We all have that one free tool we can't live without, but we're probably using it in ways the developers never intended. I'm curious about your daily routine.
What's the first thing you open when you need to get stuff done? The one that's become so essential you'd panic if it disappeared tomorrow?
Recently I have seen a lot of good free ai appear like gemini pro, gemma, claude 3, reka, duckduckgo ai chat, cohere, sydneyqt aka copilot optimized and I really don't know which is the good choice in this bunch. IMO, gemini pro 1.5 is still doing the best job, but the way it talks nonsense then goes straight to the heart of the problem really annoys me.
I've spent an ungodly amount of time procrastinating trying tons of new/free AI tools from Reddit and various lists of the best AI tools for different use cases. Frankly, most free AI tools (and even paid ones) are gimmicky ChatGPT wrappers with questionable utility in everyday tasks or overpriced enterprise software that don't use AI as anything more than a marketing buzzword.
My last list of free AI tools got a good response, and I wanted to make another with the best AI tools that I actually use day-to-day now that I've spent more time with them.
All these tools can be used for free, though most of them have some kind of premium offering if you need more advanced stuff or a ton of queries. To make it easy to sort through, I've also added whether each tool requires signup.
ChatPDF: Free Tool to Use ChatGPT on Your Own Documents/PDFs
(free no signup)
Put simply, ChatPDF lets you upload any PDF and interact with it like ChatGPT. I heard about this one from my nephew who used it to automatically generate flashcards and explain concepts based on class notes and readings. There are a few similar services out there, but I found ChatPDF the easiest to use of those that don't require payment/signup.
If you're a student or someone who needs to read through long PDFs regularly, the possibilities to use this are endless. It's also completely free and doesn't require signup.
Key Features:
Free to upload up to 3 PDFs daily, with up to 120 pages in each PDF
Can be used without signing up at all
Taskade: AI Task Management, Scheduling, and Notetaking Tool with GPT-4 Built-In
(free with signup)
Taskade is an all-in-one notetaking, task management, and scheduling platform with built-in AI workflows and templates. Like Notion, Taskade lets you easily create workspaces, documents, and templates for your workflows. Unlike Notion’s GPT-3 based AI, Taskade has built-in GPT-4 based AI that’s trained to structure your documents, create content, and otherwise help you improve your productivity.
Key Features:
GPT-4 is built in to their free plan and trained to help with document formatting, scheduling, content creation and answering questions through a chat interface. Its AI seems specifically trained to work seamlessly with your documents and workspaces, and understands queries specific to their interface like asking it to turn (text) notes into a mind map.
One of the highest usage limits of the free tools: Taskade’s free plan comes with 1000 monthly requests, which is one of the highest I’ve seen for a tool with built-in GPT-4. Because it’s built into a document editor with database, scheduling and chat capabilities, you can use it for pretty much anything you’d use ChatGPT for but without paying for ChatGPT Premium.
Free templates to get you started with actually integrating AI into your workflows: there are a huge number of genuinely useful free templates for workflows, task management, mind mapping, etc. For example, you can add a project and have Taskade automatically map out and schedule a breakdown of the tasks that make up that overall deliverable.
Plus AI for Google Slides: AI-generated (and improved) slide decks
(free with signup, addon for Google Slides)
I've tried out a bunch of AI presentation/slide generating tools. To be honest, most of them leave a lot to be desired and aren't genuinely useful unless you're literally paid to generate a presentation vaguely related to some topic. Plus AI is a (free!) Google Slides addon that lets you describe the kind of slide deck you're making, then generate and fine-tune it based on your exact needs.
It's still not at the point where you can literally just tell it one prompt and get the entire finished product, but it saves a bunch of time getting an initial structure together that you can then perfect. Similarly, if you have existing slides made you can tell it (in natural language) how you want it changed. For example, asking it to change up the layout of text on a page, improve the writing style, or even use external data sources.
Key Features:
Integrates seamlessly into Google Slides: if you’re already using Slides, using Plus AI is as simple as installing the plugin. Their tutorials are easy to follow and it doesn’t require learning some new slideshow software or interface like some other options.
Create and tweak slides using natural language: Plus AI lets you create whole slideshows, adjust text, or change layouts using natural language. It’s all fairly intuitive and the best of the AI slide tools I’ve tried.
FlowGPT: Database of AI prompts and workflows
(free without signup-though it pushes you to signup!)
FlowGPT collects prompts and collections of prompts to do various tasks, from marketing, productivity, and coding to random stuff people find interesting. It uses an upvote system similar to Reddit that makes it easy to find interesting ways to use ChatGPT. It also lets you search for prompts if you have something in mind and want to see what others have done.
It's free and has a lot of cool features like showing you previews of how ChatGPT responds to the prompts. Unfortunately, it's also a bit pushy with getting you to signup, and the design leaves something to be desired, but it's the best of these tools I've found.
Key Features:
Lots of users that share genuinely useful and interesting prompts
Upvote system similar to Reddit’s that allows you to find interesting prompts within the categories you’re interested in
Summarize.Tech: AI summaries of YouTube Videos
(free no signup)
Summarize generates AI summaries of YouTube videos, condensing them into relatively short written notes with timestamps. All the summaries I've seen have been accurate and save significant time.
I find it especially useful when looking at longer tutorials where I want to find if:
The tutorial actually tells me what I'm looking for, and
See where in the video I can find that specific part. The one downside I've seen is that it doesn't work for videos that don't have subtitles, but hopefully, someone can build something with Whisper or a similar audio transcription API to solve that.
Claude: ChatGPT Alternative with ~75k Word Limit
(free with signup)
If you've used ChatGPT, you've probably run into the issue of its (relatively low) token limit. Put simply, it can't handle text longer than a few thousand words. It's the same reason why ChatGPT "forgets" instructions you gave it earlier on in a conversation. Claude solves that, with a ~75,000 word limit that lets you input literal novels and do pretty much everything you can do with ChatGPT.
Unfortunately, Claude is currently only free in the US or UK. Claude pitches itself as the "safer" AI, which can make it a pain to use for many use cases, but it's worth trying out and better than ChatGPT for certain tasks. Currently, I'm mainly using it to summarize long documents that ChatGPT literally cannot process as a single prompt.
Key Features:
Much longer word limit than even ChatGPT’s highest token models
Stronger guardrails than ChatGPT: if you're into this, Claude focuses a lot more on "trust and safety" than even ChatGPT does. While an AI telling me what information I can and can't have is more of an annoyance for my use cases, it can be useful if you're building apps like customer support or other use cases where it's a top priority to keep the AI from writing something "surprising."
Phind: AI Search Engine That Combines Google with ChatGPT
(free no signup)
Like a combination of Google and ChatGPT. Like ChatGPT, it can understand complex prompts and give you detailed answers condensing multiple sources. Like Google, it shows you the most up-to-date sources answering your question and has access to everything on the internet in real time (vs. ChatGPT's September 2021 cutoff).
Unlike Google, it avoids spammy links that seem to dominate Google nowadays and actually answers your question.
Key Features:
Accesses the internet to get you real-time information vs. ChatGPT’s 2021 cutoff. While ChatGPT is great for content generation and other tasks that you don’t really need live information for, it can’t get you any information from past its cutoff point.
Provides actual sources for its claims, helping you dive deeper into any specific points and avoid hallucinations. Phind was the first to combine the best of both worlds between Google and ChatGPT, giving you easy access to actual sources the way Google does while summarizing relevant results the way ChatGPT does. It’s still one of the best places for that, especially if you have technical questions.
Bing AI: ChatGPT Alternative Based on GPT-4 (with internet access!)
(free no signup)
For all the hate Bing gets, they've done the best job of all the major search engines of integrating AI chat to answer questions. Bing's Chat AI is very similar to ChatGPT (it's based on GPT-4).
Unlike ChatGPT's base model without plugins, it has access to the internet. It also doesn't require signing in, which is nice.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Google has really dropped the ball lately in delivering non-spammy search results that actually answer the query, and it's nice to see other search engines like Bing and Phind providing alternatives.
Key Features:
Similar to Phind, though arguably a bit better for non-technical questions: Bing similarly provides sourced summaries, generates content and otherwise integrates AI and search nicely.
Built on top of GPT-4: like Taskade, Bing has confirmed they use GPT-4. That makes it another nice option to get around paying for GPT-4 while still getting much of the same capabilities as ChatGPT.
Seamless integration with a standard search engine that’s much better than I remember it being (when it was more of a joke than anything)
Honorable Mentions:
These are the “rest of the best” free AI tools I've found that are simpler/don't need a whole entry to explain:
PdfGPT: Alternative to ChatPDF that also uses AI to summarize and let you interact with PDF documents. Nice to have options if you run into one site’s PDF or page limit and don’t want to pay to do so.
Remove.bg: One of the few image AI tools I use regularly. Remove.bg uses simple AI to remove backgrounds from your images. It's very simple, but something I end up doing surprisingly often editing product images, etc.
CopyAI and Jasper: both are AI writing tools primarily built for website marketing/blog content. I've tried both but don't use them enough regularly to be able to recommend one over the other. Worth trying if you do a lot of content writing and want to automate parts of it.
Let me know if you guys recommend any other free AI tools that you use day-to-day and I can add them to the list.
I’m also interested in any requests you guys have for AI tools that don’t exist yet, as I’m looking for new projects to work on at the moment!
TL;DR:
ChatPDF: Interact with any PDF using ChatGPT without signing up, great for students and anyone who needs to filter through long PDFs.
Taskade: All-in-one task management, scheduling, and notetaking with built-in GPT-4 Chat + AI assistant for improving productivity.
Plus AI for Google Slides: Addon for Google Slides that generates and fine-tunes slide decks based on your description(s) in natural language.
FlowGPT: Database of AI prompts and workflows. Nice resource to find interesting ChatGPT prompts.
Summarize.Tech: AI summaries of YouTube videos with timestamps that makes it easier to find relevant information in longer videos.
Claude: ChatGPT alternative with a ~75k word limit, ideal for handling long documents and tasks that go above ChatGPT's token limit.
Phind: AI search engine similar to a combination of Google and ChatGPT. Built in internet access and links/citations for its claims.
Bing AI: Bing's ChatGPT alternative based on GPT-4. Has real-time internet access + integrates nicely with their normal search engine.
Title.
What AI do u use and why?
With ChatGPT blowing up over the past year, it seems like every person and their grandmother is launching an AI startup. There are a plethora of AI tools available, some excellent and some less so. Amid this flood of new technology, there are a few hidden gems that I personally find incredibly useful, having reviewed them for my AI directory. Here are the ones I have personally integrated into my workflow in both my professional and entreprenuerial life:
Plus AI for Google Slides - Generate Presentations
There's a few slide deck generators out there however I've found Plus AI works much better at helping you 'co-write' slides rather than simply spitting out a mediocre finished product that likely won't be useful. For instance, there's "sticky notes" to slides with suggestions on how to finish / edit / improve each slide. Another major reason why I've stuck with Plus AI is the ability for "snapshots", or the ability to use external data (i.e. from web sources/dashboards) for your presentations. For my day job I work in a chemical plant as an engineer, and one of my tasks is to present in meetings about production KPIs to different groups for different purposes- and graphs for these are often found across various internal web apps. I can simply use Plus AI to generate "boilerplate" for my slide deck, then go through each slide to make sure it's using the correct snapshot. The presentation generator itself is completely free and available as a plugin for Google Slides and Docs.
My AskAI - ChatGPT Trained on Your Documents
Great tool for using ChatGPT on your own files and website. Works very well especially if you are dealing with a lot of documents. The basic plan allows you to upload over 100 files and this was a life saver during online, open book exams for a few training courses I've taken. I've noticed it hallucinates much less compared to other GPT-powered bots trained on your knowledge base. For this reason I prefer My AskAI for research or any tasks where accuracy is needed over the other custom chatbot solutions I have tried. Another plus is that it shows the sources within your knowledge base where it got the answers from, and you can choose to have it give you a more concise answer or a more detailed one. There's a free plan however it was worth it for me to get the $20/mo option as it allows over 100 pieces of content.
Krater.ai - All AI Tools in One App
Perfect solution if you use many AI tools and loathe having to have multiple tabs open. Essentially combines text, audio, and image-based generative AI tools into a single web app, so you can continue with your workflow without having to switch tabs all the time. There's plenty of templates available for copywriting- it beats having to prompt manually each time or having to save and reference prompts over and over again. I prefer Krater over Writesonic/Jasper for ease of use. You also get 10 generations a month for free compared to Jasper offering none, so its a better free option if you want an all-in-one AI content solution. The text to speech feature is simple however works reliably fast and offers multilingual transcription, and the image generator tool is great for photo-realistic images.
HARPA AI - ChatGPT Inside Chrome
Simply by far the best GTP add-on for Chrome I've used. Essentially gives you GPT answers beside the typical search results on any search engine such as Google or Bing, along with the option to "chat" with any web page or summarize YouTube videos. Also great for writing emails and replying to social media posts with its preset templates. Currently they don't have any paid features, so it's entirely free and you can find it on the chrome web store for extensions.
Taskade - All in One Productivity/Notes/Organization AI Tool
Combines tasks, notes, mind maps, chat, and an AI chat assistant all within one platform that syncs across your team. Definitely simplifies my day-to-day operations, removing the need to swap between numerous apps. Also helps me to visualize my work in various views - list, board, calendar, mind map, org chart, action views - it's like having a Swiss Army knife for productivity. Personally I really like the AI 'mind map.' It's like having a brainstorming partner that never runs out of energy. Taskade's free version has quite a lot to offer so no complaints there.
Zapier + OpenAI - AI-Augmented Automations
Definitely my secret productivity powerhouse. Pretty much combines the power of Zapier's cross-platform integrations with generative AI. One of the ways I've used this is pushing Slack messages to create a task on Notion, with OpenAI writing the task based on the content of the message. Another useful automation I've used is for automatically writing reply drafts with GPT from emails that get sent to me in Gmail. The opportunities are pretty endless with this method and you can pretty much integrate any automation with GPT 3, as well as DALLE-2 and Whisper AI. It's available as an app/add-on to Zapier and its free for all the core features.
SaneBox - AI Emails Management
If you are like me and find important emails getting lost in a sea of spam, this is a great solution. Basically Sanebox uses AI to sift through your inbox and identify emails that are actually important, and you can also set it up to make certain emails go to specific folders. Non important emails get sent to a folder called SaneLater and this is something you can ignore entirely or check once in a while. Keep in mind that SaneBox doesn't actually read the contents of your email, but rather takes into consideration the header, metadata, and history with the sender. You can also finetune the system by dragging emails to the folder it should have gone to. Another great feature is the their "Deep Clean", which is great for freeing up space by deleting old emails you probably won't ever need anymore. Sanebox doesn't have a free plan however they do have a 2 week trial, and the pricing is quite affordable, depending on the features you need.
Hexowatch AI - Detect Website Changes with AI
Lifesaver if you need to ever need to keep track of multiple websites. I use this personally for my AI tools directory, and it notifies me of any changes made to any of the 1000+ websites for AI tools I have listed, which is something that would take up more time than exists in a single day if I wanted to keep on top of this manually. The AI detects any types of changes (visual/HTML) on monitored webpages and sends alert via email or Slack/Telegram/Zapier. Like Sanebox there's no free plan however you do get what you pay for with this one.
Bonus: SongsLike X - Find Similar Songs
This one won't be generating emails or presentations anytime soon, but if you like grinding along to music like me you'll find this amazing. Ironically it's probably the one I use most on a daily basis. You can enter any song and it will automatically generate a Spotify playlist for you with similar songs. I find it much more accurate than Spotify's "go to song radio" feature.
While it's clear that not all of these tools may be directly applicable to your needs, I believe that simply being aware of the range of options available can be greatly beneficial. This knowledge can broaden your perspective on what's possible and potentially inspire new ideas.
P.S. If you liked this, as mentioned previously I've created a free directory that lists over 1000 AI tools. It's updated daily and there's also a GPT-powered chatbot to help you AI tools for your needs. Feel free to check it out if it's your cup of tea
I’ve seen a bunch of lists of the best AI tools that focus on paid/subscription tools that are harder to experiment with without paying, and wanted to compile the best completely free tools I've found. Some of these still have paid/Pro plans, but all can be used completely free without a time limited trial and don't require a credit card to do so.
If you're like me and looking to experiment with using AI to improve your business, check these out and let me know your thoughts. If there are any other AI tools or resources I’m missing, please comment them below and I can add them to the list!
Business + Domain name generation:
NamingMagic: I know AI name generators are somewhat played out and most of you already know about them, but NamingMagic stands out as an option that automatically generates names with domain names you can actually register. It’s also completely free.
NameLix is another business name generator that's been around years. While it's a bit harder to find names for which non-dotcom domains are available with it, Namelix has the best interface here, and makes it easy to choose different styles of names.
Project management + integrating AI into your workflows:
3) Taskade: I use Taskade to organize everything from to-do lists, to outreach emails, meeting notes, and content creation. Similar to Notion, it’s an all-in-one content platform that lets you write, collaborate, and keep track of everything you need to get done. I find its AI functionality, which is actually powered by ChatGPT, to be much better than Notion’s.
Taskade also has GPT4 built-in to the free plan, so is a great way to get to use GPT4 without paying for ChatGPT’s pro plan (which is required to use 4 on their site). While they claim there’s a limit of 1000 monthly AI generations on the free plan, I have yet to run into the limit even using it for all of my content generation + ChatGPT prompts. Taskade also has hundreds of free templates that let you easily set up workspaces that integrate AI. Even if you don’t end up using a specific template, it’s a nice way to see what’s possible in integrating AI into your workflows and see how others are doing so.
AI site builders:
To be honest, I continue to use WooCommerce for most of my sites as I’m familiar enough with it that I can use templates and build stuff quickly that way. If, however, you tend to get stuck when building sites, there are a few AI powered site generators that might be worth trying out:
4) Jimdo: I’ve heard people recommend Jimdo, which does offer a free plan, though you have to use their subdomains to do it. Jimdo has both a standard website and online store builder.
5) 10Web is another option that focuses on AI powered WordPress websites, and has a free trial that you can try.
AI powered A/B testing
I think where AI will really shine in web development is in A/B testing. For example, automatically identifying tests you can run and making tweaks to your site based on the results. I have yet to find a tool that does it well that isn’t expensive, but if any of you have seen examples of this, let me know and I can add them to the list.
Image and illustration generator for your non-product content:
6) Dall-E 2: Like ChatGPT, Dall-E is built by OpenAI and has a free plan that lets you try it out without paying. Essentially, Dall-E lets you create AI-generated images and illustrations in whatever style you want.
I find Dall-E especially useful for creating illustrations to put in the headers of articles that help catch readers’ attention, and generally create blog content that stands out more to readers (and search engines). You can see examples of illustrations and the prompts used to create them on OpenAI's site (https://openai.com/research/dall-e). While it's not my space, this could be a gamechanger for those doing things like writing illustrated kids books, or creating games that require large volumes of illustrations.
Text-to-speech and voiceover content generation:
7) Murf: AI-powered text-to-speech that lets you choose from hundreds of different voices, tones, purposes, accents and so on. It also works with 15 different languages, so is perfect if you’re targeting non-English speaking markets.
If you’re like me and don’t have the gift of a golden voice, Murf is an excellent alternative that works for creating product videos, ads, and anything else where you need spoken audio.
Researching and answering technical questions with sources:
8) Phind: I found this one on YC HackerNews. Phind bills itself as a search engine that tells you the answer. Something like a cross between ChatGPT and Google. I use it most for answering development related questions.
Where it really shines vs. ChatGPT vanilla is in showing you the sources it uses to generate answers, so you can explore things further yourself, vs. ChatGPT where it can be harder to tell when it’s “hallucinating”. That also means it gets sources that are up-to-date, vs. ChatGPT’s pre-trained model which is limited to data available before September 2021.
Written content and copy generators:
9) Unbounce: Unbounce's AI copywriting tool generates website content, including headings, descriptions and so on. In addition, it will generate matching email marketing campaigns and other offsite copy to match what's on your site.
While it's unlikely it'll do absolutely everything you need, with some tweaks Unbounce can save a bunch of time if you're looking to spin up a new site quickly to validate a new idea or product.
10) CopyAI: CopyAI has similar writing functionality to ChatGPT, but focuses specifically on business writing use cases like emails, marketing copy, and blog content. As a result it has some features ChatGPT doesn’t, like being able to scrape leads’ sites to personalize sales emails.
Its free plan is limited to 2000 words per month, but it’s still worth trying out if you’re looking for this kind of functionality.
11) Rytr is another similar option, that limits you to 10,000 characters per month.
I’ve tried both, and found them to be better than ChatGPT for certain specific use cases like generating email copy. YMMV, but it’s worth trying if you haven’t gotten the results you want with ChatGPT.
Business Ideas, Research, and Feedback:
There are some purpose built tools for this, but I have yet to find one that does better than simply using ChatGPT/Phind/Taskade and prompting it with your ideas. You can then ask for feedback, either generally or on specific parts of your idea. One method I've found particularly useful when I'm exploring a new product/site idea is to use the prompt mind-map on Taskade to whip up a mind map of things to research for a new idea, then use Phind to research specific questions where I need recent URL sources (like research into competitors in a space). The template I used to build the mind maps is here: https://www.taskade.com/templates/featured/team-mindmap.
If any of you have tried one that’s worth using, let me know and I’ll add it. Also thinking of making this into a Google Sheet or GitHub if any of you would like to contribute to an ongoing list of AI tools that can be used entirely for free.
TL;DR:
NameLix/NamingMagic for finding business names with domain names you can register
Taskade for integrating ChatGPT/AI into your workflows, projects, and task management
Murf for AI-powered text-to-speech and voiceovers
Dall-E for AI generated images/illustrations
Phind for researching topics and getting sourced, AI-powered answers
CopyAI/Rytr for copy/marketing/sales specific content generation.
Every day, I see something new come up, so I'm curious; what are your favorite AI-enabled tools/apps/browser extensions that enhance your everyday life?
I'm not looking for the obvious ones like ChatGPT or Midjourney — more curious about those lesser-known tools that actually made a difference in your workflow, mindset, or daily routine.
Could be anything — writing, coding, research, time-blocking, design, personal journaling, habit tracking, whatever.
Just trying to find tools that might not be in my radar but could quietly improve things.
We tried 100+ AI tools for everyday use and honestly most of them were not worth it.
here's the reality -
In reality, many free (and even paid) AI tools tend to be mere ChatGPT wrappers with dubious practical value or expensive enterprise solutions that use AI as a mere marketing term.
I wanted to share a list featuring the AI tools we personally use regularly, now that I've had more time to evaluate them.
All of these tools offer free versions, though most provide premium options if you need additional features or a high volume of queries. To help you navigate, I’ve also noted whether each tool requires to be paid for use.
REWEB - visual website builder for Next.js & Tailwind
(free to use, pay to use extra features)
It is a useful to create landing pages, signup forms easily using visual editor and if needed convert it to code for more feature builds.
v0 - Create UI skeleton for your App
(free to use, optionally paid for extra components)
it is from the Vercel team to build websites easily for your business.
Cursor - AI coding editor
(paid)
Coding editor for autocompleting business logics and easly write code for non devs as well.
PDFGPT - Summarise and chat with PDF
(free, paid for more features)
Supermemory - Saves all your web bookmarks
(Free, open source)
Saves all your X, and web bookmarks.
SlidesAI - Create presentation Slides.
(free, paid optionally)
create Slides using AI.
Let me know if you guys recommend any other free AI tools that you use day-to-day and I can add them to the list.
I’m also interested in any requests you guys have for AI tools that don’t exist yet. This is just my opinion on AI tools as there might be free tools but are opensource so you need to host yourself.
I am a Media Trader and have been using ChatGpt and Grok 3 to help me create performance and key insights reports for my team, but also the level of detail and ideas for audiences and optimizations has been pretty fantastic. Does anyone have any cool tips or tricks with AI tools they have been using and what kinds of prompts are you giving? I'm trying to get better at explaining opts and the rationale behind it without saying too much.
I've spent an ungodly amount of time procrastinating trying tons of new/free AI tools from Reddit and various lists of the best AI tools for different use cases. Frankly, most free AI tools (and even paid ones) are gimmicky ChatGPT wrappers with questionable utility in everyday tasks or overpriced enterprise software that don't use AI as anything more than a marketing buzzword.
My last list of free AI tools got a good response here, and I wanted to make another with the best AI tools that I actually use day-to-day now that I've spent more time with them.
All these tools can be used for free, though most of them have some kind of premium offering if you need more advanced stuff or a ton of queries. To make it easy to sort through, I've also added whether each tool requires signup.
ChatPDF: Free Tool to Use ChatGPT on Your Own Documents/PDFs
(free no signup)
Put simply, ChatPDF lets you upload any PDF and interact with it like ChatGPT. I heard about this one from my nephew who used it to automatically generate flashcards and explain concepts based on class notes and readings. There are a few similar services out there, but I found ChatPDF the easiest to use of those that don't require payment/signup.
If you're a student or someone who needs to read through long PDFs regularly, the possibilities to use this are endless. It's also completely free and doesn't require signup.
Key Features:
Free to upload up to 3 PDFs daily, with up to 120 pages in each PDF
Can be used without signing up at all
Taskade: AI Task Management, Scheduling, and Notetaking Tool with GPT-4 Built-In
(free with signup)
Taskade is an all-in-one notetaking, task management, and scheduling platform with built-in AI workflows and templates. Like Notion, Taskade lets you easily create workspaces, documents, and templates for your workflows. Unlike Notion’s GPT-3 based AI, Taskade has built-in GPT-4 based AI that’s trained to structure your documents, create content, and otherwise help you improve your productivity.
Key Features:
GPT-4 is built in to their free plan and trained to help with document formatting, scheduling, content creation and answering questions through a chat interface. Its AI seems specifically trained to work seamlessly with your documents and workspaces, and understands queries specific to their interface like asking it to turn (text) notes into a mind map.
One of the highest usage limits of the free tools: Taskade’s free plan comes with 1000 monthly requests, which is one of the highest I’ve seen for a tool with built-in GPT-4. Because it’s built into a document editor with database, scheduling and chat capabilities, you can use it for pretty much anything you’d use ChatGPT for but without paying for ChatGPT Premium.
Free templates to get you started with actually integrating AI into your workflows: there are a huge number of genuinely useful free templates for workflows, task management, mind mapping, etc. For example, you can add a project and have Taskade automatically map out and schedule a breakdown of the tasks that make up that overall deliverable.
Plus AI for Google Slides: AI-generated (and improved) slide decks
(free with signup, addon for Google Slides)
I've tried out a bunch of AI presentation/slide generating tools. To be honest, most of them leave a lot to be desired and aren't genuinely useful unless you're literally paid to generate a presentation vaguely related to some topic. Plus AI is a (free!) Google Slides addon that lets you describe the kind of slide deck you're making, then generate and fine-tune it based on your exact needs.
It's still not at the point where you can literally just tell it one prompt and get the entire finished product, but it saves a bunch of time getting an initial structure together that you can then perfect. Similarly, if you have existing slides made you can tell it (in natural language) how you want it changed. For example, asking it to change up the layout of text on a page, improve the writing style, or even use external data sources.
Key Features:
Integrates seamlessly into Google Slides: if you’re already using Slides, using Plus AI is as simple as installing the plugin. Their tutorials are easy to follow and it doesn’t require learning some new slideshow software or interface like some other options.
Create and tweak slides using natural language: Plus AI lets you create whole slideshows, adjust text, or change layouts using natural language. It’s all fairly intuitive and the best of the AI slide tools I’ve tried.
FlowGPT: Database of AI prompts and workflows
(free without signup-though it pushes you to signup!)
FlowGPT collects prompts and collections of prompts to do various tasks, from marketing, productivity, and coding to random stuff people find interesting. It uses an upvote system similar to Reddit that makes it easy to find interesting ways to use ChatGPT. It also lets you search for prompts if you have something in mind and want to see what others have done.
It's free and has a lot of cool features like showing you previews of how ChatGPT responds to the prompts. Unfortunately, it's also a bit pushy with getting you to signup, and the design leaves something to be desired, but it's the best of these tools I've found.
Key Features:
Lots of users that share genuinely useful and interesting prompts
Upvote system similar to Reddit’s that allows you to find interesting prompts within the categories you’re interested in
Summarize.Tech: AI summaries of YouTube Videos
(free no signup)
Summarize generates AI summaries of YouTube videos, condensing them into relatively short written notes with timestamps. All the summaries I've seen have been accurate and save significant time.
I find it especially useful when looking at longer tutorials where I want to find if:
The tutorial actually tells me what I'm looking for, and
See where in the video I can find that specific part. The one downside I've seen is that it doesn't work for videos that don't have subtitles, but hopefully, someone can build something with Whisper or a similar audio transcription API to solve that.
Claude: ChatGPT Alternative with ~75k Word Limit
(free with signup)
If you've used ChatGPT, you've probably run into the issue of its (relatively low) token limit. Put simply, it can't handle text longer than a few thousand words. It's the same reason why ChatGPT "forgets" instructions you gave it earlier on in a conversation. Claude solves that, with a ~75,000 word limit that lets you input literal novels and do pretty much everything you can do with ChatGPT.
Unfortunately, Claude is currently only free in the US or UK. Claude pitches itself as the "safer" AI, which can make it a pain to use for many use cases, but it's worth trying out and better than ChatGPT for certain tasks. Currently, I'm mainly using it to summarize long documents that ChatGPT literally cannot process as a single prompt.
Key Features:
Much longer word limit than even ChatGPT’s highest token models
Stronger guardrails than ChatGPT: if you're into this, Claude focuses a lot more on "trust and safety" than even ChatGPT does. While an AI telling me what information I can and can't have is more of an annoyance for my use cases, it can be useful if you're building apps like customer support or other use cases where it's a top priority to keep the AI from writing something "surprising."
Phind: AI Search Engine That Combines Google with ChatGPT
(free no signup)
Like a combination of Google and ChatGPT. Like ChatGPT, it can understand complex prompts and give you detailed answers condensing multiple sources. Like Google, it shows you the most up-to-date sources answering your question and has access to everything on the internet in real time (vs. ChatGPT's September 2021 cutoff).
Unlike Google, it avoids spammy links that seem to dominate Google nowadays and actually answers your question.
Key Features:
Accesses the internet to get you real-time information vs. ChatGPT’s 2021 cutoff. While ChatGPT is great for content generation and other tasks that you don’t really need live information for, it can’t get you any information from past its cutoff point.
Provides actual sources for its claims, helping you dive deeper into any specific points and avoid hallucinations. Phind was the first to combine the best of both worlds between Google and ChatGPT, giving you easy access to actual sources the way Google does while summarizing relevant results the way ChatGPT does. It’s still one of the best places for that, especially if you have technical questions.
Bing AI: ChatGPT Alternative Based on GPT-4 (with internet access!)
(free no signup)
For all the hate Bing gets, they've done the best job of all the major search engines of integrating AI chat to answer questions. Bing's Chat AI is very similar to ChatGPT (it's based on GPT-4).
Unlike ChatGPT's base model without plugins, it has access to the internet. It also doesn't require signing in, which is nice.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Google has really dropped the ball lately in delivering non-spammy search results that actually answer the query, and it's nice to see other search engines like Bing and Phind providing alternatives.
Key Features:
Similar to Phind, though arguably a bit better for non-technical questions: Bing similarly provides sourced summaries, generates content and otherwise integrates AI and search nicely.
Built on top of GPT-4: like Taskade, Bing has confirmed they use GPT-4. That makes it another nice option to get around paying for GPT-4 while still getting much of the same capabilities as ChatGPT.
Seamless integration with a standard search engine that’s much better than I remember it being (when it was more of a joke than anything)
Honorable Mentions:
These are the “rest of the best” free AI tools I've found that are simpler/don't need a whole entry to explain:
PdfGPT: Alternative to ChatPDF that also uses AI to summarize and let you interact with PDF documents. Nice to have options if you run into one site’s PDF or page limit and don’t want to pay to do so.
Remove.bg: One of the few image AI tools I use regularly. Remove.bg uses simple AI to remove backgrounds from your images. It's very simple, but something I end up doing surprisingly often editing product images, etc.
CopyAI and Jasper: both are AI writing tools primarily built for website marketing/blog content. I've tried both but don't use them enough regularly to be able to recommend one over the other. Worth trying if you do a lot of content writing and want to automate parts of it.
Let me know if you guys recommend any other free AI tools that you use day-to-day and I can add them to the list.
I’m also interested in any requests you guys have for AI tools that don’t exist yet, as I’m looking for new projects to work on at the moment!
TL;DR:
ChatPDF: Interact with any PDF using ChatGPT without signing up, great for students and anyone who needs to filter through long PDFs.
Taskade: All-in-one task management, scheduling, and notetaking with built-in GPT-4 Chat + AI assistant for improving productivity.
Plus AI for Google Slides: Addon for Google Slides that generates and fine-tunes slide decks based on your description(s) in natural language.
FlowGPT: Database of AI prompts and workflows. Nice resource to find interesting ChatGPT prompts.
Summarize.Tech: AI summaries of YouTube videos with timestamps that makes it easier to find relevant information in longer videos.
Claude: ChatGPT alternative with a ~75k word limit, ideal for handling long documents and tasks that go above ChatGPT's token limit.
Phind: AI search engine similar to a combination of Google and ChatGPT. Built in internet access and links/citations for its claims.
Bing AI: Bing's ChatGPT alternative based on GPT-4. Has real-time internet access + integrates nicely with their normal search engine.
With all the focus on AI’s applications for text-based tasks like writing and coding, I wanted to see how it’s being used in design and more visual tasks. From UI and full-on website design, to graphics and photo generation, there are a ton of interesting and free tools coming out that are worth trying.
All of them are free to try, but most have some kind of paid plan or limit on the number of free generations. Fair enough given it costs money to run the models, but I've tried to include notes on any that don't have permanent free plans and excluded any that explicitly require a credit card or payment to use.
If nothing else, I found it interesting to see where AI is (and isn't) likely to have a significant impact in design work. For all the hype around AI replacing everyone’s jobs, I see it as much more likely to do what technology has always done: replacing grunt work and shifting human attention to tasks that actually need more human involvement.
AI Website, Graphic and UI Generators:
Framer: Describe the website you want, and Framer will create it for you. Edit and instantly publish your site from their platform. Ironically my favorite thing about Framer isn’t its AI tool. Its real advantage is its website editor which is the best I’ve seen on any platform (and usable for free). It’s like Figma if Figma let you publish directly to the web.
Microsoft Designer: Generates designs based on user input for social media posts, logos, and business graphics. It’s free to use with a Microsoft account, and fairly impressive if not always consistent. If you pay a lot or spend a ton of time on design/social media content, Designer is definitely worth checking out.
UIzard: Transforms text and images into design mockups, wireframes, and full user interfaces. It’s an ambitious concept, but very cool. While Framer was better for generating websites from text prompts, UIZard offers something none of the others did: taking a sketch drawing and turning it into a UI and/or wireframing.
Visualizations, Graphics and Illustrations:
Taskade: AI powered productivity tool to visualize your notes, projects, and tasks. Taskade lets you easily generate mind maps and other visualizations of your work, and makes use of AI in a bunch of cool ways. For example, you can generate a mind map to help you brainstorm and then ask it to expand on a certain point or even research it for you with the internet.
Bing Image Creator: Generate images from natural text descriptions, powered by DALL-E. Whether you’re looking for blog illustrations, images for your site’s pages or any other purpose, it’s worth trying.
AutoDraw: Autodraw is a Google Project that lets you draw something freehand with your cursor, and AutoDraw uses AI to transform it into a refined image with icons and predrawn designs, all for free in your browser.
AI Presentations and Slides:
Plus AI for Google Slides: AI generated slides and full-on presentations, all within Google Slides. I liked how Plus AI worked within Google Slides and made it easy to make changes to the presentation (as lets be real, no AI tool is going to generate exactly the content and formatting you need for a serious presentation).
SlidesGo: Generate slides with illustrations, images, and icons chosen by AI. SlidesGo also has their own editor to let you edit and refine the AI generated presentation.
Tome: Tell Tome what you want to say to your audience, and it will create a presentation that effectively communicates it clearly and effectively. Tome actually goes beyond just presentations and has a few cool formats worth checking out that I could see being useful for salespeople and anyone who needs to pitch an idea or product at work or to clients.
Product Photography:
These are all fairly similar so I’ve kept the descriptions short, but it’s genuinely a pretty useful category if you run any kind of business or side hustle that needs product photos. These photos establish the professionalism of your store/brand, and all the ones I tried had genuinely impressive results that seemed much better than what I could do myself.
Pebblely: AI image generator for product images in various styles and settings. 40 free images, paid after that.
Booth.ai: Generates professional-quality product photos using AI, focused on furniture, fashion, and packaged goods.
Stylized.ai: Generates product photos integrated into ecommerce platforms like Shopify.
Miscellaneous Tools:
Fronty: Converts uploaded images or drawings into HTML and CSS code using AI. It’s a bit clunky, but a cool concept nonetheless.
LetsEnhance: Uses AI to enhance the resolution of images and photographs. Generally works pretty well from my experience, and gives you 10 free credits with signup. Unfortunately beyond that it is a paid product.
Remove.bg: Specializes in recognizing and removing image backgrounds effectively. Doesn’t promise much, but it does the job and doesn’t require you to sign up.
TL;DR/Overall favorites:
These are the ones I've found the most use for in my day-to-day work.
Framer: responsive website design with a full-featured editor to edit and publish your site all in one place. Free + paid plans.
Taskade: visualize and automate your workflows, projects, mind maps, and more with AI powered templates. Free + paid plans.
Microsoft Designer: generate social media and other marketing graphics with AI. Free to use.
Plus AI: plugin for Google Slides to generate slide content, designs, and make tweaks with AI. Free + paid plans.
Pebblely: professional-quality product photos in various settings and backgrounds, free to generate up to 40 images (through you can always sign up for another account…)
Let me know if you know of any tools I’ve missed so I can add them to the list! I’ve grouped them by categories, to make it easier to see what each tool is capable of, then given a bit more detail under each specific tool.
There are so many advertisements out there for AI that will edit your product shots to make them awesome or will build out campaigns and content for advertising and social media.
I'm curious about two things. Does anybody have any experience with any of these products? Can anyone share the pros and cons of any of these apps?
My problem is that the few I have had any success with are very limited and complicated. I have looked into some that supposedly have a free trial, but I can't even use them without giving payment information for my "free trial" or actually paying up front.
What happened to being able to try a product for free and giving a chance to get to know it before locking you in to payments? I don't care if it stops working after a trial period or if it is limited somehow. I don't care if the images created have a watermark until you buy in. I just want to know that I'm not being sold a bill of goods. Is that too much to ask for nowadays?
There are lots of AI hypes out there. I've tried so many AI tools, some are just wrappers, some are vibe-code mvp, some are full of bugs. Here are the ones I actually use to increase productivity/create new things. Most have free plans.
ChatGPT - still my main AI for brainstorming, writing, and image generation. I pay for the Plus and I use it for hours daily. Other chatbots are ok, but I'm too used to with Chat
Manus / Genspark - AI agents that actually do stuff for you, handy in heavy research work. These are the easiest ones to use - no heavy setup like others
Saner - My personal assistant, I chat to manage notes, todos, emails, and calendar. Handy for my ADHD
Fathom - AI meeting note takers. There are other similar apps, but this has a generous free plan
Grammarly - I use this everyday, basically it’s like a grammar fixer for my writing
V0 / Lovable - Turn my ideas into working web apps, without coding. This is super helpful for non-technical person like me
Consensus - Get real research paper insights in minutes. So good for fact-finding purposes, especially in this era
NotebookLM - Turn my PDFs into podcasts, easier to absorb information. Quite fun
ElevenLabs - AI voices. I use it for narrations and videos. It also has a decent free plan
What AI apps actually help you and deliver value? Would love to hear your AI stack
I know there are some posts about this topic on this subreddit but non of them looked like a proper list. I tried Julius but it wants $20.00 for 250 messages per month. Which is so absurd.