The AI Tools I'm Actually Paying For in 2026
Social media, AI subscriptions, and coding tools — what survived six months of testing
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Tens of thousands (literally) of people ask me what tools to use. The honest answer is that tool selection is contextual. Different workflows, different requirements, different budgets, different constraints. What works for a solo researcher won’t work for a 50-person engineering team. What works in the US might not be available elsewhere.
That said, we’ve developed a protocol. Every tool in this article has been tested by our team for at least six months. Our top engineers and researchers have vetted each one and cross-checked each other. We’ve also cross-checked recommendations with multiple people across different use cases in our network. For every tool mentioned here, there are several we tested, paid for, and chose not to include because they weren’t good enough.
This is the honest breakdown of what’s worth the money, what isn’t, and why. Post-paywall, we cover:
Social media tools: The philosophy behind low-effort distribution, discovery platforms vs conversion platforms, the tool I used to get 66K views in 90 days with almost no additional effort, and why I’m canceling one of my subscriptions (even though it is good).
AI subscriptions: Claude vs ChatGPT vs Gemini — which wins at research, communication, and learning, and why both $200 tiers are worth it for different reasons. And why Gemini is not worth it anymore.
Coding tools: When to use Lovable vs CLI tools vs IDE tools, the collaboration problem with Claude Code and Codex, and an architectural insight on how CLI tools would change architecture best practices. Each tool recommended here has been used to deploy real-life systems that are used by thousands of users at least.
Where this is going: Why execution is commoditizing, what actually compounds, and how to build intuition that outlasts the tools
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