Free up means to make time, space, money or a person available for something else. It's about something that was taken up and becomes available: free up an hour, free up memory on a phone. You can also free up a person: The new software freed up two staff to work with clients.
Want to use free up in conversation?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
free up + time/space/money; free it up; free up + person + to do something
- Moving all my meetings to Monday freed up the rest of the week for writing.
- I deleted old videos from my phone to free up some space for holiday photos.
- Hiring an assistant freed up the manager to focus on new clients.
What changed
First versionCall me later, I'll free up at six.
RevisionCall me later, I'll be free at six.
Free up frees something: time, space, money. It isn't used to say that you yourself will become available. For that, English uses something simpler: I'll be free at six. In the correction, free up was replaced with be free, and nothing else changed.
Set free also means “to release”, but in the sense of letting a prisoner or an animal go: They set the bird free. Free up makes available something that was taken up by tasks or things: We freed up a desk for the new intern.
Your turn
Cancelling my gym membership ___ fifty pounds a month for an English course.
Show the answer
freed up — The money that went on the gym became available for the course, so freed up. Set free means to let someone or something go free, which doesn't fit money in a budget.
Describe how you made time for study or a hobby. Say what you gave up and how much time you gained.
I stopped watching TV series on weekday evenings, which freed up about two hours a day for English.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.