lmost every tech tool I have been using for the past three years has some AI feature baked into it now.
It all started with ChatGPT, then Claude, and then we had an explosion of AI apps for literally every use case you can think of.
Video editing, voice generation, coding, search, automation, presentations, SEO, you name it.
Tools promising to make us more productive.
Some were simple “ChatGPT wrappers” while others were genuinely new products that used AI in ways that were not possible a few years ago.
The problem is that there are so many AI tools out there now that it’s hard to know which ones are actually worth your time. I have personally tested over 70 of them, and most I used once and never opened again. But there are a handful that I genuinely cannot live without at this point.
These are the 15 AI apps that have stuck around in my daily and weekly workflow and continue to make ship things faster and better.
What is an AI app?
An AI app is any application that uses artificial intelligence, typically from large language models (LLMs), to help you get work done. These are tools that go beyond traditional software by being able to understand context, generate content, make decisions, and automate tasks that would normally require a human.
Some AI apps are built entirely around AI, like ChatGPT or Claude, where the AI is the product. Others are new AI tools that have used LLMs to create automations with other APIs and existing tools. There are use cases for everything now.
The AI apps on this list cover a wide range of use cases, from writing and coding to video editing, voice generation, search, and automation. So I’m sure you’ll find something in this list that you can walk away using in just 15 minutes from now.
But before we jump into the list of AI apps, let me go over how I evaluate AI tools when trying them out.
How I chose the AI apps on this list
I have probably used over 70 different AI tools over the past couple of years. And out of all of them, these are the 15 that I find myself coming back to over and over again over the last six months.
Some of them I use every single day. Others I use weekly depending on the project. But none of them are tools I tried once and forgot about.
Here is what I look at when evaluating whether an AI tool is worth keeping around:
- How often I actually use it after the first week
- Whether it actually produces something net new or it’s just perceived value
- How easy it is to get started without
- The quality of the output compared to doing it manually
- Whether it has a free plan or reasonable pricing
- How well it integrates with the other tools I already use
- Whether the product is actively improving or feels outdated
- How reliable it is when I am depending on it for real work
These are more vibe tests. I could go over things like specific features and all the technical details. But I think that’s starting to matter less and less these days.
It’s less about the tech, and more about it unlocking something I couldn’t do before. (No I did not use AI to write that, it just sounded right when typing.)
Okay, no more rambling. Let’s go over my top AI apps right now.