Alternative to create EOS accounts (than using online services that charge 17 USD or more)

There are several ways to create an EOS account, with the official eos.io cleos command line tool (I tried cleos with docker), SimplEOS, EOSToolkit.io, but they assume that you already have an account to begin with, or a friend that can do it for you, or pay an online service such as:

• zeos.co, cost: 17.3 USD (last checked on 2018-07-07)
• eos-account-creator.com, cost: 25 USD (last checked on 2018-07-07)

I checked how to create an account via EOSToolkit.io

As you can see in the page or screenshot: 0.1 EOS need to be staked for net and 0.1 EOS for the CPU. You also need RAM (minimum 4 KB, ideally 8 KB) and this is what costs the most.

The RAM cost is volatile (it actually increased a lot, compared to a few weeks ago, somebody even got rich trading ram), this website lists the current RAM cost: https://www.eosrp.io/

At the moment of writing (2018-07-08), the RAM costs around 0.4 EOS/KB. EOS price: 8.5 USD.

Cost of 4 KB RAM: 0.4 * 4 = 1.6 EOS => account cost (including 0.2 EOS for net and cpu): 1.8 EOS = 15.3 USD

Cost of 8 KB RAM: 0.4 * 8 = 3.2 EOS => account cost (including 0.2 EOS for net and cpu): 3.4 EOS = 28.9 USD

How to create an EOS account for FREE

After many searches, I finally found a way to create a FREE account with the MEET.ONE app. Read How to use MEET.ONE ?, the instructions to get the free account are at the end of the article. (Tested on 2018-07-10, it worked! I could also change the owner key. MEET.ONE pays the RAM for you.)

There are a few "catches":

• the method works only on Android mobile phones (I tried to download the apk file on my PC, without success)
• the app can be downloaded only from the MEET.ONE download page (which is a bit dodgy, I asked in their telegram group why it's not on the Play Store, I was told it's in progress... that's why I suggest to create your own key and change active & owner permissions before doing anything valuable with the account)
• you must have a twitter account and tweet their post (fair enough: they fund the RAM for your account, worth 14 USD: in exchange you advertize their service on twitter)
• you must have telegram and request the invitation code by writing a personal message to a MEET.ONE admin (Eve, she responded within 8 hours -I asked before going to sleep and got a reply in the morning after walking up- so be patient)

Where to buy EOS

If you own bitcoin and you want to buy some alt coins to diversify, try binance.com:

• it's one of the best exchanges and it doesn't require any verification (unless you need to transfer more than 1 BTC/day, you don't need to verify your account).
• the withdrawal fee is only 0.01 EOS and the minimum amount to withdraw is 0.1 EOS, which makes binance ideal for testing purposes: 0.01 EOS is 8.5 cents, 0.1 EOS are 85 cents. If a test goes wrong you lose less than 1 USD, which is an acceptable risk. To compare, bitfinex allows to withdraw EOS for free, but requires to withdraw at least the equivalent of 250 USD, which is not really convenient for a person who wants to make some tests to get familiar with this cryptocurrency.

Final notes

I will update this article or add comments with updates, stay tuned.
Please upvote this post if it helped you. Thank you.