In terms of ligature support, as a free alternative there is FiraCode...
https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
The condensed look and lack of interlinear spacing of PPro are a nice bonus, not that there aren't other condensed fonts. I suppose for intl use PPro might be nice too since it has 9000+ glyphs, and the dev is still adding more.
Gorgeous font, bit of a bugger to build but once you get it working hours of tinkering ;)