How ReallyFree works
It marks search results before you click. Here is exactly what it does.
The dots
Every colored dot on a search result is our answer to one question: can you finish the job and keep what you made, without paying?
- ● Green — you get everything you need. No paywall, no watermark, no "export requires a subscription." You can use the tool and keep the result, free, as long as you want.
- ● Yellow — something's missing. The core tool is free but there's a catch you should know about — an in-app purchase for a key feature, a limit on exports, a required account. Click the dot to see what it is.
- ● Red — it costs money. A subscription, a one-time purchase, or a trial that becomes a charge. Not a moral judgment — charging money is a normal thing to do. Just a heads-up so you're not surprised.
- — Gray dash — we read it and couldn't pin it down. Usually means the page is complex, or the offer is genuinely ambiguous.
- ? Gray dot — nothing to judge yet. We haven't checked this one. Click it and we'll check it now.
Where the dots come from
We visit sites and read their pages — the pricing page, the signup flow, the export dialog. We apply a published set of detection rules and record what we find. The result is stored in our database and served to the extension the moment it needs it.
The extension itself runs the judgment locally, on your device, using a rules bundle it downloads from us once a day. When it sees a site it doesn't have an answer for, it asks our server. The dot appears in under a second.
We judge from the United States. Pricing and availability differ by country, so what we see may not be what you see. If a dot looks wrong for your location, tell us.
What the extension does and doesn't do
It reads the destination links in your search results — just the site name, never your search words — and fetches verdicts for them. It never reads your browsing history, never tracks you across sites, and never stores anything about you. The full privacy policy is one page, in plain English.
The verdict is never for sale
Not the color. Not the position. Not the removal of a yellow or a red. Nobody can pay us to change a dot, and nobody has. A company that wants to go green has one path: actually become free. We check, we find that it is, and the dot changes. That is the only way it changes.
My ReallyFree
The extension keeps a personal list — your favorites. Sites you've starred are saved to your account so they follow you across browsers and devices. The My ReallyFree dashboard shows your saved sites, the current verdict on each, and a quick link back to the site itself.
The Green List
Every site we have judged green, in one list you can search, sort, and filter. It is the complete picture of what we have verified. Browse it at reallyfree.app/collection.
Questions or corrections
If a dot looks wrong, write to us. A person reads it. If we were wrong, we correct the record and the correction reaches everyone.