AI Tools Directory
The tools we actually recommend
Hand-picked AI tools, grouped by what they do and how they price. No affiliate gate, no fluff. Just an honest list of what's worth trying right now.
Featured
Editorially picked, best-in-category right now
Claude
Anthropic's conversational AI — strong at careful reasoning, long documents, and writing that reads like a human wrote it
Chat & AssistantsFreemium
Cursor
AI-first code editor. Chat with your codebase, auto-apply edits, and let the agent tackle multi-file refactors
CodeFreemium
Perplexity
Search + synthesis — ask a question, get a sourced answer with citations you can actually click through and verify
ResearchFreemium
Midjourney
Image generation with the most aesthetically consistent output in the category. Discord-first, web app in beta
ImagePaid
Runway
Pro video generation and editing — text-to-video, image-to-video, inpainting, motion brushing, lip-sync
VideoFreemiumElevenLabs
Best-in-class voice synthesis and cloning. Used for podcasts, audiobooks, dubbing, and game narration
AudioFreemium
More tools
35 tools (plus 6 featured above)
ChatGPT
OpenAI's assistant. Deep tool integration, Advanced Voice, image generation, and the default for most first-time AI users
Chat & AssistantsFreemium
Gemini
Google's assistant with 1M-token context, native Google Workspace integration, and strong multimodal reasoning
Chat & AssistantsFreemium
Poe
One interface, many models — Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, image and video models all under a single subscription
Chat & AssistantsFreemium
GitHub Copilot
Inline AI autocomplete + agent mode inside VS Code, JetBrains, and the GitHub web editor. The category-defining incumbent
CodePaid
v0 by Vercel
Generate React / Next.js UIs from a prompt. Outputs production-ready shadcn-style components you can copy straight into a repo
CodeFreemium
Lovable
Describe an app, watch it get built. Full-stack generation with Supabase, auth, and one-click deploy
CodeFreemium
Bolt.new
In-browser full-stack prototyping — prompt a project, watch the dev server boot, edit and deploy from the same tab
CodeFreemium
Replit Agent
Agent that scaffolds, builds, and deploys full apps inside Replit's cloud IDE — including DB setup and secrets
CodePaid
Notion AI
AI inside your Notion workspace — summarise pages, draft docs, search across your entire knowledge base
WritingPaid
Grammarly
Grammar + tone + brand-voice enforcement, now with generative drafting. The everywhere-you-type AI writing layer
WritingFreemium
Jasper
Marketing-team AI writer with brand voice training, campaign workflows, and team seat management
WritingPaid
Ideogram
Image generation with the best handling of text-in-image (logos, posters, product mockups) in the category
ImageFreemium
FLUX
Open-weights generation from Black Forest Labs. Photorealistic prompts handled better than most closed models
ImageFreemium
Freepik AI Suite
Image + video + upscaling + background removal under one subscription, with licensable commercial-safe outputs
ImagePaid
Descript
Edit video and podcasts by editing the transcript. Overdub voice cloning, studio sound, and agent clip creation
VideoFreemium
HeyGen
AI avatars and dubbing — turn a script into a talking-head video in 175+ languages with lip-sync that actually works
VideoFreemium
Pika
Short-form video generation with playful special effects (Pikaffects). Great for social, less great for long-form
VideoFreemium
Suno
Generate full songs from a prompt — lyrics, vocals, instrumentation. Stems available on paid plans
AudioFreemium
Udio
Song generation with extraordinary vocal quality. Strong at genre-specific styles and mashup prompts
AudioFreemium
Otter.ai
Live meeting transcription and summarisation. Integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams — search across every call
AudioFreemium
NotebookLM
Upload sources, get a research assistant grounded in YOUR docs — with the Audio Overview podcast feature as a bonus
ResearchFree
Consensus
AI search across 200M+ peer-reviewed papers. Get evidence-based answers, not hallucinated citations
ResearchFreemium
Gamma
Generate decks, docs, and webpages from a prompt. Refreshingly not-a-slide-template aesthetic — feels designed, not assembled
DesignFreemium
Framer AI
Prompt-to-website with real layout primitives. The generated result is editable in Framer's visual editor
DesignFreemium
Granola
Meeting notes app that listens silently and structures what was actually discussed — no meeting bot, no recording anxiety
ProductivityFreemium
Reclaim
Calendar AI that auto-schedules deep work, meetings, and habits around your actual availability
ProductivityFreemium
Zapier
Connect 6,000+ apps with AI steps baked in. The low-code spine for most production AI-workflow integrations
ProductivityFreemium
n8n
Open-source workflow automation with first-class LLM + vector-DB nodes. Self-host or use their cloud
AgentsFreemium
LangGraph
Code-level framework for building multi-step, stateful LLM agents. The serious engineer's choice for agent orchestration
AgentsFree
CrewAI
Role-based multi-agent framework. Spin up a planner-researcher-writer crew in ~30 lines of Python
AgentsFree
Lindy
No-code agent builder with 1,600+ integrations. The pragmatic answer when LangGraph is overkill but Zapier can't express the logic
AgentsFreemium
GPTZero
AI text + deepfake detection. Covers writing, images, and humanised AI content for compliance, education, and trust workflows
AI Detection & TrustFreemium
Originality.AI
AI detection + plagiarism scanning for content marketing and SEO. Lower false positives on long-form than general-purpose detectors
AI Detection & TrustPaid
Pinecone
Fully-managed vector database for production RAG. Serverless tier, low operational overhead — the default for client deployments
Data & ML OpsFreemium
LangSmith
LLM observability, tracing, and evals from the LangChain team. The piece every serious AI deployment needs before it goes wrong in production
Data & ML OpsFreemium