Studio 3T Free and the future of Robo 3T

TL;DR:  3T is releasing a free edition of Studio 3T to replace Robo 3T.

3T is pleased to announce the availability of Studio 3T Free. This new tool is built from the same codebase as the rest of the 3T family of tools providing a stable, sustainable, free MongoDB client for all.

What is Studio 3T Free?

Built from the same code base as the current Studio 3T, the Free edition combines the company’s IntelliShell, Connection Manager, and Table/Tree/JSON views with essential import and export functionality in an easy to use desktop environment. And it also sports a dark theme.  New users will also be able to enjoy the full suite of 3T tools as Studio 3T Free includes an optional 30 day trial of the Ultimate edition tool set. At the end of the trial, users will continue with the Studio 3T Free functionality, as illustrated below:

As part of the 3T family:

  • Users needing a free tool will benefit from monthly maintenance updates instead of annual updates.
  • Free users get continuous bug fixes alongside users of the commercial editions.
  • Users of the free edition will always be compatible with the latest version of MongoDB.
  • Access to always up-to-date, professional-grade, shell-centric tooling for MongoDB at zero cost

It also means that we get to streamline the allocation of resources within our development team, allowing them to move faster to respond to all our users’ needs. Being able to focus all our efforts on a single codebase means that all our customers, commercial and non-commercial alike, will enjoy better features, fewer bugs and smoother performance, delivered faster than ever before.

Community matters to us and as part of creating Studio 3T Free, we’re also rolling out a new support forum and knowledge exchange which will enable sharing of best practices and solutions to problems, centered around actual users of Studio 3T but with the added input of our engineering experts.  

As a dedicated, professional team, the 3T mission is to create and continuously improve the very best tools in the NoSQL space.


What about Robo 3T?

When we took on responsibility for Robomongo in 2017, later renaming it to Robo 3T, we planned and delivered annual updates to maintain its compatibility with the latest versions on MongoDB. But, as MongoDB has moved to mongosh, a new Node-based command line client, they have also deprecated the old mongo shell which is at the core of Robo 3T.

That would mean a future Robo 3T would have to be engineered from scratch to work with mongosh. After lengthy consideration, we decided a simpler solution, with better outcomes for all users would be to create a forever-free edition of Studio 3T. This free edition would match or exceed the functionality of Robo 3T using the thoroughly tested codebase of Studio 3T.

This decision means that we are putting annual Robo 3T updates on hold.

This means that Robo 3T Users can continue using their existing application but we recommend that they download Studio 3T Free and experience its capabilities. Robo 3T and Studio 3T Free can run alongside each other with no disruption to existing workflows.

The legacy edition of Robo 3T, version 1.4.4, can be downloaded from:

And the source code from Robo 3T repository.