Best AI Tools in 2026

Everyday Tools

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the most famous LLM, gaining its popularity when the concept of generative AI itself went mainstream around 2024. It creates text, images, ideas, and much more.
But these days, most LLMs already create text, images, and ideas, so that’s not why we’re talking about ChatGPT. What really matters here are its strongest points compared with other AIs.
The traits that stand out in ChatGPT are creativity and obedience. In our view, ChatGPT is the most effective when it comes to generating creative ideas. As for obedience, out of all the AIs, it’s the one that, when you give it tasks with specific instructions, doesn’t forget any of the requirements or steps. While other tools may have the same capabilities and intelligence, ChatGPT doesn’t skip any step or requirement, whereas others can forget them; especially Gemini, which can ignore some of the steps you asked for.

Claude

Claude is the generative AI from the company Anthropic. One of the best things about Claude is that its privacy policy is very clear, and Anthropic even released Claude’s “constitution,” where they spell out exactly how they train the AI to be ethical and responsible; it’s the only platform that has done this so far.
Beyond the ethics and responsibility angle, Claude’s writing is very human. Unlike ChatGPT, where if you copy and paste the output somewhere it’s obvious it wasn’t written by a human, Claude is the best LLM when it comes to writing in a human, non-robotic way.

Whispr

Leaving LLMs behind for a moment, Whispr is a tool that saves you a ton of time replying to emails and messages, writing scripts, and anything that involves writing. The app listens to your audio, to what you say, and automatically transcribes it to text.
Instead of spending 10 minutes writing an email, you just say it out loud and the app uses AI to write what you’re saying. It takes you much less time to speak than to type and, in the long run, that adds up to hours and hours saved. The best part is its privacy policy, because everything you say through the tool is not used to train any AI model and is stored locally, so only you have access to what you say.

Granola

Granola is another tool to help you save time in your day-to-day, especially with meetings and calls. Instead of taking notes, Granola listens and transcribes all the topics covered in the meeting so you have all the information organized.
Again, similar to Whispr, it also doesn’t share that information and it’s all stored on your own device.

Perplexity

A lot of people get this wrong, but Perplexity is not an AI LLM model. It uses existing models like Gemini, ChatGPT, and others, but it specifically optimizes those models just for search.
Perplexity’s strong point is, without a doubt, search. That’s the whole purpose behind the tool: it shows you all the sources it used as references and, out of all the tools on the market, it’s the leader and the one that knows how to run the most advanced searches.

NotebookLM

NotebookLM is another Google tool that’s great when you have your own sources. When you upload your sources (documents, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, ebooks, etc.), you can ask questions and NotebookLM will answer only using the sources you provided, without making anything up on top.
Besides being able to consult exclusive sources that you give it, it also has several features you can use: automatic podcasts (it creates an AI podcast about the topic of your files), summaries, mind maps, infographics, study cards, and a bunch of other features.
It’s especially good for students, researchers, and professionals who need to absorb large volumes of information.

AI Creative Tools

Gamma

Gamma is a platform for creatively creating presentations, documents, social media content, and webpages. You can give it the text you’re going to use and it automatically creates the presentation with a flashy design. Instead of using a template or creating it from scratch, the platform does that creation for you. The only downside is that the free version is a bit limited, with a 10-page limit.
It definitely stands out in presentation creation. Although the other formats are also good, the presentations are the best part, especially compared to what’s currently on the market.

Leonardo AI

Leonardo AI is one of the best platforms for creating images, videos, and other visual content like product prototypes, logo design, and YouTube thumbnails. It’s widely used by designers, game creators, and digital artists because it offers high visual quality, a simple interface, and a very generous free plan, making it accessible both for beginners and professionals.

AI Coding Tools

Claude Code

We already talked about Claude earlier in this article, but Claude also has a specialized version for coding, Claude Code. It can fix software bugs, create web pages, integrate with existing code, and build simple applications.
It’s an excellent option for developers and people with little experience in tech who want to experiment with building apps or fixing simple bugs.

Cursor

Cursor is a code editor built as an enhanced version of Visual Studio Code (Microsoft’s coding app), with AI deeply integrated. The tool integrates coding models like Claude Code and similar ones, and connects directly to Visual Studio Code. You can send a direct prompt to Cursor and it will use Claude Code’s model to create what you asked for.
Instead of having to copy all your code into a Claude chat and keep copying and pasting back and forth, Cursor helps by having AI already integrated, so you can request changes directly where you edit your code.

AI Automation Tools

Make.com

Make.com is a platform for task automation, with more than 3,000 integrations like Gmail, Slack, Google Sheets, and hundreds of others. It can create automated workflows without you needing to write any code. It’s great for more complex automations.
For example, you can set up an automation so that whenever someone fills out a form, the data is saved in a spreadsheet and a reply email is automatically sent. It’s a tool widely used by companies and professionals who want to save time by eliminating repetitive everyday tasks.
The best thing about Make.com is that it has a very generous free plan. While other automation tools, like n8n, only give you a free period for 1 month, Make.com lets you run automations without a paid plan for an unlimited time, with monthly credit limits that reset every month on the free plan.

Zapier

Zapier is an online automation platform that connects apps to run tasks automatically, without needing code. You create “Zaps,” which are simple flows, like automatically saving email attachments to Google Drive or notifying the team in Slack when a new sale comes in.
Compared to Make.com, Zapier is simpler and more intuitive, ideal for those just getting started with automations, but it has less flexibility for more complex flows and a higher cost on paid plans.

N8N

N8N is an open-source workflow automation platform that, just like Make.com and Zapier, connects different apps and services to automate tasks.
The big differentiator is that you can install it on your own server, which means full control over your data and no usage limits, something highly valued by companies that deal with sensitive information.
It also has a visual interface to build automations, supports hundreds of integrations, and allows advanced logic with JavaScript code when needed. It’s the favorite option for developers and technical teams who want Make.com-level power but with more freedom, privacy, and lower cost.