Can I legitimately get any hats for free?

Are there any hats that I can get in team fortress 2 without spending money. I don't want a cheat or a hack that does this. Are there any free hats and how can I get them?

Solution 1:

There are a bunch of hats you can get free in Team Fortress 2.

Random Drops

If you have a premium account (from either owning The Orange Box or buying anything in the Mann Co Store), you can get random hat drops. However, keep in mind that they are rare. You will go months without getting one.

Note: This was broken for the entire year of 2015, but appears to be working against as of January 24th, 2016.

From TF2 itself

• Ghostly Gibus - Dominate anyone wearing one of these hats: Ghastly Gibus, Ghastlier Gibus, Ghastlierest Gibus, or Ghostly Gibus. Note that only the Ghostly version is currently awarded despite what the achievement description says.
• Pyrovision Goggles - Dominate someone wearing Pyrovision Goggles
• Full Head of Steam - Complete 7 achievements on cp_foundry
• Gentle Munitionne of Leisure - Complete 7 achievements on sd_doomsday (not sd_doomsday_event)
• Party Hat - Log on to TF2 on or around August 24
• Saxton Hale Mask - Craft together 1 of each of the Class Halloween Masks, which are not available most of the year. Note: This is much more difficult starting in 2015 as the number of Halloween item drops was reduced to just 13 and they are now awarded randomly.
• Mildly Disturbing Halloween Mask - Get the Candy Coroner achievement. This achievement can be earned on Halloween maps. Halloween/Full Moon restricted item.
• Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head - Kill the Horseless Headless Horsemann for the first time. He appears on the Mann Manor map (cp_manor_event). Halloween/Full Moon restricted item.
• MONOCULUS! - Kill MONOCULUS for the first time. He appears on the Eyeaduct map (cp_viaduct_event). Halloween/Full Moon restricted item.
• Bombnomicon - After killing MONOCULUS, go through the portal that appears and make it to the top of the island without getting killed. Touch the Bombnomicon waiting there to get it.
• Skull Island Topper AKA Merasmus's Skull Hat - After killing Merasmus on Ghost Fort (cp_lakeside_event), go through the portal that appears make your way to the top of the island without dying. Touch his hat to get it.
• Any hat can be gotten by using the Fabricate Headgear crafting recipe (or related recipes). This costs at least 3 Refined metal to do and may only be available to Premium accounts.
• The Spine-Cooling Skull, Spine-Tingling Skull, or Spine-Twisting Skull can be crafted if you have 4 Refined Metal and the Haunted Metal Scrap... which you get by hitting the Horseless Headless Horsemann with a melee attack during his death animation.

From other games

The Promotion Items wiki page covers this in more depth than I ever could... it even covers which are currently active and which are expired.

Halloween Exclusive

During the Halloween event each year, it is possible to get many Halloween-specific hats by finding gifts that appear on the level.

You're too late for this in 2014, but for future use:

• Mann Manor (cp_manor_event) - 9 All-Class Masks. Can be crafted to make the Saxton Hale Mask (which isn't holiday restricted).
• Eyeaduct (koth_viaduct_event) - 27 cosmetics (3 per class).
• Ghost Fort (cp_lakeside_event) - 26 spells, 30 cosmetics, and one melee reskin... although you may get Voodoo cursed items instead. You can craft 7 Voodoo-Cursed items to get one of the cosmetics.
• Helltower (cp_hightower_event) - 102 cosmetics. No, that's not a typo.

The gifts containing items used to appear around every 45 minutes, but in 2014 it was raised to a much longer time... I want to say around 3 hours.

Carnival of Carnage (sd_doomsday_event) has 50 cosmetics. However, they do not appear on the map itself. Instead, each player can only get a max of 6: 3 for logging in during the Halloween event and 3 more for getting 4 achievements on the map.

During the Halloween event, you can do 13 Merasmissions (1 per day during the event) to get a random Halloween cosmetic. There are hundreds of Halloween cosmetics in the game, though.

Solution 2:

There are two ways of getting hats/cosmetics in TF2 for free.

1. Complete promotional actions (most are already finished or require you to spend money elsewhere)
2. Get one in the drop system

If you're looking for a hat through non-grindy means (waiting to get stuff from the drop system), you can try earning the Spiral Sallet, by earning Mission Accomplished achievement from Spiral Knights, for example is still an on-going "promotion".
Spiral Knights is a free-to-play game.

Alternatively, you can wait for the drop system to give you a hat. Which occurs around every 100-180 drops^.

A reminder that hats earned through promotions and achievements are untradable and unmarketable (unless in Genuine Quality, for most cases which makes them marketable AND tradable), and hats recieved through the item drop system (unless you're using a Free account) are tradable but not marketable.

^This figure is not accurate. It is an estimate from what I've received, and it DEFINITELY is not how the game calculates when you get a dropped hat.

Solution 3:

The easiest hat to get for free is the Ghastly Gibus. To get a Ghastly Gibus, dominate a player who is also wearing a gibus to earn the achievement and you will receive one. The gibus can be worn by all classes.

If you don't want to spend any money at all, which means continuing to play the f2p version of TF2, getting a hat from drops is extremely unlikely- most cosmetic items can't drop. To upgrade, you'd need to make a purchase from the Mann Co. store- even if it's just spending 50c on something.