The 10 Best AI Tools for 2025 (Tried and Tested)

 

• The Best AI Tools by Category
• 
  
• AI Assistants (Chatbots): ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok
• Video Generation and Editing: Synthesia, Runway, Filmora, OpusClip
• Image Generation: GPT-4o, Midjourney
• Notetakers and Meeting Assistants: Fathom, Nyota
• Automation: n8n
• Research/Education: Deep Research, NotebookLM
• Writing: Rytr, Sudowrite
• Grammar and Writing Improvement: Grammarly, Wordtune
• Search Engines: Perplexity, ChatGPT search
• Social Media Management: Vista Social, FeedHive
• Graphic Design: Canva Magic Studio, Looka
• App Builders & Coding: Bubble, Bolt, Lovable, Cursor, v0
• Project Management: Asana, ‎ClickUp
• Scheduling: Reclaim, Clockwise
• Customer Service: Tidio AI, Hiver
• Recruitment: Textio, CVViZ
• Knowledge Management: Notion AI Q&A, Guru
• Email: Hubspot Email Writer, SaneBox, Shortwave
• Presentations: Gamma, Presentations.ai
• Resume Builders: Teal, Kickresume
• Voice Generation: ElevenLabs, Murf
• Music Generation: Suno, Udio
• Marketing: AdCreative
• Sales: Clay
• Legal: Harvey
• How I selected the AI software in this list

In this article I list 10 AI tools across different categories. After exploring all the available options in each category, I’ve carefully selected the best tools based on my personal experience. This ensures that the recommendations come from real, practical use, so you can trust that they’re grounded in what actually works.

For each tool, I focus on its best use cases, explaining when and how it can be most useful. I also share what I love about each one, as well as any downsides I’ve encountered during my experience. Additionally, I provide information on the free version and premium pricing plans for each tool.Free AI tools

If you're looking for free AI tools, you're in luck! I made sure that every AI tool listed in this article offers either a free plan or free trial with no credit card required, allowing you to explore their features and functionality without any commitment.

The first-rate AI assistants (chatbots)

Ch‎atGPT

ChatGPT always ranks at the top of the LM Arena leaderboard, outperforming different fashions in key benchmarks. It's the arena's maximum famous AI software, with 200 million users as of October 2024.

I’ve used ChatGPT appreciably for brainstorming ideas, translation obligations, coding, AI script era, records analysis and dealing with research-heavy obligations. The new 4o model is a great leap forward—it’s especially speedy, and feels manner smarter than any of the previous variations of ChatGPT.

With ChatGPT's multimodal abilties I can paste in photos—like a chart or graph—and ask questions on it, making it lots less difficult to interpret visual facts speedy. I fed it a PNG picture of a chart and it analysed the chart, gave me a table of the uncooked statistics (that it read from the chart photograph) and then re-did the chart in my favored shades - pretty astounding.

ChatGPT can now preserve context through the years, personalizing responses based totally on preceding conversations. For instance, I’ve used it to refine habitual task ideas with out re-explaining each detail, saving hours of attempt. You can overview and manage what it recalls through OpenAI’s controls, to make sure it does not go all Skynet on you.

The integrated ChatGPT seek alternative (more on this later) makes it even easier to find relevant statistics directly within conversations, which cuts down at the hallucinations with the use of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). RAG grounds the AI's answer through retrieving facts from outside information sources.

While it excels in innovative and widespread-reason obligations, I’d suggest exploring other gear like Claude (see beneath) for coding. It's not that ChatGPT is awful at coding tasks, it's simply that Claude is excellent at them.

If you're looking for a ChatGPT video generator, OpenAI has a device referred to as Sora which is fun to play around with.

ChatGPT o1

o1 is a specialized superior reasoning version built for complex problem-solving, coding, and math.

While I locate 4o excels in creativity and flexibility, o1 has confirmed exceptionally useful for particular responsibilities like coding, troubleshooting technical problems, or even solving problematic math issues that other fashions struggled with. I’ve used it to generate shell scripts, paintings through spreadsheet troubles, and even address cryptic crossword puzzles, in which its precision and logical intensity without a doubt shine.

However, it lacks the wider talents and tool integrations of 4o, so I see it greater as a complementary choice for precise wishes in preference to a full replacement for more innovative or expansive duties.

Operators

In January 2025, ChatGPT added "Operators," AI sellers which could e-book inns, order food, and keep on-line. Exclusive to Pro users ($two hundred/month), they display thrilling potential however are hit-or-pass over in execution.

For example, I asked the Operator to e book a resort in NYC. It started strong, navigating filters and looking TripAdvisor, but ultimately got caught in a loop. Ordering a pizza changed into comparable—it custom designed the order however couldn’t complete checkout. Shopping labored better; it determined a computer underneath $1,000 on Amazon however required me to finish the purchase manually. Operators allow you to take manage once they get caught, but the laggy browser often makes doing it yourself less complicated.

Right now, Operators experience more like a evidence-of-idea than a practical device. While the idea of automating repetitive tasks is thrilling, it desires enhancements in velocity and reliability. If you’re already a Pro person, it’s really worth exploring, however not essential but.

Pricing

OpenAI provide a loose tier which presently gives you constrained get right of entry to to GPT-4o and limitless get admission to to ChatGPT-4o mini. The Plus plan gets you wider get entry to and costs $20/month - I assume it truly is pretty good price for cash. They also provide a Pro plan for $2 hundred/month which gives you precedence get entry to to their modern tools.

Cl‎aude

I’ve been the usage of Claude (their Sonnet three.5 version to be particular), for coding responsibilities, and it’s fast turning into my cross-to for code critiques. What really makes Claude stand out is how specific it's miles—it seems to "get" the nuances of programming better than other equipment I’ve attempted. I’ve used it to identify diffused troubles in my code or even brainstorm higher ways to structure tasks. Anthropic are education these fashions on extra current and specialised coding knowledge and it suggests, particularly while tackling modern frameworks or troubleshooting difficult bugs.

Another thing I love about Claude is how best it's miles to talk to. It feels adore it has more "soul" compared to ChatGPT—the tone is hotter, and conversations simply glide better. Whether I’m bouncing round thoughts or running thru a complicated trouble, it’s certainly nice to have interaction with. I haven't pretty reached Her levels of affection for Claude, however we are getting there.

That said, I actually have hit the response and charge limits a touch faster than I’d like, which can be a hassle if I’m deep right into a venture. But for $20/month on the Pro plan, it’s nevertheless a awesome deal, mainly if you’re looking for an AI assistant that’s clever, approachable, and particularly strong in coding tasks.

Ge‎mini

Google’s Gemini suits seamlessly into the Google environment. On Android, it feels like a natural extension of the gadget in place of a separate app, and in case you’re already using Google Workspace, it’s notably convenient. Whether I become drafting emails, summarizing articles, or asking it random questions, it delivered fast and smoothly.

I’ve located it beneficial in sudden methods too. When reviewing prison files, I’d do my preliminary examine-thru and then ask Gemini to double-check if I missed whatever. Another time, I struggled with a confusing sizing chart even as purchasing for garments. I snapped a photograph of the label, defined my ordinary size, and let Gemini deal with the rest. The notion changed into spot-on, and I ended up with a really perfect in shape!

For innovative initiatives, Gemini’s photograph competencies definitely shine. I once uploaded an photograph I liked and requested it to explain it as a prompt for an AI photo generator. The effects were innovative and galvanizing, making it a a laugh tool for brainstorming new thoughts.

When I became running on a task thought, Gemini Advanced furnished nuanced, tailor-made hints that felt like a proper productiveness enhance. It even made copywriting less difficult—generating meaningful text for design mockups that felt polished, as opposed to using prevalent filler like "Lorem Ipsum."

However, it’s now not best. One frustration I had became with its context retention. When revising a chunk of writing, I had to re-explain instructions some times because it would overlook what we’d already mentioned. Similarly, when I uploaded an Excel report, got a summary, and later up to date the data, Gemini treated the up to date file as a emblem-new project in place of constructing on what we’d already carried out.

Another weak point is its performance on technical obligations. While it’s super at formatting and debugging easy code, I observed that it once in a while rewrote JavaScript as Python unnecessarily. For extra specialised or dense content material, like criminal texts, its analysis lacked depth in comparison to what I was hoping for. Even its responses to a few photograph-based queries had been occasionally inaccurate, which became a letdown after seeing its innovative potential someplace else.

That stated, Gemini’s strengths outweigh its flaws. Its tight integration with Google gear makes it sensible for anyone already in the Google environment, and its capacity to deal with each text and pix makes it a versatile tool for creative projects. While it’s now not the exceptional desire for enormously technical or area of interest responsibilities, it’s a stable, rapid, and clean-to-use assistant for normal needs—and for me, the advanced capabilities have made it a device I’ve come to depend on.

While the free Basic version (the usage of the 1.5 Flash model) covers most informal wishes, the $19.99/month Gemini Advanced provides the more powerful 1.Five Pro and Gemini-Exp-1206 fashions for complicated duties like coding, math, and deep research, which includes reading texts up to at least one,500 pages.

De‎epSeek

DeepSeek is likewise worth sorting out. They allow you to use their V3 and new R1 fashions without spending a dime on their web site, even though you continue to must pay for API access (it's very reasonably-priced although).

DeepSeek's seek feels greater enticing and "sticky" even after only some queries. Its transparency—displaying reasoning and overtly acknowledging what it is aware of and what it might not—builds a sizable degree of person consider.

In January 2025, they launched their R1 version as a competitor to ChatGPT's o1, quickly gaining interest inside the AI community for being both fee-effective and open supply. I've performed round with each their R1 and V3 models.

I requested both ChatGPT-o1 and DeepSeek-R1 to research sections of a presentation I’m operating on. R1 supplied a extra complete analysis, addressing key components that o1 unnoticed. I additionally had both brainstorm thoughts, and another time, R1 added substantially better hints than o1.

For coding I’ve been relying more on DeepSeek (v3) these days due to its honest method—it receives straight to the point with its suggestions. Claude (three.Five Sonnet), by comparison, regularly takes a more detailed course, proposing multiple answers and leaning in the direction of the one that aligns best with strong software engineering practices. Both equipment are outstanding of their personal approaches, and I’ve began the usage of them similarly. DeepSeek is excellent for its affordability and efficiency, while Claude is worthwhile for double-checking essential code and ensuring the whole lot is on point. Together, they make a top notch group.

For writing, I'm much less eager on these DeepSeek models. I locate its output much less natural-sounding and frequently boring and repetitive.

Gr‎ok

Grok three is a capable model that handles maximum obligations well, however in my revel in, it doesn’t experience extensively one of a kind from different pinnacle-tier LLMs.

I tested it for brainstorming, coding assistance, and extended conversations, and while it accomplished reliably, nothing about it sincerely stood out.

It does a decent task at preserving context and producing distinctive responses, but when I in comparison it to ChatGPT and Claude, I discovered its coding recommendations to be hit-or-leave out. Some solutions have been spot on, whilst others required heavy corrections, which isn’t unusual with AI coding assistants, however it didn’t seem to have the identical degree of consistency because the satisfactory models out there.

What does makes Grok 3 precise is its direct get admission to to real-time Twitter data, which could give it a bonus for up to date statistics, however I didn’t find it noticeably higher at current activities than other AI models.

It additionally has a ways fewer content material regulations, meaning it’s extra open to generating responses that different LLMs outright refuse. While that could appeal to a few users, it additionally raises concerns, specifically when it comes to generating noticeably offensive or legally questionable content material.

And then there’s the price. Unlike different free-tier AI fashions, gaining access to Grok three requires an X Premium+ subscription at $40/month, which makes it one of the extra highly-priced options.

While it’s strong and practical, I didn’t walk away feeling like it become a have to-have over current models, especially thinking about the fee barrier.

Th‎e nice AI video turbines

Sy‎‎nthesia

Synthesia is the main AI video generator which allows you to generate sensible AI human avatar motion pictures. I’ve used it for growing schooling modules and shows, and it’s clear why it’s a fave for studying and improvement groups. By turning textual content into video, Synthesia simplifies the production of brilliant content without the want for cameras, microphones, or studios.

Its most famous use case is surely education films, but Synthesia is versatile sufficient to deal with a wide variety of wishes.

Businesses use it for inner communications, onboarding new personnel, and growing customer support or know-how base films.

On the advertising aspect, it excels in generating personalised sales outreach videos, B2B advertising content, explainer movies and even product demos.

I’ve in my view also observed it accessible for internet site videos that wished a polished, professional contact with minimal effort. Synthesia is extremely good smooth to use, you just kind in your script and then generate your video.

Two matters I love approximately Synthesia are the potential to customise avatars and the huge kind of templates presented. When I had to create tailored education films for unique departments, Synthesia made it smooth to exchange the avatar language, tone, or background to match the target audience. The library of over 230 virtual avatars and aid for one hundred forty+ languages means you could create globally constant content effortlessly.

While Synthesia shines for AI speaking head video generation, it’s not designed for storytelling or cinematic visuals. It’s fine for groups and corporations that prioritize velocity, professionalism, and brand consistency of their video manufacturing workflows.

Synthesia gives a loose plan that permits users to generate as much as 36 mins of video in step with yr, without a credit card required. For more full-size features, paid plans begin at $29 in keeping with month.

Ru‎‎nway

Runway is a powerful AI video advent platform packed with features like text-to-video, image-to-video, Motion Brush, Camera Controls, and Inpainting. I’ve more often than not used it to transform textual content into AI video for social media posts.

Tools like Motion Brush make it easy to add animations to unique components of a video, at the same time as Camera Controls can help you alter angles and attention for a cinematic experience. The Inpainting function is in particular remarkable, permitting me to seamlessly eliminate or alter elements in a scene with out disrupting the video’s continuity—responsibilities that normally require advanced abilties and fancy video editing software. There continues to be a chunk of a gaining knowledge of curve although, particularly for novices to video modifying.

Runway’s pricing is bendy: the Standard Plan ($12/month) is super for mild use, the Pro Plan ($28/month) gives more credit and capabilities, and the Unlimited Plan ($a hundred and forty four/month) is ideal for excessive-output creators or groups. Runway additionally offers the Basic plan. This plan offers people with a hundred twenty five one-time credit free of charge. A very mild model of Runway is also included into Canva so that you can strive it out there too.

Runway shines for creatives like filmmakers, virtual artists, and content material creators trying to push boundaries. Though rendering instances can every so often lag for excessive-decision videos, the results are worth it. For me, it’s emerge as an vital device for experimenting and achieving expert-nice outputs, whether for brief-form content material or storytelling projects.

Fi‎lmora

Filmora right away stood out to me as one of the most user-friendly video editors I’ve attempted. Its drag-and-drop functionality and smooth interface made it smooth to start modifying, even with out a great deal previous experience. The platform also gives a huge sort of transitions, outcomes, and templates, which made growing polished movies for YouTube and social media a breeze.

What honestly units Filmora aside is its outstanding variety of AI-powered gear. The AI Smart Cutout function makes keeping apart objects as clean as painting over them, even as the AI Remove Background device lets you swap out video backgrounds without needing a inexperienced display screen. I mainly loved the AI Audio Denoise and Silence Detection gear, which helped smooth up audio and cast off needless pauses to create smoother edits.

The AI Motion Tracking feature brought a fun, creative detail to my tasks, permitting me to tune moving objects for privateness blurring or quirky outcomes like adding stickers. The AI Audio Stretch tool also came in handy, saving me time by extending background music to perfectly in shape scene transitions.

While Filmora’s AI equipment are convenient and time-saving, they’re now not perfect. Features like Smart Cutout and Remove Background occasionally require guide touch-ups, specifically for complicated scenes. Additionally, rendering can sluggish down whilst operating with excessive-decision documents or heavy AI usage, which might be a situation for professional-grade initiatives.

Overall, Filmora is an first-rate choice for creators searching out an lower priced, AI-superior video editor that simplifies the enhancing procedure with out sacrificing great. Whether you’re a hobbyist or a social media creator, it’s a well-rounded option that makes video editing both amusing and distinctly efficient.

Filmora plans begin at $49.Ninety nine according to 12 months or an entire life license for $79.Ninety nine. While the loose model is handy for testing, it does include a watermark on exports.

Op‎usClip

ClipAnything: First-ever multimodal AI clipping that allows you to clip any video

OpusClip is a outstanding tool for breaking down longer motion pictures into quick, shareable clips for social media. It’s sincere to use and does loads of the heavy lifting for you.

The AI function is tremendously powerful at finding the great components of a video, so I didn’t should spend a long time scrubbing thru photos. It additionally resized my clips routinely to in shape structures like TikTok and Instagram.

Adding captions is brief and simple, and the option to throw in emojis makes the clips sense greater dynamic—mainly useful for grabbing attention in silent scrolling. I additionally virtually appreciated the “hook” feature that alternatives out key moments to begin the clip off sturdy.

Opus Clip makes it smooth to create desirable content from videos I’ve already made. It’s sensible, green, and takes a number of the hassle out of social media editing.

The pleasant AI photo mills

GP‎‎T-4o

The new GPT-4o photo generator is severely awesome. The jump in first-rate (vs. The preceding DALL·E 3 picture generation version) is apparent proper away. It handles human beings a lot better than before. Faces appearance practical, proportions make experience, or even information like posture and lighting frequently experience intentional. It’s not just spitting out random visible noise anymore. It simply looks like it knows what it is doing.

One thing that without a doubt stood out is how properly it generates textual content. I asked for posters, symptoms, even labeled diagrams, and most of the time the writing become flawlessly readable. That by myself makes it manner greater useful than older versions. It additionally does a far higher job with character consistency, which is something different gear like Midjourney nonetheless conflict with.

That said, it’s not ideal. It nevertheless struggles with certain prompts, particularly fable-related ones like maps or magical creatures. Some filters are nevertheless quite strict. Also, the rollout is sort of all over the place. I got it on my smartphone however not on laptop at the beginning. But while it really works, it’s really exciting. I’ve already started out the usage of it for mockups and visuals I used to need Photoshop for.

Mi‎‎djourney

Midjourney remains my preferred AI photograph generator for painterly and innovative visuals. Its inventive energy lies in its ability to create beautiful fantasy and sci-fi imagery or richly textured "ancient" images.

One vicinity where Midjourney shines is in its painterly aesthetic, in particular for faces and complicated info in surreal contexts. I’ve observed it struggles with rendering faces at a distance, however for speculative and narrative-pushed art work—like a dreamy space opera or a mythical nation—Midjourney is unmatched.

For grounded realism, I depend upon DALL-E 3, however whilst crafting vibrant, otherworldly scenes or notably conceptual artwork, Midjourney is my move-to tool.

Like DALL-E three, it lacks the ability to outline reusable characters or objects, a characteristic that could hugely decorate its value for consistent visible storytelling.

Midjourney gives both loose and premium plans. The free plan lets in users to create a small variety of photos, even as the top class plans gives greater generations, faster processing, and get right of entry to to extra tools. The cheapest top rate choice is the simple plan which cost me $10/month.

The excellent AI assembly assistants

Fa‎thom

‎Fathom AI Notetaker is the fine AI meeting recorder I’ve used. It records meetings seamlessly, generates clean and based summaries, and affords a full transcript that I can seek the use of AI-powered questions with timestamps for the solutions. I store hours each week by way of not having to rewatch recordings or take notes manually. The summaries are so accurate that they require little to no editing.

The app is free to apply with some boundaries. Premium plans begin at $19 in keeping with month and liberate unlimited AI features in conjunction with more integration options. For the rate, it's miles tough to beat, mainly with how properly it captures questions and action objects.

Fathom joins conferences reliably and gives me the option to decide out while needed. It even notifies me once I have been speakme too long, that's some thing I in no way knew I needed however now in reality admire. It's splendid for purchaser calls, making follow-u.S.A.And undertaking monitoring easy. At this point, I can not consider handling meetings without it.

Ny‎‎ota

Nyota is another AI-powered meeting assistant designed to enhance productiveness by using automating word-taking, mission control, and meeting planning.

I linked Nyota to our calendar and it robotically joined scheduled meetings. During meetings, Nyota captured key points, decisions, and action gadgets, allowing me to live completely engaged inside the dialogue with out the distraction of guide observe-taking. 

Post-meeting, Nyota furnished detailed transcripts and concise summaries, highlighting essential data and assigned responsibilities. This characteristic was specially beneficial for team members who couldn't attend, as they could quick trap up on crucial discussions. 

Nyota's has some cool meeting planning abilties. It offered AI-generated tips for applicable topics, making sure our conferences have been focused and effective. Additionally, Nyota integrated with our undertaking control tools, automatically developing tasks and updates based totally on assembly discussions.

While Nyota's features have been complete, I determined that it had a comparable problem as tl;dv in that its editing abilties for transcripts have been somewhat restrained. Additionally, at the same time as Nyota excelled in capturing meeting content, it failed to provide the same intensity in submit-meeting analytics as a few other tools. These analytics usually degree factors of the assembly, as an example if everyone were given a danger to talk, which sounds weird but can certainly help get anyone contributing to the dialogue in an unbiased manner.

In contrast to tl;dv, every other AI assembly assistant, Nyota provided a more holistic technique with the aid of integrating meeting notes with project control gear. While tl;dv focused on transcription and summarization, Nyota's energy lay in its ability to connect meeting insights directly to task duties and planning.

Nyota gives a Starter Plan at $12/month with simple functions like meeting note-taking. There's a 7-day unfastened trial.

The pleasant AI automation gear

n8n\

n8n is a self-hostable automation device that helps you to join apps and services to build custom workflows with out writing complete packages. One of the things I like maximum is the way it manages to be each no-code friendly and developer-friendly. The visual editor makes it easy to piece collectively automations by using dragging and connecting nodes. If you don't know how to code, you could nonetheless get loads finished. And if you do, there’s room to drop in custom functions and pass deeper.

I started out using it to automate backups and pull statistics from APIs, but certainly one of my favorite use cases is archiving my Spotify playlists. I set it up to grab my Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daylist, then keep those tracks to long-time period archive playlists every week. It runs on a schedule and maintains the whole thing organized with out me lifting a finger. It’s no longer constantly plug-and-play, but after you figure it out, n8n will become a seriously effective tool for automating the stuff you don’t need to do manually.

N8n’s pricing starts at €20/month for 2,500 executions and simple capabilities. The Pro plan at €50/month provides more workflows, concurrency, and admin equipment. Enterprise offers complete customization and support, with pricing on request.

The exceptional AI studies/training gear

De‎ep research

OpenAI's deep studies will locate, examine & synthesize loads of on-line resources to create a complete file mins.

I’ve examined it across more than one domains, and the speed and intensity of its insights are unreal—what might normally take me hours, if no longer days, is now condensed into minutes.

The device doesn’t just regurgitate records; it virtually synthesizes statistics in a manner that looks like having a top-tier studies assistant. Whether it’s felony analysis, funding reviews, or technical breakdowns, it compiles assets, systems findings, and affords a level of readability that’s tough to suit.

The quotation gadget is solid, although I’ve noticed that in highly specialised fields, it could once in a while misinterpret information, that means a very last guide take a look at remains essential.

That stated, I don’t suppose its limitations do away with from how effective it is. It’s mainly robust at identifying styles and connections that might otherwise go disregarded, making it experience like a true step closer to AI-assisted studies in preference to just a sophisticated seek engine.

Some would possibly argue it’s not "developing" new records, however in practice, the way it organizes and presents records often results in insights I wouldn’t have reached by myself.

There’s no question that tools like this are shifting the manner research is performed, and at the same time as it’s not best, it’s the nearest element I’ve seen to an AI that actually enhances intellectual work in preference to just rushing it up.