We're always scouting for the latest AI tools, telling you about new releases, and weighing the free vs. paid options. But honestly? There might be no better guide than hearing what your fellow readers find valuable enough to pay for month after month.
We recently asked how much Neuron readers actually spend on AI, and the results were clear: nearly half of you land squarely in that $20/month sweet spot (shoutout to the 858 readers who voted!). Knowing the cost is interesting, but knowing what tools people get for their money offers the real insight.
Luckily, you delivered in the comments, telling us exactly which tools earn a place in your budget. So, instead of yet another generic "Top 10 AI Tools" list, consider this your crowdsourced guide to the AI tools really worth paying for, direct from the Neuron community. Think of it as the ultimate reader-approved toolkit reveal.
Below, we dive into the data, breaking down which tools dominate, which specialists fill the gaps, and what the sprawling landscape of AI assistants looks like today based on your usage. (And yes, as promised, we’ll spill the beans on our team's go-to tools at the very end!).
The Neuron Reader AI Toolkit: A Detailed Look
Based on your comments, here’s a breakdown of the 54 unique tools you all said you paid for (we're genuinely surprised to see some new tools we never heard of here!)
The Big Three (The Generalists)
These were, by far, the most frequently mentioned, often used as the core of a user's AI workflow.
- ChatGPT (65 mentions): OpenAI's flagship chatbot. The clear leader, used for everything from drafting emails and debugging code to brainstorming ideas and general Q&A. Mentions included specific shout outs for Pro, Plus, 4o, and Teams versions.
- Claude (29 mentions): Anthropic's conversational AI. Often praised for its strong writing capabilities, larger context window for processing long documents, and focus on producing more natural, less "robotic" text. Mentions included both Pro and API usage.
- Gemini (21 mentions): Google's primary AI model and chatbot family. Gemini was mentioned frequently for its integration with Google Workspace (Docs, Gmail), multimodal capabilities (understanding images/audio), and as a strong alternative to ChatGPT/Claude. People said they worked with Advanced, Pro, and specific versions like 2.5/Flash 2.0.
The Second Tier (Popular Specialist Platforms)
These tools showed significant usage, often complementing the Big Three for specific tasks.
- Perplexity (8 mentions): An AI-powered search engine that provides direct answers with citations, aiming to be more accurate and research-focused than traditional search or general chatbots. Includes mentions of Pro/Plus versions.
- OpenAI (8 mentions): Mentioned distinctly from ChatGPT when referring to direct use of OpenAI's APIs (like GPT-4 Turbo, embedding models, etc.) for building custom applications or more advanced workflows, or platform-level access.
- Cursor (7 mentions): An AI-first code editor built specifically for software development. It integrates AI deeply to help write, debug, and understand code, acting like a pair programmer.
- Midjourney (7 mentions): A highly popular AI image generator, accessed primarily through Discord. Known for producing artistic, stylized, and often high-quality images from text prompts.
The Long Tail (Filling Every Niche Imaginable)
Beyond the top 7, readers use a huge variety of tools. Here's a breakdown by category:
- Coding & Development Tools:
- Lovable (3 mentions): A platform that allows users to build custom applications (like internal tools, client portals, or automated workflows) often with no code, leveraging AI.
- Replit (3 mentions): An online, browser-based coding environment (IDE) with integrated AI coding assistance (Ghostwriter) and cloud deployment features.
- Copilot (3 mentions): Microsoft's AI assistant, most famously integrated into GitHub for code completion and suggestions, but also present in Microsoft 365 apps (this is probably so low on the list because most people get Copilot for work, so their work likely pays for it).
- Manus (2 mentions): An "autonomous AI agent" system designed to handle complex multi-step tasks (like research, planning, coding, deployment) with minimal human input; cool to see people actually using this!
- GitHub (1 mention): The ubiquitous code hosting platform, often used w/ Copilot for AI.
- codeium (a.k.a Windsurf) (1 mention): Another AI coding assistant tool, often seen as an alternative to CoPilot.
- Llama (1 mention): Meta's family of powerful, often open-source large language models. Users mentioning this are likely running or accessing these models directly.
- grok / X (1 mention total): xAI's chatbot, known for real-time access to X (Twitter) data and a distinct personality.
- AI Infrastructure & Platforms (For Builders):
- Hugging Face (1 mention): A central platform and community hub for accessing open-source AI models, datasets, and tools. Essential for many ML practitioners.
- lightning.ai (1 mention): A platform (known for PyTorch Lightning) designed to streamline the process of building and training AI models.
- Deepnote (1 mention): A collaborative, cloud-based notebook environment for data science teams, incorporating AI assistance.
- open router (1 mention): An API aggregator service that allows developers to access numerous different LLMs (from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, open-source models, etc.) through a single interface/API key.
- Cloud GPU & ML Platforms (1 mention each for modal.com, together.ai, fireworks, fal.ai, vast.ai, runpod, kluster.ai and nebius): These platforms provide the specialized cloud computing infrastructure (often GPUs) needed to efficiently train and run demanding AI models, offering alternatives to major cloud providers.
- Creative & Content Generation (Beyond Text):
- Runway (4 mentions): A versatile AI platform focused on video generation, editing, and manipulation tools (e.g., text-to-video, video-to-video, background removal).
- Eleven Labs (3 mentions): A leading platform for generating realistic AI voices (text-to-speech) and performing voice cloning.
- Gamma (3 mentions): An AI tool for quickly creating polished presentations, documents, or webpages from simple text prompts or outlines.
- Suno (1 mention): An AI music generator that creates original songs, often including vocals, based on text prompts describing genre, mood, or lyrics.
- HeyGen (1 mention): An AI video platform specializing in creating videos featuring realistic AI avatars that speak from text, often used for marketing or training.
- Synthesia (1 mention): Similar to HeyGen, an AI video creation platform using AI avatars to generate videos from scripts.
- Veed (1 mention): An online video editor that incorporates various AI tools to simplify editing tasks like transcription, subtitling, and content repurposing.
- Krea (1 mention): An AI design tool focused on real-time image generation and enhancement, allowing users to interactively shape the output.
- Leonardo AI (1 mention): A platform for creating AI-generated art and assets, particularly popular for game development visuals.
- Adobe Firefly (1 mention): Adobe's suite of generative AI models integrated into its Creative Cloud apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), trained on licensed or public domain content.
- Freepik (1 mention): Primarily a stock photo/vector site, but has integrated AI image generation capabilities.
- Canva (1 mention): The popular online graphic design tool, which has added numerous "Magic" AI features for text generation, image creation, presentation design, etc.
- Writing & Productivity Enhancement:
- Notion (1 mention): The popular all-in-one workspace app, which includes integrated "Notion AI" features for summarizing notes, drafting content, brainstorming, and more within the app.
- Grammarly (1 mention): A widely used AI-powered writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, and tone, offering suggestions for improvement.
- Sudowrite (1 mention): An AI writing partner specifically designed for fiction writers, offering tools for brainstorming, expanding descriptions, rewriting, and overcoming writer's block.
- Lex.page (1 mention): A minimalist, AI-assisted word processor focused on writing workflows.
- Otter.ai (1 mention): An AI tool specializing in transcribing audio conversations (especially meetings) in real-time and generating summaries.
- Whisper Flow (1 mention): Appears to be an implementation leveraging OpenAI's Whisper model for real-time audio transcription, as opposed to processing entire files after recording.
- Business, Sales & Niche Tools:
- Gong (1 mention): A "conversation intelligence" platform that uses AI to record, transcribe, and analyze sales calls and customer interactions to provide insights and improve team performance.
- SimTheory.ai (1 mention): An AI workspace aiming to consolidate various AI tools and capabilities under one subscription, facilitating complex tasks and simulations.
- Aqua AI (1 mention): An AI tool focused on improving software quality assurance (QA) by assisting with test case generation and management.
What this sprawling list tells us:
- ChatGPT is the Gateway AI: It's the default starting point for most (duh).
- Specialization Pays: Users actively seek out best-in-class tools for specific needs like coding, images, or video. No single tool dominates everything and it seems the marketplace for each niche is pretty diverse with 1-2 major players at least.
- Combos Add Up ($$ wise): Many users settle on 1-2 core paid tools ($20-$40/month), often pairing ChatGPT with Claude or Gemini. Power users ($200+) have much broader, specialized stacks.
- The Ecosystem is HUGE: The sheer number of tools mentioned (54 defined here!) shows incredible diversity and ongoing experimentation.
Why this matters: It confirms that while the big models are powerful, the real productivity gains often come from combining them with specialized tools tailored to your workflow. Don't be afraid to look beyond the top 3; that niche tool mentioned once might be exactly what you need for your specific use-case.
So, What's in The Neuron's Toolkit?
Alright, as promised, here’s a peek behind the curtain at the tools we lean on regularly here at The Neuron:
- Our core paid stack includes ChatGPT Pro (the $200 tier, for higher limits on features like Deep Research), Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Kling (Kuaishou's impressive text-to-video model), and Lovable.
- We also have personal accounts for Claude and ChatGPT on the side, and at various times we've paid for subscriptions to Runway and Midjourney when specific projects demanded it.
Since we write about AI tools all day, we're constantly testing new things, but the ones above are the staples that have stuck around.
Why not some of the others you mentioned?
- We don't currently pay for Perplexity Pro. While Perplexity is great, we find the three free Pro searches per day, combined with the extensive capabilities of ChatGPT's Deep Research (unlocked with our Pro plan), cover most of our advanced search needs.
- We generally avoid paying for most SaaS AI wrapper tools right now. We're experimenting with using API credits directly from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc., to build our own simple automations with n8n and make.com. Lovable is the exception – it wraps other AI services specifically to build software stacks, and honestly, it's quite fun to play with.
- We aren't paying for ElevenLabs or other voice tools at the moment simply because we don't have a constant, daily need for AI voice generation (though that might change soon... stay tuned!).
- We're between AI IDEs atm, so we aren't paying for Cursor. We're actually testing out Windsurf atm because it seems to be the most popular tool of the moment, plus Claude and OpenAI both dropped their own native AI coding tools (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI) that seem quite useful, too.
Many of the other tools mentioned in the poll are fantastic, but often too niche for our specific day-to-day newsletter workflow.
That said, we're always on the lookout for tools that solve your business problems!
Let us know in our newsletter feedback what kind of tools you're searching for to add to your stack, and we'll prioritize covering those in our "Treats to Try" section whenever we can!
