This page lists primarily statistical software, along with mapping, spreadsheets, database, stuff to do data analysis or management. All of the packages are free to use, that is: there is no charge for individuals to use them. Many of the websites say that individuals are free to download and use the packages. In some cases, there may be charges to institutions. Some of the packages are also open, that is, they are free to use and the source code is freely available so anyone can make modifications to the programs if they wish to. At the bottom of this page, I list a few sites that have information about what "free" means.
Please note: I've only used a few of these software programs a little bit, so I can't say much about how good they are, whether they crash, have viruses, or much else about them. If you use them, please let me know how well they work. If there are any major problems, I'll take them off this list. I'm sorry to add the usual disclaimer that, while I don't expect any problems with them, if you use any of these, I can't be responsible for any problems that may occur.
I'm not necessarily recommending or endorsing any of the software below. I'm only providing info and links.
Statistics
There are many free statistical programs.
See my review of easy to use packages: Free To Use Statistical Software: Comparing Statistical Analyses https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4105959 I find all packages give the same, results, for outputs of frequencies, means, and correlation. For the packages that have regression, these all give the same results too.
See this article http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Free_statistical_software/Citable_Version at Citizendium about free statistical software.
The Popularity of Data Analysis Software, by Robert A. Muenchen. https://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/ This isn't a review of the packages, but a look at which ones are popular, not limited to free ones
Linux Statistical Analysis Tools. May 2022 Steve Emms https://www.linuxlinks.com/StatisticalAnalysis/ Recommend R, gretl, PSPP, and also say these are good: SOFA, jamovi, Deducer
Free statistics software for Macintosh computers, SPSS clones, updated May 2024, David Zatz https://www.macstats.org/statistics-software/free.html Review of Jasp, jamovi and PSPP
Best Free Software Alternatives To SPSS For Data Analysis. Feb 2021. https://datafordev.com/data-analysis/best-free-software-alternatives-to-spss-for-data-analysis/ Alexander Mtembenuzeni. Brief review of BlueSky, PSPP, jamovi, Jasp, Epi Info
Other lists of free stat software
Free statistical software https://statpages.info/javasta2.html The First and MAIN list of software. I got links to several of the stat packages listed here from this site, which lists more info about each package. This statpages site was started and maintained for many years by John Pezzullo. Sadly, Mr. Pezzullo passed away in June 2016. I believe the site is now maintained by a couple of people, including Søren Merser. Statpages is a great site to bookmark.
Betty Jung's page https://www.bettycjung.net/Statpgms.htm
Free Statistical Software
Epi Info
Epi Info is available from https://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/index.html
It is very large in size and will take considerable time to download. This is a program for entering and analyzing data, developed for epidemiologists, but can be used for basic statistical analysis by anyone.
CDC's youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B9157E47AB3FDFA
CDC Epi Info tutorials https://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/support/tutorials.html
CDC Epi Info User Guide https://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/support/userguide.html
CDC/Census Bureau software
CSPro (Census and Survey Processing System) https://www.census.gov/data/software/cspro.html a public-domain software package for entering, tabulating and mapping census and survey data. Last updated 2021.
R,
R is a very widely used program, with tons of documentation
R: The Comprehensive R Archive Network https://cran.r-project.org "R, also known as "GNU S", is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics." It is, I understand, like S+, a statistical language. R is better for graphics than SAS. However, R is complex, and takes a lot of study, so only use this if you have complex statistical or graphical needs. If this site doesn't work, try these mirrors, http://cran.wustl.edu or https://mirrors.nics.utk.edu/cran/
There are many graphical interfaces. Several are reviewed here
R Graphical User Interface Comparison. By Robert A. Muenchen, updated 2024. https://r4stats.com/articles/software-reviews/r-gui-comparison/ and reviews of each package https://r4stats.com/articles/software-reviews/
The review lists these GUIs as one step install and start, and point and click to use:
BlueSky, jamovi, Jasp, Rkward
7 Useful Free Graphical User Interfaces for R. February 7, 2019 Steve Emms Scientific, Software. https://www.linuxlinks.com/guisforr/ They recommend RStudio and Rattle (Bluesky is not included)
10 Best Free Programming Graphical User Interfaces for R. By Tabshir Bin Bashar. In ML & AIProgramming Tips. undated 2024
https://www.ubuntupit.com/best-free-graphical-user-interfaces-for-r/
RStudio is way ahead of its fellow competitors.
R Commander is a free graphical user interface for R. It has drop-down menus that can navigate statistical data analysis.
Deducer includes a menu bar for performing basic data manipulation and analysis activities and an Excel-like spreadsheet for displaying and editing data frames. ... it has a complicated installation process. .. You can complete simple functions with just a few clicks on the mouse.
JASP is intended to be simple to use and intuitive to SPSS users.
Are there reliable standard GUI distribution(s) for R statistical software? https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_there_reliable_standard_GUI_distributions_for_R_statistical_software no date, just "two years ago", as 5/14/2018
R GUIs
BlueSky https://www.blueskystatistics.com
R Commander is available here http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rcmdr/index.html This covers some basic stats.
RKWard https://apps.kde.org/rkward/ From the website "RKWard is meant to become an easy to use, transparent front end to the R-language, a very powerful, yet hard-to-get-into scripting-language with a strong focus on statistic functions. "
R studio https://posit.co/products/open-source/rstudio/ another interface.
jamovi https://www.jamovi.org "a free and open statistical platform which is intuitive to use, and can provide the latest developments in statistical methodology."
jamovi for beginners https://www.rensvandeschoot.com/tutorials/jamovi-for-beginners/ by Ihnwhi Heo and Rens van de Schoot, Utrecht University
JASP https://jasp-stats.org/ An alternative to SPSS and R. A fairly new package so still being developed. A lot of it seems Bayesian, but also the usual statistical tests. Mentioned here: What Are the Odds? A Practical Guide to Computing and Reporting Bayes Factors https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jps/vol7/iss1/2/ and The JASP team wrote about it here https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/bayes-or-bust-with-new-softwares and Also reviewed here https://computingforpsychologists.wordpress.com/tag/pspp/
R software packages
Zelig https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/zelig "Zelig is a single, easy-to-use program that can estimate, help interpret, and present the results of a large range of statistical methods." You have to install it through R, and use it in R. NOTE: The website says zelig is no longer being maintained.
R-Instat http://r-instat.org/ "R-Instat provides a front-end to R, designed to broaden the users of the software, particularly in Africa."
ADE-4 http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/ADE-4/home.php?lang=eng ADE-4 is a multivariate analysis and graphical display software package.
I sometimes have difficulty with this link.
R help mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help announcements, questions and answers, etc.
Tutorials, faqs, guides..... Many of these were posted on the American Evaluation Association email list.
R Introduction and other manuals https://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html
The R site lists other guides https://cran.r-project.org/other-docs.html including Simple R, and many others.
UCLA Academic Technology page for R https://stats.oarc.ucla.edu/r/ has tutorials, links
Beginner's guide to R https://www.computerworld.com/article/2497143/business-intelligence-beginner-s-guide-to-r-introduction.html
Using R for psychological research http://personality-project.org/r/
David Keyes has one getting started class for free https://rfortherestofus.com/courses/getting-started/ but you have to create an account, with your name, snail mail and email address, and phone number.
Paul Murrell's page https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/ has slides and some instructions for R.
Rtips https://pj.freefaculty.org/R/Rtips.html various tips.
R videos https://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2012/12/coursera-videos.html from Coursera's class.
Swirl https://swirlstats.com "learn R in R"
Douglas Wiig has some tutorials on R and some GUIs for R; https://dmwiig.net/
Journal about R https://journal.r-project.org
R is also used for data mining
https://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rdatamining/ is a comprehensive data mining package for R
https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2009-2/ Rattle: A Data Mining GUI for R, by Graham Williams.
The R site for Rattle is here https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rattle/index.html
Other - General statistical packages
Develve http://develve.net/ from Frank Pauw. Develve has a free version for non commercial use. "Statistical package for fast and easy interpretation of experimental data in science and R&D in a technical environment." As of Sept 2024, last updated May 2024.
Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) http://ess.r-project.org/ "is an add-on package for emacs text editors such as GNU Emacs and XEmacs. It is designed to support editing of scripts and interaction with various statistical analysis programs such as R, S-Plus, SAS, Stata and JAGS". As of Sept 2024, last updated 2024
Epidata http://www.epidata.dk/ "a data-entry and data-checking program for Microsoft Windows." Epidata is data entry and data checking. According to the website, "EpiData Analysis performs basic statistical analysis, graphs, and comprehensive data management. E.g. descriptive statistics, SPC Charts, Recoding data, label values and variables. Defining missing values." As of Sept 2024, last updated in April 2024
gretl https://gretl.sourceforge.net/ package for econometric analysis, but also can go the basics, like means, correlations, regression and so on. Can be run either with code or through a menu system. There are a lot of tutorials and other info about gretl and how to use it here https://github.com/gretl-project/material-on-gretl/blob/main/README.md gretl is frequently updated.
InVivoStat https://invivostat.co.uk InVivoStat is designed specifically for scientists conducting animal experiments. However, it has all the statistical tests used by researchers in other areas, so can be used by anyone. As of Sept 2024, last updated in April 2024
MicrOsiris, from Neal and Susan Van Eck. http://microsiris.com By Neal and Susan Van Eck. This program "is derived from OSIRIS IV, a statistical and data management package developed and used at the University of Michigan and includes special techniques for data mining and analysis of nominal- and ordinal-scaled data. As of July 2022, last updated 2015
Pepi for windows at http://www.brixtonhealth.com/ - some statistical tests and descriptives. This site also includes a few other programs such as EpiGram, simple diagramming software, and SampleXS, which is a sample size calculator, which allows for design effects. The help box has very good documentation about sampling and what the program does. For social surveyors, you need to change the confidence interval to 5 rather than .5. As of July 2022, last updated 2016
PSPP http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/ "is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a Free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS, and appears very similar to it with a few exceptions."
This page http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/get.html lists where you can get it, in all the different versions (unix, mac, windows, etc)
You can download a windows version here http://sourceforge.net/projects/pspp4windows/ However, the project person says they will no longer update the windows version, and the last version appears to be September 2020. See a note on the discussion list here https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/pspp-users/2021-09/msg00011.html
A discussion list is here https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pspp-users There seems to be some discussion about the sourceforge version. I'm not totally clear.
A list of bugs is here https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=pspp
A video on PSPP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d44AdFZIfZc by a student. 5 minutes, an overview of a few things.
SAS on demand https://www.sas.com/en_us/software/on-demand-for-academics.html free to use. I've used it. If you know SAS, not to difficult to use. There are menu drop down options, which work fairly well.
SOFA - Statistics Open For All http://www.sofastatistics.com/home.php From Dr Grant Paton-Simpson. Has some basic procedures, mean, median, sd, independent and paired t-tests, Mann-Whitney U, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks, Pearson's Chi Square, one-way ANOVAs, Kruskal Wallis H, and Spearman's and Pearson's correlations. At present, does not have regression. Can link directly to data from MySQL, SQLite, MS Access, and MS SQL Server, and can import data in csv, ODS, or Excel format. Provides a range of charting and tabular output options including simple bar charts (freq or means), clustered bar charts (freq or means), pie charts, single and multiple line charts (freq or means), area charts (freq or means), histograms, scatterplots, and box and whisker plots. Further information is here http://sourceforge.net/projects/sofastatistics/
This is not specifically analysis, but managing and cleaning. OpenRefine http://openrefine.org is a powerful tool for working with messy data: cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data.
Classification and data mining
Guide http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~loh/guide.html Classification and regression tree software. From Wei-Yin Loh. Last updated in 2024
Qualitative data analysis (qda)
What is qda, how to do it, what software... look at these pages.
Qual page https://qualpage.com lists some software, some links to sites about qual research methods.
LiGRE has this listing and review, https://ligresoftware.com/2024/03/26/top-11-free-qualitative-data-analysis-software/
Aquad http://www.aquad.de AQUAD is open-source freeware (according to the conditions of GNU GPL v.3). The recent version allows to analyze all kinds of qualitative data. Can't tell the last update date.
QDA Miner Lite http://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/ "It can be used for the analysis of textual data such as interview and news transcripts, open-ended responses, etc. as well as for the analysis of still images." It's missing a lot of the features of the full version, but I haven't used either so I don't know how significant the differences are. Last updated in 2024. See this page to see what functions it has and doesn't have https://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/compare-versions/
RQDA http://rqda.r-forge.r-project.org/ "RDQA is a R package for Qualitative Data Analysis, a free (free as freedom) qualitative analysis software application". Last updated in 2016
Taguette https://www.taguette.org Allows you to import docs and then "Highlight words, sentences, or paragraphs and tag them with the codes you create."
TextStat http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat/ free simple text analysis software. Word counts, and also shows where the words appear. Last updated in 2024
Data visualization
Mondrian https://www.theusrus.de/Mondrian/ "General purpose statistical visualization system." As of May 2018, last updated 2013
Gephi https://gephi.github.io/ "Interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs.". Last updated 2022
Tableau https://public.tableau.com/app/discover Free data visualization and mapping software. But with this "public" version, you must save your results on their public server, so anyone can see.
Google has a couple of tools.
Google Sheets https://www.google.com/sheets/about/
Google Looker Studio https://lookerstudio.google.com/navigation/reporting I don't really know much about this yet.
Google Charts https://developers.google.com/chart
Stat with excel
Use the Analysis ToolPak to perform complex data analysis
Applies To: Excel 2019, 2016, other versions.
Excel For Statistical Data Analysis http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/excel/excel.htm general tutorial, from Professor Hossein Arsham.
tutorial from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeKyTGZlLhI from Alan Swank at Spring Arbor University. 2007
Excel add ons
Check which version of excel the add on works with.
Statpages http://statpages.info/javasta2.html#Excel lists a bunch of excel add ons for statistics
Robert Nau and John Butler have this page for excel add ons for regression and multivariate data analysis http://regressit.com/ Last updated 2019
ez analyze http://www.ezanalyze.com/ "adding "point and click" functionality for analyzing data, creating graphs, and creating new variables". As of May 2018, last updated 2010.
Daniel's XL toolbox http://xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/ for analyzing and presenting data
Mapping/GIS packages available as free software
FAQ about GIS
New York State GIS Resources https://gis.ny.gov/frequently-asked-questions includes a page of What is GIS
Lists of software
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org/ "OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software, and promote its widespread use" They have a section with desktop applications, which point to QGIS and gvSIG, listed belowx.
GIS Lounge https://www.gislounge.com/open-source-gis-applications/ lists freeware and open source gis programs. Last updated September 2022.
13 Free GIS Software Options: Map the World in Open Source http://gisgeography.com/free-gis-software/ As of December 2021, last updated October 2021. Lists several of the programs below.
Software
Christine gis system http://www.christine-gis.com The web site says "Christine is a useful, easy-to-use tool that brings geographic information to your deskop." I don't know anything about it. The VIEWER is free but the full program is shareware. The program is listed in the Gislounge and other places:
gislounge http://gislounge.com/free-data-viewers/
viewer listed here http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/public/gis/Links.html
Datum GeoView https://www.microimages.com/products/tntmipsfree/
Diva-Gis https://diva-gis.org As of 9/23/2024, says under construction, should be back in a few days. Had said this is a mapping program. The web site says this "is a free mapping program, sometimes called geographic information system (GIS), that can be used for many different purposes."
Diva-gis is a provider or partner of the European Environment Agency https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data-providers-and-partners/diva-gis
Epi info also can do maps. https://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/
GRASS GIS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) https://grass.osgeo.org "is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics and maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization."
Grass is listed here
here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/mitasova-grass-092663.html
here https://gliht.gsfc.nasa.gov/links/
gvSIG http://www.gvsig.com/en/home "is a tool oriented to manage geographic information." (May take a long time to load)
Listed as #3 on the 13 Free GIS Software Options site above.
MapWindows https://www.mapwindow.org has a GIS program along with a lot of other stuff. "The MapWindow Interface is simple and easy to use as demostrated in this Picture! The MapWindow application is a free, extensible, geographic information system (GIS) that can be used: As an alternative desktop GIS, To distribute data to others, To develop and distribute custom spatial data analyses"
Map Maker Gratis is free https://mapmaker.com/v5/Map%20Maker%205.Gratis.htm The full professional version is available for free to not-for-profit organizations, educational establishments, and students in Africa.
OpenJump http://www.openjump.org/index.html The current version can read and write shapefiles simple GML files as well as several other vector formats via plugins. ... its particular strength is the editing of geometry and attribute data.
QGIS https://qgis.org "is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats."
Tableau https://public.tableau.com/app/discover Free data visualization and mapping software. But with this "public" version, you must save your results on their public server, so anyone can see.
Other software, speadsheets, databases, graphics,
Spreadsheets
Some office suites have spreadsheets, and many of these suites below are listed in these reviews
Best free office software of 2024 https://www.techradar.com/best/free-office-software
Best Microsoft Office free alternative https://www.pcguide.com/software/best-microsoft-office-free-alternative/
8 Best Alternatives To Microsoft Office Suite (as of Sept 2024, updated July 2023) https://fossbytes.com/best-alternatives-microsoft-office/
The best alternatives to Microsoft Office (as of Sept 2024, updated April 2023) https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-microsoft-office-alternatives/
I list these alphabetically.
Calligra http://www.calligra.org/
Gnumeric http://www.gnumeric.org only for linux
Google Docs, I think has a spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/
LibreOffice http://www.libreoffice.org/
MS Office Online https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/free-office-online-for-the-web
Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/
SSuite http://www.ssuitesoft.com/
Softmaker Free Office http://www.freeoffice.com/
WPS office http://www.wps.com/ (had been Kingsoft Office).
Databases
PostgreSQL http://www.postgresql.org/ highly-scalable, SQL compliant, open source object-relational database management system.
Firebird http://www.firebirdsql.org/ Another relational database.
SQLLite https://www.sqlite.org/index.html public domain sql engine
MariaDB https://mariadb.org open source database server
Graphics
Gnuplot http://www.gnuplot.info/ Need programming ability to use this but supposed to produce professional quality graphs. Still under development, see here http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/
Collecting and managing data
Redcap https://projectredcap.org Research Electronic Data Capture. It's a consortium which supports a secure web application (REDCap) designed exclusively to support data capture for research studies.
Project management http://www.logframer.eu/ last updated 2018
What is free software? Sites that explain what free means and/or lists free software.
GNU http://www.gnu.org/ especially see this page https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Open Source Alternative to Commercial software http://www.osalt.com/
International Free and Open Source Software Foundation http://www.ifossf.org/ actually, I'm not sure what this is, whether it has software or not. But it seems like an interesting organization.
last updated and verified 9/29/2024