24 tools, the full sheet
| Row | Tool | Category | What the free tier actually gives you | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canva | CV builders | Free PDF, PNG and JPG downloads on a free account with no watermark, provided the design contains no Pro elements. One Pro icon, font or photo watermarks the whole file. | Filter elements by Free before you start or you only find out at the download screen. Many Canva resume layouts also use columns and graphics that applicant tracking systems parse badly, so it fits design and creative applications better than corporate ones. |
| 2 | Europass CV | CV builders | Everything. Free EU account, unlimited CVs, PDF and Word export, 31 languages, no paid tier, no watermark. | Verified August 2026. Run by the EU, so it is the one builder here with no upgrade path and no download paywall. The trade is a fixed layout you cannot restyle, though it is recognised across Europe and is the format many EU public-sector application processes expect. |
| 3 | FlowCV | CV builders | One resume and one cover letter, unlimited watermark-free PDF downloads of them, all templates. A second tailored resume needs a paid plan (Basic about 11 USD a month or 36 USD a year). | Corrected August 2026: the free plan includes a cover letter as well as the resume, which the earlier entry missed. The one-document limit is the real catch and it bites the moment you want separate versions for different roles; the downloads themselves are genuinely unlimited, so the cap is on variety, not volume. |
| 4 | Reactive Resume | CV builders | All of it. Open source, the hosted version costs nothing, no download limit, no watermark, no upsell, and you can self-host it with Docker. | Confirmed still live and actively maintained as of August 2026. The optional AI writing help asks for your own OpenAI API key, which you pay OpenAI for separately; everything else works without it. |
| 5 | Rezi | CV builders | One resume, three PDF downloads in total, one AI interview, and unlimited cover and resignation letters. The three downloads are a lifetime allowance, not a monthly refill. | Corrected August 2026: the free plan is now feature-capped rather than AI-credit-capped, and the unlimited free cover letters are the part most people miss. Paid is 29 USD a month or 149 USD once for lifetime access. |
| 6 | Zety | CV builders | None in practice. You can build and preview with every template, but the only free download is a plain .txt file with no columns, colours or fonts. | Verified August 2026. The 14-day access costs about 1.95 USD and then auto-renews at roughly 25.95 USD every four weeks unless cancelled, which is the most common complaint about the service. An annual option runs about 71.40 USD charged upfront, and a full refund is only available inside the first 7 days. Listed as a warning, not a recommendation. |
| 7 | Google Career Certificates on Coursera | Certifications | A 7-day trial, then 49 USD a month. Most people finish in three to six months, so the realistic total is 147 to 294 USD. | Price confirmed August 2026. Coursera financial aid can bring this to zero but needs a written application of roughly 150 words and takes around 15 days to decide, so start it before you need the certificate. Approval is reported as common for applicants from lower-income countries. |
| 8 | Google Skillshop | Certifications | Free including the exams. The Google Ads and Google Analytics (GA4) certifications cost nothing at any point and need no card. | Verified August 2026. The GA4 exam is 50 questions in 75 minutes with an 80% pass mark. Each certification expires after 12 months and has to be retaken, and it only carries weight for marketing and advertising roles. |
| 9 | HubSpot Academy | Certifications | All courses and all certification exams, free with a free account. No paid plan at any stage. | An account is required but costs nothing. Most certifications carry an expiry date and need retaking, so check the validity period before putting one on a CV. Meaningful for marketing, sales and customer-success roles and close to worthless outside them. |
| 10 | Microsoft Learn | Certifications | All training is free. The exam is not: AZ-900 is 99 USD in the US, priced in local currency by region. | Corrected August 2026: the previous note implied Virtual Training Days might still hand out a free exam voucher. They do not. Microsoft ended free vouchers for Fundamentals Virtual Training Days in March 2023, and what has appeared since is at most a partial discount that varies by session. Budget for the full fee. |
| 11 | ZAB Statement of Comparability | Certifications | None. The fee is 208 euros, a reissued copy is 104 euros, and the fee is normally due within three weeks of applying. Standard processing runs roughly two to three months from the point the payment clears. | Verified August 2026. This is the document German employers and authorities ask for when your degree was awarded outside the EU. Two things worth knowing: cases running through the accelerated skilled-worker procedure or an EU Blue Card application are usually decided in about 10 working days, and anabin, the free database, should be checked first, because if your university and degree are already listed you may not need this at all. |
| 12 | freeCodeCamp | Certifications | Everything. Eleven core certifications, each earned by completing five projects that pass automated tests, with no fee, no proctor and no time limit. Newer tracks such as Foundational C# with Microsoft and A2 English for Developers are also free. | Corrected August 2026: the count was listed as twelve. freeCodeCamp's own certifications page lists eleven core certifications and the total shifts as new tracks launch, so do not commit to a number in copy. Each takes roughly 300 hours. Employers read it as self-taught evidence rather than a formal credential, so the five projects matter more than the certificate. |
| 13 | telc German exams | Certifications | None. Fees are set by each test centre and run roughly 155 to 239 euros for B1 and 175 to 249 euros for B2 in Germany. | Ranges spot-checked against several Volkshochschule price lists, August 2026. The identical exam is usually cheaper at a Volkshochschule than at a private language school, and most VHS centres charge their own course participants less than external candidates, in some cases 155 euros against 185. Compare two or three centres before booking. |
| 14 | Exponent Practice | Interview practice | Free peer mock interviews with a monthly credit allowance. Exponent's own FAQ confirms free users are allotted credits every month but does not publish the number. AI feedback and session transcripts require a paid membership. | Corrected August 2026: Pramp joined Exponent in November 2021, not 2024. What happened later was the retirement of the Pramp platform itself, with all sessions moving to tryexponent.com. Covers coding, system design, product management and behavioural rounds. |
| 15 | Glassdoor | Interview practice | Some interview reports are readable without paying, but the site runs a give-to-get wall: posting one review, salary or interview report unlocks about 12 months of full access. | Wall confirmed still in force, August 2026. Coverage of German employers is thinner than of US ones, so check kununu alongside it for local company reviews. |
| 16 | LeetCode | Interview practice | The large majority of roughly 3,800 problems, plus the discussion forum and the weekly contests. Company-tagged filtering, official editorials, automated mock interviews and a pool of locked problems sit behind Premium. | Corrected August 2026: the old 'roughly 300 problems behind Premium' figure does not hold up. Published estimates of the free-versus-locked split range from about 1,600 free to nearly all of them, and LeetCode does not state it, so avoid quoting a number. Premium is about 35 USD a month or 159 USD a year, and company tags are the main thing it buys. |
| 17 | Yoodli | Interview practice | 5 sessions in total, not per month, with basic speech analytics. Pro is about 8 USD a month billed annually and Advanced about 20 USD. | Verified against Yoodli's pricing page, August 2026. Two things to know: Google did retire its free Interview Warmup tool in April 2026, which is why a five-session lifetime allowance is worth listing at all; and Yoodli has drifted heavily toward sales roleplay, so the interview-practice framing is thinner than it was. |
| 18 | interviewing.io | Interview practice | One free anonymous peer session on signup, with further free sessions unlocked by conducting mock interviews for other people. | Verified August 2026. Sessions with vetted professional interviewers start around 179 USD, rise to roughly 225 to 300 USD for someone from a specific target company, and a three-session coaching package runs about 2,000 USD. Free slots are limited and scheduling one can take several days. |
| 19 | Apollo.io | Recruiter contact finders | Free forever, no card, no expiry. Roughly 100 email credits a month if you sign up with a personal address such as Gmail, and reportedly up to 10,000 a month on a verified company domain. | Upgraded from unverified, August 2026. The number is still absent from Apollo's own pricing page, but the personal-versus-company-domain split was confirmed across current sources after Apollo restructured the free tier in late 2025. Most job seekers land on the 100 figure, so read the counter in your own account before planning around it. |
| 20 | ContactOut | Recruiter contact finders | 5 email, 5 phone and 5 export credits per day, free forever, no card. Usable in both the Chrome extension and the web search portal. | Corrected August 2026: the earlier entry said the free credits worked only through the Chrome extension on LinkedIn, which is wrong. Free access covers the search portal too; what is genuinely paid-only is advanced search, email campaigns and CRM integrations. The daily reset works out at roughly 150 of each per month, the largest free allowance in this category. |
| 21 | Hunter.io | Recruiter contact finders | 50 credits a month, no card required, renewing every billing cycle. A found email costs 1 credit and a verification costs 0.5, so the same allowance is 50 finds or 100 verifications or a mix. One connected mailbox included. | Checked against Hunter's own pricing page, August 2026. Teammates can be added free but share the same 50 credits, so a shared account does not multiply the allowance. |
| 22 | Lusha | Recruiter contact finders | 40 credits a month on one seat, basic search only. That is the figure Lusha publishes. | Upgraded from unverified, August 2026. Third-party reviews still quote 50 and 70; those numbers are stale and the official 40 is what current sources confirm. Treat the free seat as a coverage test for your target companies rather than a usable prospecting tool. |
| 23 | RocketReach | Recruiter contact finders | 5 lookups, emails only, no export and no CRM sync. Sources disagree on whether the 5 refresh monthly or are a one-time signup allowance, and RocketReach does not publish it. | Either reading makes this a data-quality sample rather than a working tool. Use it to test whether RocketReach actually covers your target companies before paying, and use ContactOut or Hunter for any real volume. |
| 24 | Snov.io | Recruiter contact finders | 50 credits, 100 email recipients and 1 email warm-up slot, renewing every 30 days, no card needed. Export, bulk search, bulk verification and API access are all paid-only. | Verified against Snov's pricing page, August 2026, which describes the trial as a peek at the product rather than something meant to grow sales. It does send the outreach as well as find the address, which most free finders do not, but 100 recipients goes fast. |
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns. Every name links to that organisation’s own page.
Checked against each provider's own current pricing in August 2026. Free tiers move constantly; if one has changed, tell us. These are independent companies and agencies with no relationship to Ankommo. Links change: if you find a dead one, tell us at hello@ankommo.de and we will fix it.
Before you start applying
Free to Build, Paid to Download
That is the pattern these lists hide, and it is worth one example. Zety lets you build a CV with any template and then exports a plain text file, stripped of columns, colours and fonts, unless you pay. Canva really does download free, right up until one Pro icon or font watermarks the entire document. Neither is dishonest; both are invisible until the moment you need the file.
So the useful thing a page like this can do is state the limit in units you can act on. Ten lookups a month. Forty credits, one seat. Most of 3,800 problems free, company filtering paid. A give-to-get wall that opens for twelve months once you post one review of your own.
And the honest overall answer is that you need three of these, not twenty-four: a CV builder, a way to find the hiring manager’s name, and somewhere to practise saying your story out loud. Assembling a tool stack is a very comfortable way to spend a fortnight not applying.
Questions People Actually Ask
Which CV builder should I use for a German application?
Whichever one lets you export a clean, one or two page PDF without a watermark, and the free tiers differ enormously on exactly that. Canva downloads free as long as no Pro element sneaks into the design, because a single Pro icon or font watermarks the whole file. Zety lets you build with every template and then only exports a plain text file for free, which is not a CV. We build a free one on this site with no export limit, for the obvious reason that we would rather you used ours, and because a German Lebenslauf has format conventions most international builders do not follow.
Are recruiter contact finders legal to use in Germany?
Using them is not the risky part; what you do with the data is. Under the GDPR a business email address is still personal data, and cold-mailing somebody who never gave you their address is on shakier ground here than in the US, particularly at volume. The practical read: finding a hiring manager name so you can address a letter properly is normal and fine. Scraping a hundred addresses and mailing them all is the thing that gets you reported. Most of these tools give you 10 to 40 lookups a month free, which is roughly the volume that is defensible anyway.
Is interview practice with AI worth it?
For structure and nerves, yes. For content, only if you feed it the real job ad and your real CV, otherwise you rehearse generic answers to generic questions. What none of them prepare you for is the specifically German part of the interview: a much flatter, more factual register than the US-style enthusiasm most of these tools are trained on, questions about your notice period and earliest start date taken very seriously, and a salary question you are expected to answer with a number rather than deflect.
How many of these do I actually need?
Three. One CV builder, one way to find the hiring manager name, and one place to practise saying your own story out loud. The rest of this table is here so you can see what is available and how each one is monetised, not as a checklist. Somebody who spends a fortnight assembling a tool stack has spent a fortnight not applying, and the application count is what moves the outcome.
A builder gives you a tidy document. It cannot tell you that a German recruiter stops reading at the third line of your summary.
CV Review · €49Returned within 2 working days
No Tool on This Page Closes the Gap These Employers Actually Name
For most roles in Germany that gap is the language. Even B1 moves you from the pile nobody calls to the pile they do. Start free at your level.
Start FreeFirst 5 chapters free · Cancel anytime