Honest takes on every AI tool worth your time. No affiliate links, no hype — just what each tool does well and who it's for.
by OpenAI
The one that started the revolution. GPT-4o powers fast, versatile conversations across writing, analysis, coding, and creative tasks. Its ecosystem is massive — with plugins, custom GPTs, and image generation built in.
by Anthropic
The thoughtful one. Claude is known for nuanced, careful responses, excellent long-form writing, and the ability to work with enormous documents (up to 200K tokens). It follows instructions precisely and rarely "hallucinates."
by Google
Google's AI integrates deeply with the Google ecosystem — Search, Docs, Gmail, and more. Gemini excels at research-style tasks, real-time information, and multimodal understanding (text + images together).
by Perplexity AI
Think of it as Google Search meets AI. Perplexity searches the web in real-time, reads the results, and gives you a synthesised answer with clickable citations. Perfect for when you need facts, not opinions.
by Google
Upload your own documents — PDFs, slides, articles, notes — and chat with them. NotebookLM only answers from your sources, which means zero hallucinations. It can even generate audio summaries you can listen to.
by Anthropic
An agentic coding tool that lives in your terminal. Claude Code can read your entire codebase, make changes across multiple files, run tests, and fix bugs — all from a natural language conversation. It's pair programming with an AI.
by Google DeepMind
An intelligent AI workspace that goes beyond chat. Upload context, describe what you want to build, and Antigravity plans, writes, tests, and iterates with you. It's designed for complex, multi-step projects where context matters.
by Anysphere
A code editor with AI built into its bones. Cursor gives you inline completions, chat-based editing, and the ability to reference your codebase in conversations. It feels like VS Code, but with a genius co-pilot baked in.
by Midjourney Inc.
The gold standard for AI image generation. Describe what you want in words and Midjourney creates stunning, often photorealistic images. It has a distinct artistic flair that makes its outputs feel professional and polished.
by Microsoft
AI integrated directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Copilot can draft documents, build formulas, create presentations from a prompt, and summarise email threads. If you live in Microsoft 365, this is your AI upgrade.
by Grammarly Inc.
Beyond grammar checking — Grammarly's AI can rewrite paragraphs, adjust tone, and generate text from prompts. It works everywhere: email, docs, social media, even code comments. Think of it as your always-on writing assistant.
by OpenAI
Built into ChatGPT, DALL·E 3 generates images from text descriptions. It's especially good at following detailed instructions, rendering text in images, and creating clean illustrations. Easy to use if you already have ChatGPT.
Start with Claude for outlining, then Grammarly for polishing.
Use Perplexity for real-time facts, then NotebookLM to analyse your sources.
Open ChatGPT or Claude and throw ideas at it. Ask for 20 options, then narrow down.
Use Antigravity for full projects or Claude Code for terminal-based coding.
Try Midjourney for premium results or DALL·E 3 via ChatGPT for quick images.