Known widely for its comprehensive study guides for literary works commonly studied in the English classroom, Sparknotes is an absolute essential for studying the all-important humanities subject of literature. Packaged with explanations for characters, themes, motifs, plot points, and many other guides for comprehending major titles, all of its essential content is available with its free access option.

Polyglot Club is a language exchange social network where you can connect with native speakers of your target language to practice different languages online and offline, while you make friends and discover cultures.

LibGen provides free access to a wide range of journal articles, textbooks, and other forms of media that are mostly otherwise behind a paywall. The ability to download free textbooks is especially helpful to students at locations where resource access is lacking. To prevent downloading unwanted viruses, it is best to avoid torrenting; rather, download files directly from the site.

Edx is a database of courses provided by universities, private companies and even international organizations. From skill-learning such as coding to academic learning such as topology, Edx provides courses for any and all interests. While certification is priced, most courses are available for free.

The NYT Learning Network holds contests throughout the school year for teenagers around the world to submit entries, free of charge. It provides writers and journalists a platform to voice their ideas and showcase their writing. Examples of these opportunities include the Editorial, Review, and Summer Reading contests.

Busuu is a global online language learning community of 60 million users worldwide and relies heavily on its users’ efforts to help teach one another. It offers the opportunity to learn while networking with other learners. Beginners can use flashcards to learn new vocabulary, but lessons for advanced learners involve writing and answering questions that native speakers on the site will correct.

Coursera’s online courses, largely administered by world-renowned universities and companies, cover all fields of study and allow for many flexible aspects in learning. Its courses vary from simple lecture series to full professional degrees. Though many courses require payment, a large number of high-quality classes are offered free of charge and some paid programs allow for free viewing of content (“auditing”), though without graded assignments.

RemNote is a note-taking application, available on mobile, as a web app, and on desktop, that allows users to create spaced-repetition flashcards within a hierarchic text structure. This functionality takes full advantage of the forgetting curve to optimize memory retention for notes that would otherwise exist in plain text. All of the essentials come with the free version of the app.

This one is for the little ones! Set in a fantasy game background, this app allows children from grades 1 - 8 to practice their mathematical skills interactively. While maximizing engagement through games, Prodigy also maximizes learning as teachers can supervise and report back on children’s progress.

Clozemaster is a gamified language learning tool for learning new vocabulary in context. It has more than 100 language pairings available. In this way, the vocabulary you learn via Clozemaster is the most difficult of the most common.

The most popular global video platform, YouTube has long hosted a substantial community of learners and teachers. With nearly all video content is available free of charge, it is a go-to resource for a student’s questions on any topic.

The Duolingo platform, which offers both a website and an app for learning languages, is free with 20 language courses available. Drills are used to teach languages, and they include elements of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The software keeps track of which questions the students have trouble with and the faults they consistently commit.