Free AI tools, tested
39 AI tools from our weekly newsletter, each with what it actually does, the free path, and the pricing we found. 26 of them got a full hands-on Tool of the Week walkthrough. Updated 19 Sep 2026.
Latest Tool of the Week
- Tango
Tango records you doing a task once and turns it into a clean, step-by-step how-to guide, capturing every click as a written step with its own annotated screenshot.
Tool of the Week · last covered 19 Sep 2026
- ML Clever
ML Clever turns a short prompt plus your own files into a structured, editable business document, a report, a brief, or a one-pager, that you refine section by section.
Tool of the Week · last covered 12 Sep 2026
- Recraft
Recraft is an AI design tool that turns a text prompt into real, downloadable graphics: logos, icons, illustrations, social banners, and product mockups, including true SVG vectors you can edit in Figma or Illustrator.
Tool of the Week · last covered 5 Sep 2026
AI assistants and models
- Google Workspace Intelligence
Workspace Intelligence is a context-aware AI layer that reads across your Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Chat at the same time, then surfaces actions, drafts, and answers grounded in your actual work, not generic web knowledge.
Tool of the Week · last covered 25 Apr 2026
- Slack AI
Slack's overhauled Slackbot (powered by Anthropic's Claude) brings meeting intelligence, channel summaries, enterprise search, message drafting, and workflow automation directly into the messaging app you already use at work.
Tool of the Week · last covered 4 Apr 2026
- Microsoft 365 Copilot
An AI assistant built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams that now lets you choose between OpenAI's GPT models and Anthropic's Claude for different tasks.
Tool of the Week · last covered 21 Mar 2026
- Gemini 3.1 Pro
Google's most advanced reasoning AI model, built for complex tasks like analyzing large documents, writing detailed reports, and solving multi-step problems.
Tool of the Week · last covered 14 Mar 2026
Design and images
- Recraft
Recraft is an AI design tool that turns a text prompt into real, downloadable graphics: logos, icons, illustrations, social banners, and product mockups, including true SVG vectors you can edit in Figma or Illustrator.
Tool of the Week · last covered 5 Sep 2026
- Napkin AI
Napkin turns plain text into clean, professional visuals.
Tool of the Week · last covered 8 Aug 2026
- Moda
An AI design agent that creates fully editable presentations, social posts, ads, and visual assets on a layered canvas.
Tool of the Week · last covered 28 Mar 2026
- Adobe for ChatGPT
Adobe for ChatGPT: a new free plugin drops 70 plus Adobe tools (Photoshop, Firefly, Premiere, Acrobat, Express) straight into ChatGPT; type @Adobe, describe what you want, and it routes the request to the right app, with no Creative Cloud subscription needed to start.
Quick Pick · last covered 8 Aug 2026
- Google Stitch
New AI design canvas from Google Labs that turns text or voice prompts into multi-screen UI prototypes with exportable code.
Quick Pick · last covered 4 Apr 2026
- Shopify Tinker
Free mobile app bundling 100+ AI tools from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Quick Pick · last covered 4 Apr 2026
- Midjourney V8
Native 2K resolution, 5x faster rendering, and dramatically better text in images.
Quick Pick · last covered 21 Mar 2026
- Canva Magic Layers
Upload any flat image (even AI-generated ones) and Canva automatically separates it into editable layers: text becomes live text, objects become movable elements, backgrounds separate cleanly.
Quick Pick · last covered 14 Mar 2026
Agents and automation
- Gemini Spark
A 24/7 personal AI agent that lives across your Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, YouTube, and Maps.
Tool of the Week · last covered 23 May 2026
- Paperclip
Paperclip is an open-source platform that lets you organize AI agents into a company structure, complete with org charts, roles, budgets, and task delegation, so they can run business operations autonomously.
Tool of the Week · last covered 11 Apr 2026
- Google Workspace CLI
A single command-line tool that connects AI agents to your entire Google Workspace, Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Docs, Chat, and Admin, through one unified interface.
Tool of the Week · last covered 7 Mar 2026
- OpenWorker
Andrew Ng released a free, open-source desktop "AI coworker" that returns finished work across 35 connected apps instead of chatting, though you bring your own model key to run it.
Quick Pick · last covered 25 Jul 2026
- Perplexity Computer
A $200/month agent that takes a high-level goal, breaks it into subtasks, and delegates across 19 AI models (Claude, Gemini, GPT-5.2, Grok).
Quick Pick · last covered 28 Feb 2026
Slides and presentations
- Presenti
Presenti turns a prompt, an outline, or a Word or PDF file into a finished, professionally designed slide deck in under a minute.
Tool of the Week · last covered 29 Aug 2026
- Genspark
You describe the outcome you want, a slide deck, a spreadsheet with the analysis already done, a research brief, a formatted doc, and Genspark's agent builds the finished file, then lets you refine it by chatting.
Tool of the Week · last covered 25 Jul 2026
- Presentations.ai
You describe a topic, or paste a document, a PDF, or your company URL, and its AI assistant (Clip-E) builds a complete, on-brand slide deck for you: structure, written content, and design in one pass.
Tool of the Week · last covered 18 Jul 2026
Meetings and notes
- Circleback
Circleback is an AI notetaker that joins your video calls, writes the notes and action items for you, and now also captures whatever gets shared on screen.
Tool of the Week · last covered 27 Jun 2026
- Fathom
Fathom joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams call, transcribes it, and spits out a timestamped summary with action items you can paste into Slack or a doc.
Tool of the Week · last covered 18 Apr 2026
- Sally AI
Meeting note-taker now auto-joins recurring meetings.
Quick Pick · last covered 28 Feb 2026
PDFs
- UPDF
UPDF is a lightweight PDF app for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and the browser, with a set of AI agents that read a document and hand you back something usable: a plain-English summary, a clickable outline of every section, the key numbers pulled out, or a translated copy.
Tool of the Week · last covered 22 Aug 2026
- Adobe Acrobat Studio
Turns the PDFs you already work with every day into something you can chat with, summarize, restructure, and share as an interactive workspace called a PDF Space.
Tool of the Week · last covered 9 May 2026
Research
- Perplexity Deep Research
You ask one hard research question.
Tool of the Week · last covered 13 Jun 2026
- NotebookLM
NotebookLM is Google's research assistant that reads your own documents (reports, PDFs, transcripts, web pages) and lets you ask questions, generate summaries, and turn the pile into a podcast-style audio rundown or a set of narrated slides.
Tool of the Week · last covered 30 May 2026
Audio and video
- ElevenMusic
Generate, remix, and license original music tracks from a text prompt, the same way ChatGPT generates copy.
Tool of the Week · last covered 2 May 2026
- Adobe Firefly
Adobe Firefly became a full audio studio: it can now generate background music, spoken voiceover from a script, and custom sound effects from a text prompt, all in the same workspace as its image and video tools with no extra subscription.
Quick Pick · last covered 22 Aug 2026
- DeepL Voice-to-Voice
DeepL, the translation tool Europeans swear by, launched live voice-to-voice translation in 40+ languages.
Quick Pick · last covered 18 Apr 2026
Websites and apps
- WordPress.com AI Assistant
A native AI assistant built directly into the WordPress editor, no plugins, no copy-pasting into ChatGPT.
Tool of the Week · last covered 28 Feb 2026
- Canva Code 2.0
Canva's "vibe-coding" builder now turns a plain-language prompt into a working website or app, and it is free for all 265 million-plus users, not just paid ones.
Quick Pick · last covered 18 Jul 2026
- Durable Discoverability
New built-in tool that shows small businesses how they appear across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, with a "Visibility Score" and guided SEO/GEO suggestions.
Quick Pick · last covered 4 Apr 2026
Writing and documents
- ML Clever
ML Clever turns a short prompt plus your own files into a structured, editable business document, a report, a brief, or a one-pager, that you refine section by section.
Tool of the Week · last covered 12 Sep 2026
- Zoom AI Productivity Suite
Zoom's new Canvas, Slides, Sheets, and Paper turn what was said in your meetings into proposals, reports, and decks; included with paid Zoom Workplace plans from about $16/user/month.
Quick Pick · last covered 4 Jul 2026
Guides and how-tos
- Tango
Tango records you doing a task once and turns it into a clean, step-by-step how-to guide, capturing every click as a written step with its own annotated screenshot.
Tool of the Week · last covered 19 Sep 2026
Planning and scheduling
- Akiflow
Akiflow pulls every task from your inbox, Slack, Notion, and calendars into one place, then time-blocks your day so you actually work your plan instead of your notifications.
Tool of the Week · last covered 4 Jul 2026
CRM and sales
- Attio
Attio is an AI-native CRM that keeps your contacts, companies, and deals in one place, and now runs AI agents that research and update those records for you.
Tool of the Week · last covered 11 Jul 2026
Spreadsheets and data
- Sourcetable
Sourcetable is an AI spreadsheet that works like a data analyst you can boss around in plain English.
Tool of the Week · last covered 15 Aug 2026
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One free AI tool we actually tried, what it hands you, and whether the free plan is enough. Plus the week's AI news in plain English. About a 4 minute read, every Saturday.
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