The best AI tools by category

byKhalil Zalmi •
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How I selected the AI software in this list

In this article I list 45 AI tools across 21 different categories. After exploring all the available options in each category, I’ve carefully selected the best tools based on my personal experience. This ensures that the recommendations come from real, practical use, so you can trust that they’re grounded in what actually works.

For each tool, I focus on its best use cases, explaining when and how it can be most useful. I also share what I love about each one, as well as any downsides I’ve encountered during my experience. Additionally, I provide information on the free version and premium pricing plans for each tool.

Free AI tools

If you're looking for free AI tools, you're in luck! I made sure that every AI tool listed in this article offers either a free plan or free trial with no credit card required, allowing you to explore their features and functionality without any commitment.

The best AI assistants

ChatGPT

By now, everyone’s heard of ChatGPT. Most of us use it daily for a wide range of personal and professional tasks.

It’s still my go-to AI assistant, even though the alternatives on this list are now much stronger contenders than when ChatGPT first launched.

One of my favorite features is the ability to upload and analyze files. At work, I regularly drop in PDFs, spreadsheets, screenshots—you name it—and ask ChatGPT to summarize, analyze, or extract data. Just recently, I uploaded a screenshot of a funnel analysis in Google Analytics, and it gave me genuinely useful insights into where we might be losing users. Pretty irresistible stuff.

I also used it to analyze a bunch of spreadsheets for this post. I uploaded the raw survey data and got back clear trends, key insights, and even recommendations for the best chart types to visualize them. It literally saved me hours.

ChatGPT is free to use, but the free tier comes with limited access to the latest models. The Plus plan, currently $20/month, unlocks full access to advanced features and faster performance.

Gr‎ok

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While Grok can be used as a standalone AI assistant, you're most likely to see it in action on X (formerly known as Twitter).

I'm not entirely sure if the Grok integration makes X a better place, since half the comments on any post I read now involve users tagging Grok to fact-check the original poster. It’s probably a net good—it holds people more accountable to the truth—but I also think it's disrupted the natural flow of conversation on Elon's social media behemoth.

Grok is a super smart model, and I love that it's basically uncensored. It comes with several reasoning modes, like 'Think', which gives the model more time to process and refine its response, and 'Deep Search', which searches the internet using what feels like a RAG-style setup.

The lack of censorship also extends to its impressive image generation capabilities, which makes it my go-to if I want to generate pictures of celebrities, brands, or just crank out a good meme.

You can try Grok for free with limited access, but to unlock higher usage limits and the latest models, you'll need one of X’s paid tiers: Basic, Premium, or Premium+.

Claude

Claude has been the go-to AI assistant for coding for a while now. Some of the other tools on this list are starting to catch up, but I still think it’s fair to say most developers swear by Claude. I’m not a professional developer, but I dabble—and when I do, Claude is usually my first choice.

It’s especially good at writing clean, well-documented code, and even better at explaining what that code does in plain English. In my experience, Claude’s code tends to be more reliable too. I’ve had fewer issues with hallucinated variables or broken logic compared to when I’ve used ChatGPT.

I also just like how Claude communicates. It feels collaborative—more like it’s solving the problem with me, not just spitting out answers I have to wrangle into shape.

Claude is free to use, with a Pro plan at $20/month for more features and usage, and a Max plan starting at $100/month for higher limits and early access.

Gemini

Gemini is Google’s AI assistant, and at the time of writing, it currently sits at the top of the LLM Arena leaderboard—a ranking based on millions of blind tests where users choose their favorite AI responses.

One of the main reasons I use Gemini is its insanely large context window. A context window is the amount of text an AI can remember and work with during a conversation, so the bigger it is, the more information you can feed it and ask questions about. The latest Gemini models support over 1 million tokens of context, which means I can drop in a lengthy academic paper and ask a bunch of follow-up questions without it missing a beat.

Another feature I love is Gemini’s audio overview. With it, I can upload a document and get a podcast-style, five-minute audio summary hosted by AI voices. It’s perfect for digesting long documents during my commute.

Gemini offers a free plan with basic AI tools, while paid Pro and Ultra plans unlock more advanced models, creative features, and increased storage. Pricing starts at $19.99/month for Pro and $124.99/month for Ultra.

Th‎e best AI video generators

Synthesia

Synthesia is the leading AI video generator which allows you to generate realistic AI human avatar videos. I’ve used it for creating training modules and presentations, and it’s clear why it’s a favorite for learning and development teams. By turning text into video, Synthesia simplifies the production of high-quality content without the need for cameras, microphones, or studios.

Its most popular use case is undoubtedly training videos, but Synthesia is versatile enough to handle a wide range of needs. Businesses use it for internal communications, onboarding new employees, and creating customer support or knowledge base videos. On the marketing side, it excels in producing personalized sales outreach videos, B2B marketing content, explainer videos and even product demos.

I’ve personally also found it handy for website videos that needed a polished, professional touch with minimal effort. Synthesia is super easy to use, you just type in your script and then generate your video.

Two things I love about Synthesia are the ability to customize avatars and the wide variety of templates offered. When I needed to create tailored training videos for different departments, Synthesia made it easy to switch the avatar language, tone, or background to suit the audience. The library of over 240 digital avatars and support for 140+ languages means you can create globally consistent content effortlessly.

While Synthesia shines for AI talking head video generation, it’s not designed for storytelling or cinematic visuals. It’s best for teams and businesses that prioritize speed, professionalism, and brand consistency in their video production workflows.

Synthesia offers a free plan that allows users to generate up to 36 minutes of video per year, with no credit card required. For more extensive features, paid plans start at $29 per month.

Google Veo

Google's Veo is an impressive tool for generating creative AI videos, capable of producing visuals for almost anything—though its content moderation is fairly strict.

I mostly use Veo to create b-roll for social media marketing videos. Veo 2 is quite affordable, and while it occasionally produces odd results with action scenes, the physics are among the most realistic I’ve seen in AI-generated video.

Veo 3 is more expensive but adds the ability to generate audio as well, which makes it significantly more useful in my opinion.

You can try Veo 2 for free in Google AI Studio, where a limited number of free credits are available for testing.

To access Veo 3, you’ll need either the $19.99/month Google AI Pro plan or the $249.99/month Ultra plan.

OpusClip

OpusClip is a great tool for breaking down longer videos into short, shareable clips for social media. It’s straightforward to use and does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

The AI feature is surprisingly effective at finding the best parts of a video, so I didn’t have to spend ages scrubbing through footage. It also resized my clips automatically to fit platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Adding captions is quick and simple, and the option to throw in emojis makes the clips feel more dynamic—especially useful for grabbing attention in silent scrolling. I also really liked the “hook” feature that picks out key moments to start the clip off strong.

Opus Clip makes it easy to create eye-catching content from videos I’ve already made. It’s practical, efficient, and takes some of the hassle out of social media editing.

The best AI image generators

Nano Banana

Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model, better known as Nano Banana, is incredible. It’s easy to use, lightning fast, and lets you make almost any edit to an image.

I’ve been using it for video creation by generating a Synthesia video, downloading it as an MP4, and grabbing a screenshot of the first frame. I upload that still into Nano Banana and type a prompt — for example, “add a yellow hard hat and a high viz jacket.” It then generates the new image, and the edits are pretty much always exactly what I asked for.

Next, I ask it to change the background of my image to a busy construction site without distorting the subject (the presenter in the middle of the shot). From there, I animate the edited still back into a video using Runway’s Act Two. It takes a bit of trial and error, but the end result is smooth and realistic.

Put simply, Nano Banana covers nearly every kind of image editing you might need. It can handle quick touch-ups and background swaps, add texting, and even full scene transformations. Some popular use cases include using it to turn selfies into 3D figurines, trying out new outfits or hairstyles, redesigning rooms, and reimagining photos in completely different styles.

GPT-4o

Remember when everyone was generating Studio Ghibli–style AI images of themselves, their pets, and anything else they could think of? That was all powered by the built-in image generation in ChatGPT-4o.

It supports both text-to-image and image-to-image transformations across a wide range of art styles, so I’ve found it useful for all kinds of tasks. Personally, I use it to create royalty-free images for blog posts and social media posts—and now that it can reliably generate text within images (something tools like DALL·E 3 struggled with), it's even more valuable.

The feature is available on the free tier of ChatGPT, though there are daily usage limits. You can lift those by upgrading to a Plus or Pro plan.

Midjourney

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Midjourney can be considered the OG of AI image generation. It’s been around since early 2022 and is still often favored for its painterly aesthetic and for creating source images for image-to-video generation.

To be honest, I mostly use the built-in image tools in my go-to AI assistants like ChatGPT or Gemini. But when I want to generate something genuinely beautiful, I turn to Midjourney.

One downside is that Midjourney no longer offers a free plan—you have to subscribe to a paid tier to generate even a single image. There are four plans available, starting at $10/month, with higher tiers offering more generation time and advanced features like video support and stealth mode.

The best AI meeting assistants

Fathom

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You might have seen Fathom pop up during work calls—it’s one of the most genuinely useful AI tools I use day-to-day.

It’s an AI notetaker that joins your Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings, records the entire conversation, and tracks who said what. If I forget an action item, need to revisit an explanation, or just want to double-check what someone said, it's incredibly handy.

Alongside a full transcript, Fathom generates a clear, structured summary. In my experience, the notes are consistently accurate and well-organized.

The app is free to use with a few limits. Premium plans start at $19/month and unlock unlimited AI features and deeper integrations. For what it offers—especially how well it captures questions and action items—it’s tough to beat.

It’s one of those tools that makes you wonder how you ever worked without it.

Nyota

Nyota.ai — The AI Meeting Assistant to Manage Projects and People

While Fathom is a solid free option, Nyota feels like a more premium, polished version with some impressive extra features. Like Fathom, it records your meetings and generates AI-powered transcripts and summaries. But Nyota goes further by automating the follow-up tasks that usually eat up time after a call—things like data entry and updating your CRM based on what was discussed.

That means I can have a call with a prospect and, without lifting a finger afterward, get a full summary and see my CRM updated with the key points from the conversation. Honestly, that feels like magic.

Of course, those extras come at a cost. Nyota is a paid tool, though they do offer a 7-day free trial. Pricing starts at $12/month for individuals, $39 for small teams, $89 for larger teams, and there's custom pricing for enterprise. Higher tiers give you more meeting hours and unlock advanced features.

The best AI automation tools

n8n

n8n lets you automate tasks that are boring, repetitive, or just take too much time. It can feel a bit intimidating at first, but I’ve found it surprisingly easy to use once you get the hang of it.

To build an automation in n8n, you connect apps and services into a visual workflow. You simply drag and link nodes together — it’s a very intuitive setup.

You don’t need to know how to code to build useful automations. But if you do code, n8n gives you the flexibility to add custom functions and go deeper.

One workflow I set up does a daily backup of important data to a Google Sheet. Here’s how it works:

Trigger: Every day at 6am

Get Data: Pull records from an internal SQL database

Google Sheets: Append the data to my spreadsheet

It runs quietly in the background and saves me time every morning.

n8n’s pricing starts at €20/month for 2,500 executions and basic features. The Pro plan (€50/month) adds more workflows, faster execution, and admin tools. Enterprise plans offer full customization and support, with pricing on request.

Manus

I've played around with Manus quite a bit, and it's pretty awesome. It's an AI agent you can use to perform a variety of tasks, from creating slides and analyzing data to generating images and videos, building web pages, and handling programming tasks. It does this by combining different LLMs and other model types to carry out your requests.

I tested it on a range of tasks, including researching the causes of the 2008 global financial crisis and then building a financial blog website to publish the research. The final output included HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, along with image assets for the site. I thought the site looked super professional.

Compared to other AI agent products—like ChatGPT's Operator feature—I think Manus offers a better experience. I found it executes the tasks I set more reliably, and the output quality is higher.

Manus has a decent free plan with 300 daily credits and basic features. Paid plans start at $16/month, unlocking more credits, advanced models, and media generation.

The best AI research tools

Deep Research

OpenAI’s Deep Research feature can find, analyze, and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report on any subject you want in just a few minutes.

While I suspect the most common use case is students cheating on homework, it’s actually a great tool for building your own knowledge on anything you’re curious about.

At work, I mostly use it for market and competitive research or summarizing industry trends. But my favourite use is analyzing public sentiment. If you ask something like “What are Reddit users saying about [your company]?”, it gives you a super useful snapshot of how people are talking about your brand across online communities.

The reports can take a little while to generate, but that’s fair enough considering how many sources they pull in.

Free ChatGPT users get 5 Deep Research tasks per month. Paid plans get more: Plus, Team, and Edu get 10, while Pro users get 125.

NotebookLM

I last used NotebookLM to study for an exam. I uploaded a bunch of notes and course materials, and it gave me a super clear, helpful overview of everything. The best part is the audio summary feature—it turns your content into an AI-generated podcast that actually helps you retain the key points.

It’s not perfect—you have to double-check things now and then—but it does a great job of organizing complex material and making it easier to absorb. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it was free.

NotebookLM’s free tier gives you up to 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook, with daily limits on queries and audio summaries. If you need more, the $19.99/month AI Premium plan includes 500 notebooks, 300 sources each, higher usage limits, and access to Gemini Advanced. Students with a .edu email can unlock premium for free.

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