Almost every tech tool I have been using for the past three years has some AI feature baked into it now.
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Video editing, voice generation, coding, search, automation, presentations, SEO, you name it.
Tools promising to make us more productive.
Some were simple “ChatGPT wrappers” while others were genuinely new products that used AI in ways that were not possible a few years ago.
The thing is, there are AI tools available now and its tough to figure out which ones are really useful. I have tried than 70 of them myself and most I only used once and never opened again.. There are a few that I really can’t imagine living without now.
These are the 15 AI apps that I still use regularly, in my weekly work and they help me get things done faster and better.
How I chose the AI apps on this list
I have probably used over 70 different AI tools over the past couple of years. And out of all of them, these are the 15 that I find myself coming back to over and over again over the last six months.
Some of them I use every single day. Others I use weekly depending on the project. But none of them are tools I tried once and forgot about.
Here is what I look at when evaluating whether an AI tool is worth keeping around:
- How often I actually use it after the first week
- Whether it actually produces something net new or it’s just perceived value
- How easy it is to get started without
- The quality of the output compared to doing it manually
- Whether it has a free plan or reasonable pricing
- How well it integrates with the other tools I already use
- Whether the product is actively improving or feels outdated
- How reliable it is when I am depending on it for real work
These are more vibe tests. I could go over things like specific features and all the technical details. But I think that’s starting to matter less and less these days.
It’s less about the tech, and more about it unlocking something I couldn’t do before. (No I did not use AI to write that, it just sounded right when typing.)
Okay, no more rambling. Let’s go over my top AI apps right now.
What is an AI app?
An artificial intelligence app is any application that uses intelligence typically from large language models to help you get your work done. These artificial intelligence tools go beyond software by being able to understand the context of what you are doing generate content for you make decisions for you and automate tasks that would normally require a human to do them.
Some artificial intelligence apps are built around artificial intelligence like ChatGPT or Claude, where the artificial intelligence is the main product. Others are artificial intelligence tools that have used large language models to create automations with other application programming interfaces and existing tools. There are use cases for intelligence apps in just about everything now.
The artificial intelligence apps, on this list cover a range of use cases from writing and coding to video editing, voice generation, search and automation. So I am sure you will find something in this list that you can start using in 15 minutes from now.
Before we jump into the list of artificial intelligence apps let me go over how I evaluate artificial intelligence tools when I try them out.
15 best AI apps and tools in 2026 (free + paid)
Here are the best AI apps:
- Google Labs
- Gumloop
- Claude
- Cursor
- Higgsfield
- Weavy
- ElevenLabs
- Paradigm AI
- Clearscope
- v0
- Lovable
- Originality AI
- Descript
- Perplexity
- Gamma
Alright, lets go over these in depth.
Perplexity
- Best for: AI-powered research and conversational web search
- Pricing: Free plan available, Pro starts at $17/month (billed annually)
- How I use it: Researching statistics, content ideas, and trends with deep web search and sourced answers
Perplexity is an AI search engine that has quickly become my favorite way to research any topic. The cool thing about Perplexity is that it can do a social search and pull in insights from forums and UGC content.
You can also use Perplexity like you would ChatGPT or Claude, except it has a lot better web searching capabilities compared to those platforms. So it is best used when you have prompts that need web searches or deep research. Whether you are searching for statistics, content ideas, trends, or literally anything and want a conversational search experience, Perplexity is definitely an app to check out.
They also now have a Computer feature that is an AI agent that can complete tasks for you. It is very similar to how Claude Cowork or ChatGPT Agent works.
Here are some things I like about Perplexity:
- Gives you sourced, cited answers instead of just a list of links
- Social search pulls insights from forums and UGC content
- Pro plan lets you choose between GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.1, and more
- Computer feature lets you delegate tasks to an AI agent
Here are some cons with Perplexity:
- Sources are not always the most authoritative
- Can sometimes confidently present outdated information
- Free plan has limited access to advanced models
- Ultra plan at $167/month is expensive for most users
Perplexity pricing
Here are Perplexity’s pricing plans:
- Free: $0/month with basic search and AI answers
- Pro: $17/month (billed annually) with access to GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.1, deeper sourcing from proprietary data, and reports/documents/apps
- Ultra: $167/month (billed annually) with advanced reasoning models, deep investigations at scale, massive dataset support, 45,000 monthly Computer credits, and Model Council
You can view all the plans here.
Perplexity reviews
Here is what users rate Perplexity on third-party review sites:
- G2: 4.5/5 star rating (from +238 user reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 star rating (from +30 user reviews)
What is the best free AI?
If you are looking for the best free AI, it really depends on what you need it for. But if I had to pick one, I would say Claude. The free plan gives you access to web search, memory, file creation, MCP connectors, and even Slack and Google Workspace integrations. For a free AI chatbot, that is hard to beat.
But if you want free AI tools beyond just chat, Google Labs is the clear winner. Everything on the platform is free, and you get access to tools for image generation, email productivity, prototyping, and even a full AI-powered IDE with Antigravity. It is an entire ecosystem of free AI apps in one place.
And if you want to automate workflows with AI for free, Gumloop has a generous free plan that lets you build flows with 2,000 credits, unlimited nodes, and connect to any LLM model. That is enough to build a few automations and see how it fits into your workflow before committing to a paid plan.
At the end of the day, the best AI tools are the ones you actually keep using after the first week. I have tested over 70 of them and most I never opened again. These 15 are the ones that save me real time, they help me ship things faster, and a lot of them work automatically in the background while I focus on other things.
And honestly, we are still early. If the last three years taught me anything, it’s that the next wave of AI apps is probably going to look different than what we currently have.
Perplexity
Pricing: Free plan available, Pro starts at $17/month (billed yearly)
How I use it: Researching stats, content ideas, and trends with deep web search and sourced answers
They also now offer a Computer feature that is an AI agent that can handle tasks for you. It works very similarly to Claude Cowork or ChatGPT Agent.
Here are some things I like about Perplexity:
Gives you sourced, cited answers instead of only a list of links
Social search pulls insights from forums and UGC content
Pro plan lets you pick between GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.1, and more
Computer feature lets you hand off tasks to an AI agent
Here are some downsides with Perplexity:
Sources are not always the most reliable
Can sometimes confidently show outdated information
Free plan has limited access to advanced models
Ultra plan at $167/month is costly for most users
Perplexity pricing
Here are Perplexity’s pricing plans:
Free: $0/month with basic search and AI answers
Pro: $17/month (billed yearly) with access to GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.1, deeper sourcing from private data, and reports/documents/apps
Ultra: $167/month (billed yearly) with advanced reasoning models, deep investigations at scale, huge dataset support, 45,000 monthly Computer credits, and Model Council
You can view all the plans here.
Perplexity reviews
Here is how users rate Perplexity on third-party review sites:
Capterra: 4.6/5 star rating (from +30 user reviews)
G2: 4.5/5 star rating (from +238 user reviews)
Here are some things I like about Perplexity:
- Gives you sourced, cited answers instead of just a list of links
- Social search pulls insights from forums and UGC content
- Pro plan lets you choose between GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.1, and more
- Computer feature lets you delegate tasks to an AI agent
Here are some cons with Perplexity:
- Sources are not always the most authoritative
- Can sometimes confidently present outdated information
- Free plan has limited access to advanced models
- Ultra plan at $167/month is expensive for most users
Perplexity pricing
Here are Perplexity’s pricing plans:
- Free: $0/month with basic search and AI answers
- Pro: $17/month (billed annually) with access to GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.1, deeper sourcing from proprietary data, and reports/documents/apps
- Ultra: $167/month (billed annually) with advanced reasoning models, deep investigations at scale, massive dataset support, 45,000 monthly Computer credits, and Model Council
You can view all the plans here.
Perplexity reviews
Here is what users rate Perplexity on third-party review sites:
Capterra: 4.6/5 star rating (from +30 user reviews)
G2: 4.5/5 star rating (from +238 user reviews)
