Comparisons

The AI tools space has a freemium problem. Half the tools advertised as “free” are really “free for 3 days, then $29/month.” The other half give you a watered-down version that’s barely useful. This list is different. Every tool here has a genuinely useful free tier — one that doesn’t require a credit card and doesn’t cut you off after an hour. I’ve included what each one is actually good for so you can pick the right tool for the job. ...

Last updated: February 2026 | Reading time: 7 minutes Twenty dollars a month doesn’t sound like much — until you’re being asked to pay it for software you’re not sure you actually need. ChatGPT’s free tier is genuinely capable. So what exactly does Plus give you? And more importantly, is it worth it for you? Here’s the honest breakdown, no fluff. What You Get With ChatGPT Free The free tier gives you access to GPT-4o, OpenAI’s flagship model — but with limits: ...

Last updated: February 2026 | Reading time: 9 minutes If you’ve spent more than five minutes researching AI tools, you’ve probably hit a wall of vague comparisons that say things like “both are great for different use cases!” without actually telling you which one to use. This isn’t that article. We ran both ChatGPT (GPT-4o) and Claude (Claude 3.5 Sonnet) through a set of real tasks — the kind of things normal people actually need AI for. Here’s the honest breakdown. ...

Research used to mean hours in browser tabs, bookmarking sources, stitching together information from a dozen different pages. AI changed that. But now there are two distinct philosophies competing for your workflow: Perplexity AI’s real-time, source-cited search model versus ChatGPT’s deep reasoning and conversational depth. Both are excellent. They’re not the same tool. Here’s how to think about which one belongs in your research stack. What Perplexity AI Actually Does Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine. That’s the clearest way to describe it. You type a question, it queries the web in real time, reads the top sources, synthesizes an answer, and cites every claim with a numbered footnote you can click. ...

Claude 3.5 vs ChatGPT-4o: Side-by-Side Comparison for Real Tasks Both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT-4o are excellent AI assistants. But “excellent” doesn’t tell you which one to use. When you’re paying for a subscription or building a workflow around an AI, you want specifics. So we ran both through the same real-world tasks — writing, coding, research, summarization, and reasoning — and tracked where each one actually shines. Here’s what we found. ...