About OpenShelf
A 100% community-driven catalog of free & open-source software. Zero paywalls, zero affiliate tracking, zero ads. Built static, served from the edge, indexed by humans.
The open web is being slowly buried under ad-ridden directories, SEO spam, and affiliate wrappers. Most "best tools" lists in 2050 are just link farms optimized for click revenue.
OpenShelf is the antidote. A living index of free & open-source software, curated by humans, editable by anyone, deployable for $0 on the open web.
We don't rank tools by sponsorship. We don't bury non-partners. Every entry has a catalog code, a license, and a single sentence describing what it does. No fluff, no monetization, no compromise.
Mihir Parmar
Independent developer and open-source advocate focused on privacy-first web utilities. OpenShelf is an extension of a long-standing belief: that quality software deserves a quality, ad-free index.
How a single static site, a JSON file, and a CDN can serve the world forever — at zero cost.
tools.json
Community-edited
single source of truth
Static Host
Cloudflare / GitHub Pages
edge-cached HTML
User Browser
Client-side fetch + filter
in-memory search
// ZERO SERVERS
No application backend. No databases. No auth flow. The entire site is 7 HTML files and one JSON array — served as static bytes.
// ZERO TRACKING
No analytics, no cookies, no fingerprinting. Search runs in browser memory. The site works fully offline once loaded.
// ZERO COST
Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages serve static content for free. The total monthly infrastructure bill is $0 — forever.