Perhaps the biggest strength of Android is the application ecosystem. There are well over one million applications in the Google Play Store that have been downloaded billions of times. We use them for productivity, entertainment, information, functionality, and everything between. You absolutely cannot have a good time on Android unless you have some awesome apps and there are plenty that you don’t have to spend a dime to get. Here are the best free Android apps!

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1Weather

[Price: Free / $1.99]
1Weather is about as complete of a weather app as you can find. It comes with all kinds of stuff including current conditions, forecasts, radar, predictions, fun facts about meteorology, graphs, and evne a sun and moon tracker. It’s wrapped up in a very attractive tabbed design and there are even a variety of weather widgets that come along with it. It’s free to use and the $1.99 charge is simply to remove advertising. Everything else remains the same.
Get it now on Google Play!

AppLock

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
AppLock is a free Android app that comes with a lot of options. You can pay for it, get premium features, and no advertising. Or you can view advertising, get the premium features, and not pay anything. Finally, you can use it ad-free, but without premium features. The choice is yours. The app itself is a simple, but powerful app that allows you to lock your apps up tight with passwords so that snooping eyes can’t see them. This is great if you have nosy roommates, kids, or if you just want some piece of mind.
Get it now on Google Play!

CloudMagic Email

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
CloudMagic Email is arguably the most versatile email client on Android. With it, you create a CloudMagic account and then sign into all of your email addresses. If your device gets lost or stolen or you buy a new device, you just have to log into CloudMagic and all of your email will follow you. It comes with a simple, but effective design and has a variety of features such as plugins for Todoist, Evernote, OneNote, Asana, and others. It’s a powerful email client and one that you should check out.
Get it now on Google Play!

Evernote

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Evernote is a note taking application and it’s one of the best. It comes with a ton of features, including the ability to sync to the cloud for easy access on your computer or other mobile devices. You can take a variety of notes, including lists, regular notes, video notes, audio notes, and combinations of all of them. There are premium features that you can pay for, but the free version is more than enough unless you’re a seriously intense user.
Get it now on Google Play!

The Google Drive Suite

[Price: Free]
The Google Drive suite are a group of applications that are all directly integrated into Google Drive. The apps include Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Photos, and Google Keep along with the actual Google Drive app itself. These apps focus primarily on office use for documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows but also work for note taking, backing up your photos, and storing whatever file you can think of. The best part is that they’re all free unless you need more than 15GB of storage on Google Drive. Most people don’t.
Get it now on Google Play!

Google Opinion Rewards

[Price: Free]
Google Opinion Rewards is one of the most woefully underrated apps in the Google Play Store. To use this app, you simply download and install it, then open it one time. After that, the app will periodically notify you to ask you some questions. You’ll get credit for use in the Google Play Store every time you answer a survey. This is a great way to get a few bucks to buy those paid apps you’ve always wanted. Do beware that any credit earned is removed after 12 months so don’t wait forever to spend!
Get it now on Google Play!

Groupon

[Price: Free]
Groupon is one of the best and most popular coupon apps available on Android. Using this application is very simple. You browse it for coupons for goods or services you want and then you take those coupons shopping with you in order to get discounts. It doesn’t have coupons for every little thing but any penny saved is a penny earned. You can track which coupons you’ve used, take advantage of deals instantly, and a lot more. The design isn’t half bad either.
Get it now on Google Play!

Kodi

[Price: Free]
Kodi is a media center application that used to go by XBMC. It’s a popular, open-source media center that gives you complete access to your music, TV, and movie files along with your apps, pictures, and there is even support for third party plugins. It’s as full-screen app and it has a unique, simple design that’s easy to use. That said, we really recommend it for larger screen devices and probably not for smaller screen devices. The app is totally free with no in-app purchases.
Get it now on Google Play!

See also: The best free Android games100

LastPass Password Manager

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
LastPass is one of the most prominent, popular, and feature-filled password managers that you can get. The application will encrypt and store your passwords for every app and website you subscribe to and keep them safe behind your master password. The app can also suggest passwords, auto-fill your details into sites and apps, take notes, securely hide photos, and a lot more. It’s a powerful application and it’s free to use on mobile. You will have to pay for it if you want to sync between mobile and your computer.
Get it now on Google Play!

MyFitnessPal

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
MyFitnessPal is one of the best health-oriented applications available on the market. It covers a wide range of healthy lifestyle needs including a calorie counting database with over 5,000,000 foods, a recipe importer so you can create your own cookbook, exercise regimes, integration with other apps and fitness hardware, and personalized recommendations based on your diet or needs. It’s a great app to have around if you want to live a more healthy life and most of its features are entirely free.
Get it now on Google Play!

Pocket

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Pocket is a powerful application for those who surf the web all the time. The way it works is that it allows you to store links, web images, and more in your metaphorical “pocket” for later viewing. This is great if you find stuff you want to remember for later and its offline capabilities allow you to store up some content for those long rides to and from work. It works cross-platform so you can save it on your PC and read it on mobile and vice versa and it’s a handy app to keep around.
Get it now on Google Play!

Stocks, Forex, Futures, and News

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Stocks, Forex, Futures, and News is an application by Investing.com that shows you pretty much anything you need to know about the world of investing. It has real time reporting from over 40,000 financial instruments and 70 global exchanges. This includes breaking news, live charts, opinion, analysis, and coverage of emerging markets. If you’re into finance at all, you should definitely give this app a try.
Get it now on Google Play!

SwiftKey Keyboard

[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
SwiftKey is one of the best keyboards available on Android and it’s entirely free to use. It comes with world class prediction that works most of the time, various customization options including keyboard height, a dedicated number row, and emoji settings. You can even check out your heat map and see how inaccurately you type. There are themes available as well, but they will cost you money. Everything else about the app is free. SwiftKey is owned by Microsoft now so we’ll see how that turns out.
Get it now on Google Play!

Waze

[Price: Free]
Almost everyone has their GPS app of choice these days but Waze is a great option as a secondary GPS app to keep around. On top of directions, you can get road alerts about accidents, find the cheapest gas on your route, and even send ETAs to your friends based on how long Waze thinks it’ll take you to get there. The entire thing is based on live feedback from other drivers in the community so most alerts and information is real time as its being reported which is kind of awesome.
Get it now on Google Play!

Zedge

[Price: Free]
Zedge is pretty much a one-stop-shop for things like wallpapers, ringtones, notification tones, and alarms. There is a very large selection of all of those things available in a variety of genres including fantasy, mainstream, funny, and pretty much whatever else you can think of. The information is crowd sourced by Zedge users and finding stuff on there can be simple. The only bad part is the advertising can get annoying but it’s easy enough to ignore.
Get it now on Google Play!

Related best app lists:

• Need more weather? Check out these awesome weather apps and weather widgets!
• If you’re in need of some schedule organization, may we recommend the best calendar apps on Android?

If we missed any of the best Android MMORPGs, tell us about them in the comments! To see our complete list of best app lists, click here.