The Six AI Tools Worth Paying For Every Month

Connor Grennan is the Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern and works with companies on AI adoption. He has tested most of the tools on the market. These are the six he actually pays for every month, plus one bonus pick.

ChatGPT Plus ($20/month)

This is the Swiss army knife. Connor uses it for brainstorming, writing, voice mode for practicing sales calls, vision for analyzing screenshots and images, code interpreter for working with spreadsheets, and custom GPTs for turning large documents into interactive references. If you only pay for one tool, this is the one.

Claude by Anthropic ($20/month)

A very close second to ChatGPT. Connor calls Claude his writing partner and says it is "second to none" for that purpose. It imitates brand voice well, makes jokes he wishes he had thought of, and has a clean interface with Google Drive integration. His advice: always feed it your rough draft first so the output does not sound like generic AI.

Perplexity Pro ($20/month)

Perplexity has replaced Google Search for Connor. He uses it for researching anything, checking news, and prepping for podcasts. It pulls information together and provides sources, which makes it more useful than a standard search engine for research tasks.

Gemini ($20/month)

Google's Gemini is improving fast. Its standout feature is "Verify with Google," which lets you fact-check AI responses against Google's index. Connor says to watch this space because it is getting better quickly.

Midjourney ($10/month)

If you are using DALL-E inside ChatGPT for image generation, Connor says you are settling for mediocre results. Midjourney produces significantly better images. It now runs in a browser instead of Discord, which makes it much more accessible.

Canva ($12/month)

Canva's AI features make creating social media graphics fast, even for someone who is bad at graphic design. The built-in AI tools speed up the creation process considerably.

Bonus: ElevenLabs ($5/month)

For AI voice generation. A cheap add-on that rounds out the stack.

Key Takeaways

• ChatGPT Plus is the foundation tool; Claude is the best dedicated writing partner
• Perplexity Pro has functionally replaced Google Search for research-heavy work
• Midjourney at $10/month produces dramatically better images than DALL-E, and it now works in the browser

Resources

• ChatGPT Plus -- OpenAI's subscription tier with vision, voice, and custom GPTs
• Claude -- Anthropic's AI writing partner
• Perplexity -- AI-powered research and search engine
• Gemini -- Google's AI assistant with built-in verification
• Midjourney -- AI image generation
• Canva -- Design platform with AI features
• ElevenLabs -- AI voice generation