6 Free AI Apps & Tools: Smart Solutions, Zero Cost

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As artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to advance rapidly, free AI apps make its powerful capabilities accessible to everyone. These tools let individuals and budget-conscious organizations use AI without the hefty price tag. I evaluated a range of free apps designed to help you refine your writing, generate high-quality visuals, and automate processes to compare features and pros and cons. Here are my picks for the six best free AI tools for the most popular use cases:

• ChatGPT: Best for Conversational AI
• Grammarly: Best for Writing Assistance
• Synthesia: Best for Custom AI Videos
• Canva: Best for Design and Media Creation
• ClickUp: Best for Workflow Automation
• Stable Diffusion: Best for Creative Image Generation

Best Free AI Apps Comparison

The following table gives an overview of our recommended free AI apps and their overall ratings, key capabilities, output quality, and free usage limitations.

Free AI Tool	Overall Rating	Key Attributes	Pros	Cons
ChatGPT	★★★★★	Advanced conversational capabilities	Multimodal interactions and diverse applications	Strict usage limits even for paid plans
Grammarly	★★★★★	Grammar and style checks	Comprehensive writing assistance for grammar, style, and tone	May not capture the nuances of creative writing styles
Synthesia	★★★★☆	AI video generation with avatars	Significantly reduces video production costs	Only accessible on its web platform
Canva	★★★☆☆	Design templates and layout suggestions	Extensive library of templates and design elements	Usage of AI features limited to 50 interactions
ClickUp	★★★☆☆	Knowledge and project management	Effective AI tool for project management workflows	Extensive feature set can overwhelm new users
Stable Diffusion	★★★☆☆	Text-to-image generation	High-quality, detailed images from text prompts	Open-source nature requires some technical knowledge to get started

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a popular and versatile conversational AI that can engage you in natural language interactions. It generates coherent and contextually relevant text, making it excellent for casual and deep conversations. This free AI tool can also help with coding, writing content, and answering questions.

Unlike traditional chatbots that rely on scripted responses, ChatGPT uses a sophisticated machine learning algorithm that adapts and learns from user interactions. It remembers context from previous conversations, maintaining continuity in exchanges. It also outperforms other conversational AI chatbots in terms of accuracy and relevance of responses.

OpenAI strongly focuses on making AI more accessible for everyone. In a recent update, it added two major features to ChatGPT’s free version, including the ability to upload files for analysis and generate images through DALL-E 3 for free.

Interface Design

ChatGPT has a minimalistic interface with a text box where you can type your prompts or converse with the tool. It also displays your past AI interactions so you can get back to them and continue conversations.

Why I Picked ChatGPT

ChatGPT made it to my list because of its remarkable versatility and accessibility. It can be used for text generation, summarization, image generation, and coding and prioritizes accessibility by giving users access to features originally available only to paid users.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Advanced conversational capabilities with diverse applications	Occasional inaccuracies in outputs
Multimodal interactions enhance user experience	Creative limitations compared to human imagination
Continuous updates and evolution expand its capabilities	Strict usage limits, even for paid plans

Pricing

• Free: Up to 10 messages to GPT-4o every three hours and up to three image generations from DALL-E 3
• Plus: $20 per user, per month
• Team: $30 per user, per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

• Human-like text generation
• Multimodal interaction capabilities
• Accessibility features for inclusive use
• Image generation

Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that can help inspire new ideas and build outlines for different types of written content, including articles and emails. AI-generated suggestions guide you on web browsers, desktops, and mobile devices. With Grammarly, you can adjust your writing to match a particular style, tone, or brand, and this AI tool can also summarize emails and help you compose replies quickly using context-specific prompts. It can generate stories, rate aspects of your writing, and check your work for possible plagiarism.

To bring responsible AI use to the next level, Grammarly recently launched its AI detection tool, Grammarly Authorship. Authorship is designed to produce a detailed report about a piece of content, identifying which sections are human-typed, AI-generated, or edited using AI tools.

Interface Design

Grammarly has a clean interface with an AI assistant, chatbox, and formatting icons to help you refine your content. It offers capabilities such as content scoring, generative AI, and a plagiarism checker while maintaining simplicity.

Why I Picked Grammarly

I picked Grammarly as one of the best AI tools because its in-depth features go beyond basic spell-check to analyze text in real time and give instant suggestions and refinements to improve content quality and readability. It helps individuals become more confident in their writing without spending a dime.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Comprehensive writing assistance for grammar, style, and tone	Limit of 100 prompts a month
Real-time suggestions enhance writing efficiency	May not capture the nuances of creative writing styles
Personalized feedback adapts to individual writing styles	Needs an Internet connection for full functionality

Pricing

• Free: 100 prompts per month
• Pro: $12 per user, per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

• Real-time grammar, punctuation, and style corrections
• Personalized writing suggestions and feedback
• Multi-platform accessibility
• Generative AI assistance

Synthesia is an AI video creation platform that uses AI-generated avatars and voiceovers to make studio-quality custom videos. It has numerous features for crafting videos for different purposes and voiceovers in more than 140 languages to help you reach a wider audience. One of my favorite things about Synthesia is how you can quickly create high-quality videos without breaking the bank by producing videos with simple prompts, making custom avatars, and cloning your voice. It offers a broad selection of customizable AI avatars and video templates as a starting point for creating training, marketing, and sales enablement videos. The free version includes three minutes of videos per month.

Synthesia regularly enhances its offering by adding new features to its platform, such as expressive AI avatars and Personal Avatars. Expressive AI avatars display emotions and empathy to connect with audiences more effectively, while a Personal Avatar is a digital twin that mimics how you look and sound.

Interface Design

Synthesia has a simple interface with clearly labeled icons for easy navigation. It lets you select an AI avatar for your video and has a text box where you can type your script. It also offers options to modify the video background and add music.

Why I Picked Synthesia

I highly recommend Synthesia because of its user-friendly platform and extensive customization options. The tool supports rapid video creation, even if you’re not an expert, and it has a wide range of features to tailor your videos to specific audiences.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Significantly reduces video production costs	Only accessible on its web platform
Streamlines the creation of localized content	Issues with voiceovers syncing with the avatar
Enables rapid video content creation without specialized skills	Fewer visual styles compared to traditional video production

Pricing

• Free: Three minutes of video per month, six stock avatars, and AI voices in more than 140 languages
• Starter: $29 per month for one editor and three guests
• Creator: $89 per month for one editor and five guests
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

• AI-driven video creation from text scripts
• Custom avatar
• Voiceovers in more than 140 languages
• More than 120 AI avatars

Canva is an online design and image creation platform celebrated for its user-friendly interface. Thousands of ready-to-use templates for diverse outputs, including logos, presentations, and infographics, simplify the design process for beginners and experienced users. Built-in AI capabilities improve the quality of the generated output. They’re free for the first 50 uses on the Canva Free account, after which you can upgrade to a paid plan starting at $10 per user, per month.

AI features include Magic Media—which generates high-quality images from text prompts—and Magic Design, which builds entire presentations from descriptions. The platform helps compose text outputs through Magic Write and Magic Edit features. It also provides enterprise users with AI indemnification at no additional cost in the event of intellectual property claims from content made with its AI tools.

Since its launch in 2013, Canva has worked steadily to expand its offerings and has acquired multiple businesses, including generative AI company Leonardo.Ai.

Interface Design

Canva has a drag-and-drop, user-centric interface with comprehensive features neatly organized into collapsible icons for more efficient navigation. Clicking on an icon opens a selection of creative assets–including text, graphics, and user-uploaded content—that you can add to your content. It lets you resize, rename, or share your image without navigating to another page, which allows the tool to offer numerous capabilities and options without overwhelming you.

Why I Picked Canva

I recommend Canva for its ease of use, effectiveness, and accessibility. It serves its purpose well and helps free users create stunning images, graphics, and videos for personal and professional use. AI-generated visuals are also customizable, so you can tailor outputs to fit your requirements.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Extensive library of templates and design elements	AI features limited to 50 interactions overall
AI design assistant suggests layouts and elements based on content	High-quality assets and advanced features may require Pro subscription
User-friendly interface	Customization can be limited compared to professional design software

Pricing

• Free: 50 uses per account 
• Pro: $15 per user, per month for 500 images
• Teams: $10 per user, per month for 500 monthly uses
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

• AI design assistant 
• Extensive template library
• Magic Studio 
• Magic Media
• Canva Shield

ClickUp is all-in-one project management software with artificial intelligence capabilities that streamline workflow automation. It offers customizable dashboards, real-time chat for team collaboration, and visual widgets to track team members, tasks, sprints, and time. Its AI assistant, ClickUp Brain, combines conversational, contextual, and role-based AI within the platform to connect tasks, docs, and people in one place, making every part of your workflow more efficient. It also assists with quickly drafting project plans and creating subtasks from task details. In addition, it can generate real-time project summaries and updates. Signing up for a free ClickUp account gives you access to its AI tool.

ClickUp continues to upgrade ClickUp Brain and recently launched the Salesforce Connected Search and AI feature. This enhancement allows users to locate and get answers to Salesforce content from the platform through the AI assistant.

Interface Design

ClickUp Brain’s interface has many options for tasks, documents, and other connected applications. It also has recommended questions you might want to ask and a chatbox to start AI conversations. While designed to be helpful, these options can be excessive and overwhelming. 

Why I Picked ClickUp

I selected ClickUp because its AI feature provides central assistance to manage several aspects of your workflow without navigating from your current tasks, increasing efficiency.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
AI integrates seamlessly with existing project management features	Extensive feature set can overwhelm new users
Highly relevant and effective AI tool for project management workflows	Add-on costs $7 per user, per month
AI assistance for various tasks	Free AI limited to 25 uses

Pricing

• Free: First 25 uses, per Workspace
• Paid Add-on: After reaching the free usage limit, ClickUp AI costs an additional $7 per user, per month on top of ClickUp’s paid plans, which start at $7 per user, per month

Features

• Conversational AI
• Recommended questions
• Page summarization
• Role-based AI

Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion is a powerful text-to-image AI model for generating images in a wide variety of styles. Based on a simple text prompt, it can create anything from photorealistic landscapes to abstract art, making it suitable for creative image generation. You can add images to your prompts to influence the output’s composition and style.

One of Stable Diffusion’s key strengths is generating highly detailed characters depicting a strong sense of mood. The model also supports inpainting and outpainting, allowing for modifications of existing images and adding to its versatility. Stable Diffusion is an open source tool on GitHub, with a Community License for free use. It is also accessible via DreamStudio and Hugging Face.

Stable Diffusion has evolved significantly since its launch, with a recent update introducing Stable Diffusion 3. This new model upgrades performance in multi-subject prompts, image quality, and spelling abilities.

Interface Design

Stable Diffusion can be accessed and downloaded from GitHub, though setting it up may be complex for those without technical expertise. However, the AI tool is also available through online platforms like DreamStudio and Hugging Face, offering the same model in a more accessible format. DreamStudio, in particular, has a straightforward interface with options to select styles, adjust image orientation, and choose the number of output variations. You can also add image and negative prompts, making it much easier for beginners to customize the images.

Why I Picked Stable Diffusion

I recommend Stable Diffusion because of its remarkable capabilities in generating high-quality, intricate images. Its community license and open source nature also democratize access to advanced AI technology so individuals and small businesses can experiment and innovate without financial barriers.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
High-quality, detailed images from text prompts	Slow image generation process
Multi-platform availability	Open source nature requires some technical knowledge to get started
Supports a diverse array of styles and themes	Free version only for research, non-commercial, and small commercial organizations

Pricing

• Community License: Free for researchers, non-commercial organizations, and businesses with annual revenues under $1 million
• Enterprise License: Custom pricing

Features

• Advanced text-to-image generation capabilities
• High degree of customization for creative expression
• Inpainting and outpainting for modifying existing images
• Open source model encourages community development and innovation

How I Evaluated the Best Free AI Apps

I assessed each free AI app individually based on five key criteria: relevance and effectiveness, user experience, performance, accessibility, and renewable free access. I assigned a binary yes or no for each criterion and gave each “yes” a point before adding the total for each tool, with a maximum score of five.

• Relevance and Effectiveness: I evaluated each AI app to determine how effectively it fulfills its intended purpose.
• User Experience: I measured the free AI tool’s user-friendliness, taking ease of navigation and intuitive design into consideration
• Performance: I gauged the tool’s efficiency, speed, and accuracy in performing its designated task.
• Accessibility: I checked if the tool’s free version is available across different platforms and devices.
• Renewable Free Access: I determined if the tool’s free version has usage limits and if these limits reset periodically, allowing for continued free access without requiring payment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Bottom Line: Explore the Best Free AI Apps

Exploring the best free AI apps on our list is a smart move if you want to gain firsthand experience and see how AI apps can enhance your daily tasks. With countless AI tools being launched daily, it’s worth trying what’s out there to find the ones that can benefit you or your business. Free AI tools can be surprisingly effective, providing valuable solutions without financial commitment.

This guide was designed to help you find the top free AI apps for various use cases, whether you’re interested in writing, graphic design, or project management. However, while these options are a great resource, it’s important to be mindful of their limitations and set realistic expectations.

Find the top AI industry leaders in our guide to the 150 top AI companies.