Why nah

There's a pattern in software that most people don't think about until it happens to them. You need a QR code, so you google "free QR code generator." You find one, make your code, print it on 200 wedding invitations. Two weeks later the code stops working. It was a 14-day trial, and now you either pay $120/year or reprint everything.

I started looking into how widespread this actually is. It's not a few shady companies. It's an entire industry. Over $2.2 billion in venture capital has gone into companies that basically charge subscriptions for stuff your browser can already do for free. QR codes, PDF merges, resume exports, background removal. All of it runs client-side with open-source JavaScript libraries. The infrastructure cost is close to zero. The subscriptions exist because most people don't know that.

The Better Business Bureau has documented $1.3 billion in consumer losses from "free trial offer" scams over the past decade. That's the world these tools operate in.

So I built nah.tools. It's a free, open-source set of browser-based tools that replaces the worst offenders. No signup, no ads, no tracking, no catch.

Here's what I found when I looked into the companies nah is meant to replace.

Where the money went

Here's where the money went — and what it bought.

The playbook

Every one of these companies runs some version of the same five steps.

Buy the search results. Spend on Google Ads and SEO until your product shows up above the genuinely free options. In some categories, one parent company owns multiple brands to take up several top results at once, creating a fake sense of competition.

Offer a "free" tool. Let the user start working. The interface looks polished. There's no mention of pricing anywhere. Everything feels real.

Collect their time. Let someone spend 30 to 60 minutes entering their work history into a resume builder. Let them upload and arrange sensitive tax documents into a PDF tool. Let them design a QR code and print it. The longer they work, the less likely they are to leave.

Trigger the trap. The paywall shows up right when you try to download. The resume you just spent an hour on? That'll be $2.95 for a "14-day trial." The trial auto-converts to $24 every four weeks. Not every month. Every four weeks. That's 13 billing cycles per year. No receipt emails are sent.

Make cancellation hard. Hide the cancel button. Break it when ad-blockers are on. Route billing receipts to an email address the user doesn't check. Some companies respond to cancellation attempts with chatbot loops for weeks.

In October 2024, the FTC finalized its "click-to-cancel" rule, requiring companies to make cancellation as easy as signup. These companies are already on regulators' radar.

The investigations

What it actually costs to run these tools

nah.tools runs on Cloudflare Workers with KV caching and Analytics Engine. Static tools cost nothing to serve. Dynamic features cost about $0.80 per million requests. The full breakdown is on the how it works page.

The rules

No accounts. If a tool doesn't need to know who you are, it won't ask.

No tracking. No cookies, no fingerprinting. Basic Cloudflare Web Analytics that count page views without identifying visitors.

No ads. Not now, not later.

No paywall. Every feature free for every user. No premium tiers, no daily limits, no watermarks.

Privacy by architecture, not policy. Static tools run in your browser. There is no server to send your data to. Dynamic features use Cloudflare D1 with passphrase-based auth — no accounts, no email collection. This isn't a promise. It's how the code works.

Open source. The full codebase is MIT-licensed. Read every line, verify every claim, self-host the whole thing.

Why it's called nah

Because the correct response to a $564/year QR code generator is "nah."

Because the correct response to a resume builder that holds your work history hostage is "nah."

Because the correct response to a PDF tool that ranks above government websites and charges $96 for a form fill is "nah."

Because the correct response to paying $2 per image for something your browser does for free is "nah."

The internet is full of tools that should be free but aren't. They survive because most people don't know there's an alternative. Now there is.

Help make this work

nah has no marketing budget, no ads, no VC money. It grows when people share it.

• Share the link. Send nah.tools to someone who needs a QR code, a PDF merge, or a resume.
• Star the GitHub repo. It helps with discoverability.
• Contribute. Bug reports, feature requests, PRs, new tools. It's all open source.
• Tell the story. Link to this page. The tools work, but they only help people who know they exist.

Been charged by one of these companies? Check our consumer protection resources for how to dispute charges, file complaints, and find free alternatives.

No one should pay $564/year for a QR code. Help make sure they don't.