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The AI Tools I Actually Use Every Day (Honest Review)
I’ve tested over 40 AI tools in the past six months. I kept five. The rest either cost too much, did the same thing as a free option, or made my work worse. This is the list of what I actually open on my laptop every day — and what I’d tell a friend to start with.
What AI tools do I use every day?
The core stack is small: ChatGPT for quick tasks, Claude for writing that matters, Notion to keep everything organized, GitHub and Vercel to run the blog, and Hugo to build it. That’s six tools. Four are free. The two paid ones cost $20 each per month, and I only pay for one at a time depending on what I’m working on.
I don’t use them all equally. ChatGPT gets opened the most — probably 15 times a day for short questions, code snippets, or brainstorming. Claude gets opened when I’m writing something that needs to sound like me, not like a machine. Notion is always running in the background, tracking every post idea, affiliate link, and deadline.
Is ChatGPT worth paying for?
Yes, but only if you’re using it daily. The free tier handles most things: drafting emails, explaining concepts, writing code snippets. I used the free version for three months before I upgraded.
What $20/month gets you is access to GPT-4o and image generation with DALL·E. The model difference is real — GPT-4o follows instructions better and hallucinates less than the free model. If you’re writing code or doing research, that matters.
What ChatGPT is bad at: long conversations. After about 20 back-and-forth messages, it starts forgetting what you said earlier. I’ve had it contradict itself mid-project. For anything requiring sustained reasoning over a long document, I switch to Claude.
The other limitation is math. It doesn’t calculate — it predicts what the answer should look like based on patterns. I once asked it to split a restaurant bill with tax and tip. It got the tip wrong by $4. Use a calculator for numbers.
Price: Free tier is solid. Plus is $20/month.
Why do I use Claude for writing instead of ChatGPT?
Claude sounds more like a person. That’s the short answer.
When I ask ChatGPT to write a blog post, it produces something that reads like a press release — polished, generic, full of phrases like “in today’s fast-paced world.” Claude’s output is closer to how I actually talk. It uses shorter sentences. It doesn’t pad paragraphs with filler. It asks clarifying questions instead of guessing.
I use Claude for blog drafts, email sequences, and anything where tone matters. Last week I needed to write a difficult email to a collaborator about a missed deadline. ChatGPT gave me something corporate and stiff. Claude gave me something direct but kind. I sent the Claude version.
Where Claude falls short: it can’t generate images, it’s slower than ChatGPT, and it sometimes refuses tasks it shouldn’t (over-cautious safety filters). For code, ChatGPT is still better — Claude writes cleaner explanations but ChatGPT produces working code faster.
Price: Free tier is generous. Pro is $20/month.
How do I organize everything with Notion?
Notion is where the chaos goes to get sorted. I have databases for blog posts (status, publish date, topic, word count), affiliate links (product, commission rate, last check date), and a content calendar that maps out the next two months.
The AI features inside Notion — the writing assistant, the summarizer — are fine for quick edits. I wouldn’t use them for anything serious. The real value is the system itself. Before Notion, I kept ideas in Apple Notes, Google Docs, and random text files on my desktop. Finding anything took 10 minutes. Now it takes 10 seconds.
One thing Notion is bad at: large databases. Once you pass a few hundred entries, it slows down noticeably. My affiliate link database has 200+ rows, and opening it takes 3-4 seconds. Not a dealbreaker, but annoying.
Price: Free for personal use. $10/month for Plus if you need more storage or collaborators.
Do I need to know code to use GitHub and Vercel?
No. That’s the whole point.
GitHub stores my blog’s code. Vercel takes that code and turns it into a live website. When I push a change to GitHub — fix a typo, publish a new post — Vercel rebuilds the site automatically. The whole process takes about 45 seconds.
I was terrified of GitHub for months. The interface looks like it was designed by and for engineers. But for my use case — hosting a blog — I use maybe 5% of its features. I create a repository, push code to it, and occasionally roll back a change if I break something. That’s it.
Vercel is even simpler. You connect it to your GitHub repo once, and it handles everything else: SSL certificates, global CDN, automatic deployments. I’ve never touched a server configuration file. My blog loads in under a second, and I’ve never paid a dollar for hosting.
GitHub: Free for public and private repos (up to 3 collaborators on private). Vercel: Free tier is generous. Pro is $20/month if you need team features.
Why Hugo instead of WordPress or Squarespace?
Speed. My blog loads in 0.8 seconds. WordPress sites I’ve tested average 3-5 seconds. That difference matters — Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, and readers bounce from slow sites.
Hugo is a static site generator. It takes markdown files (plain text with simple formatting) and turns them into HTML. No database. No server-side processing. Just files on a CDN.
The tradeoff is you write in markdown, not a visual editor. There’s no drag-and-drop. If you want to see what your post looks like, you preview it locally or push it live. For me, that’s fine — I write in a text editor anyway. If you need a visual builder where you click buttons and move boxes around, use Wix or Squarespace. They’re slower, but easier to learn.
Price: Free. Open source.
What tools did I try and stop using?
I test a lot of tools. Most don’t make the cut.
Midjourney — The images are beautiful. But it costs $10/month minimum, requires Discord (which I hate), and the free alternatives have gotten good enough for blog headers. I switched to DALL·E inside ChatGPT.
Notion AI — Built into Notion. Fine for summarizing a meeting note or rephrasing a sentence. Not good enough for writing a full paragraph that sounds human. I tried using it for blog intros and rewrote every single one.
Grammarly — Catches typos well. The AI tone suggestions are terrible — they strip out personality and make everything sound like a corporate memo. I use the free version for spell-check only.
Jasper — AI writing tool built for marketing teams. The templates are decent if you need 50 product descriptions fast. At $49/month, it’s not worth it for a solo blogger. ChatGPT does the same thing for $20.
Copy.ai — Similar to Jasper. Good templates, but the output still needs heavy editing. Not worth a subscription when free tools do 80% of the job.
What should I start with if I have no budget?
Start with these five tools — all free:
- ChatGPT for drafting, brainstorming, and quick research
- Notion for organizing ideas and tracking content
- GitHub for storing your site’s code
- Vercel for hosting
- Hugo for building the site
That’s a complete blog stack. You can publish your first post today without spending a dollar.
If you find yourself using ChatGPT constantly, upgrade to Plus ($20/month). If you’re writing long-form content and need it to sound human, add Claude Pro ($20/month). Don’t buy both at once — use one for a month, then switch if you want to compare.
The tools aren’t the bottleneck. The work is.
I test AI tools so you don’t waste money on the ones that don’t work. If I recommend something, I use it. If it sucks, I’ll say so.
Built with AI. Written by a human. Tested in the real world.