Compare with Azure DevOps
#3
A
Azure DevOps
Plan smarter, collaborate better, and ship faster
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Azure DevOps breakdown Compare with Bitbucket
#4
Bitbucket
Git code management for professional teams
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $3.65 a month.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $7.25.
Billing
Model not published
Published tiers
3 tiers
Bitbucket breakdown Compare with Buildkite
#5
Buildkite
CI/CD pipelines that run on your own compute
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Buildkite breakdown Compare with Claude Code
#6
Claude Code
AI-powered CLI for developers
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Claude Code breakdown Compare with Cody
#7
Cody
AI coding assistant powered by code search
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Cody breakdown Compare with Deno
#8
D
Deno
A fast, open-source, fully Node-compatible JS runtime with TypeScript baked right in
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Deno breakdown Compare with ESLint
#9
ESLint
Find and fix problems in JavaScript code
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
Model not published
ESLint breakdown Compare with Fig
#10
F
Fig
IDE-style autocomplete for your existing terminal
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Fig breakdown Compare with Git
#11
G
Git
A free and open source distributed version control system
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
open-source
Git breakdown Compare with GitHub Copilot
#12
GitHub Copilot
AI pair programmer for developers
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $10 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $19.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
ai, coding, github, developer-tools
GitHub Copilot breakdown Compare with GitLab CI/CD
#13
G
GitLab CI/CD
Automatically build, test, deploy, and monitor your applications with GitLab CI/CD
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
usage-based
GitLab CI/CD breakdown Compare with Harness
#14
Harness
Software delivery platform across CI, CD, security testing and cost management
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
quote
Harness breakdown Compare with HCP Terraform
#15
HCP Terraform
Infrastructure as code provisioning and management, formerly Terraform Cloud
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
subscription
HCP Terraform breakdown Compare with Helm
#16
H
Helm
The package manager for Kubernetes
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
open-source
Helm breakdown Compare with JFrog Artifactory
#17
J
JFrog Artifactory
The Universal Binary Repository
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
usage-based
JFrog Artifactory breakdown Compare with Octopus Deploy
#18
Octopus Deploy
Continuous delivery and runbook automation for releases
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
freemium
Octopus Deploy breakdown Compare with pnpm
#19
pnpm
Fast, disk space efficient package manager
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
Model not published
pnpm breakdown Compare with Prettier
#20
Prettier
Opinionated code formatter
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
free
Prettier breakdown

What development tools software costs

Counted from the published pricing of the 20 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.

Cheapest paid plan: $3.65Bitbucket
Median entry price: $10across 3 priced
Dearest entry price: $5,000Ansible
Publish a $0 plan: 6of 20

Paid development tools plans in this set start anywhere from $3.65 a month for Bitbucket to $5,000 for Ansible. The median entry price across the 3 tools that publish one is $10, half of them start below that figure and half above it.

6 of 20 publish a $0 plan, and 4 of those charge nothing at all. 1 tool has no free tier of any kind.

Bitbucket pricing Ansible pricing Ansible plans

How these vendors bill

The billing model each of the 20 development tools listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.

freemium: 7
open-source: 4
subscription: 2
usage-based: 2
free: 1
quote: 1

How to choose between them

Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.

Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them

6 of 20 development tools tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line.

Read the spread before you read the features

$3.65 to $5,000 is a $4,996.35 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $5,000 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.

Check which tier you actually land on

1 of 20 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.

The billing model matters more than the headline number

This category splits across 6 billing models: freemium on 7 listings, open-source on 4, and 4 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.

Compare development tools tools directly

Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.

Go straight to the numbers

Build your own comparison See the shortlist instead

Questions people ask about development tools software

Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.

How is this development tools ranking decided?: Mechanically. The 20 approved development tools listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
Is this list re-ordered for freelancers?: No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the freelancers framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.
How much does development tools software cost?: Across the 20 development tools tools listed here, paid plans start between $3.65 and $5,000 a month, with a median entry price of $10. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $5,000 a month (Ansible). 6 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.
What is the cheapest development tools software?: 4 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Bitbucket has the lowest published entry price at $3.65 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
Is there free development tools software?: Yes, 6 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 4 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
How is development tools software usually billed?: freemium (7), open-source (4), subscription (2), usage-based (2), plus 2 less common arrangements, counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not.
How many pricing tiers do development tools tools offer?: 3 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 1 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
How many development tools tools are listed on Softwr?: 20 approved development tools listings appear on this page, including Ansible, Argo CD, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/development-tools, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Keep reading

Neighbouring categories

Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Where the ratings come from

What the pool is

The ranking

Ansible

Argo CD

Azure DevOps

Bitbucket

Buildkite

Claude Code

Cody

Deno

ESLint

Fig

Git

GitHub Copilot

GitLab CI/CD

Harness

HCP Terraform

Helm

JFrog Artifactory

Octopus Deploy

pnpm

Prettier