These 5 Free AI Tools Save Me Tons of Money on Subscriptions

The technological marvel of AI offers free alternatives to expensive software and subscriptions. But just where can you save? From writing and note-taking to PDF and transcription, here are the tools that regularly save me money.

Most of these tools have to be paid for. Whether you want to splash out on it depends on your usage. All the tools I cover have generous free versions and all the functionality I need to enhance and replace a subscription service.

Creating custom images or sourcing stock images has always been time consuming and/or expensive for me. I was constantly coming up with or creating images to accompany my work. I now use the free version of Leonardo.AI to create many of my artworks.

The process is simple, and the free version offers options such as contrast, sizes and preset styles.

How Leonardo.AI saves me money

• The free version is limited to 150 tokens per day. As a rule, a single generated image without changes will cost 24 tokens.

• The version without Leonardo.AI is limited to small and medium resolution options. However, it also allows you to create images at 1376×768, which is a fairly healthy resolution for most purposes.

• A selection of up to four images for each prompt.

This saved me money in two ways. First, the time spent creating, editing, or uploading images can add up quickly. Leonardo.AI speeds up the entire process and significantly reduces the editing required. Also save money on image subscriptions like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock.

2

ChatGPT: A free writing assistant

It is impossible to write such a list without mentioning ChatGPT. As a writing assistant, this is an incredibly powerful tool and the free version will be more than adequate for all but the most ardent wordsmiths. Although it can do so, as a writer, I do not trust ChatGPT to generate entire articles. But this does not diminish its value as a writing assistant, and the free version works perfectly in such a role.

If you spend an inordinate amount of time pondering how to write an awkward email or compelling social media post, the free version of ChatGPT will help.

How ChatGPT saves me money

• The free version uses the GPT-4o template, which offers a variety of tasks, from text refinement to generating quick creative ideas.

• Free users are limited to using the GPT-4o mini version only a limited number of times in a five-hour window. After that, the free version uses the mini GPT-4o version still useful, but not as powerful. However, the company is shy to reveal how limited this number is.

• The free version of ChatGPT does not include advanced features such as file uploads or the ability to browse the Internet, but it remains a powerful tool for drafting and brainstorming.

Similar to Leonardo.AI, ChatGPT saved me money in two ways. It can save time on tasks such as simplifying information or finding new ideas. However, it also saves money on paid tiers like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus or alternatives like Claude.

While tools like ChatGPT are great for getting ideas down on paper, their work really stops there. This is where the onboard grammar checkers come into play. There are many free spelling and grammar checkers to choose from and they all do their job quite well.

My preference is LanguageTool. I use the free version, which is suitable for all my writing needs and outperforms the premium versions of many alternatives.

How LanguageTool saves me money

• LanguageTool has plugins and apps for browsers, office applications and email clients.

• The free version has a grammar checker, a spelling checker, and a paraphrasing tool.

• Word documents can be uploaded and checked online.

First, a confession. Despite working in IT and as a writer, my writing skills remain terrible. In this sense, LanguageTool saves me money just by automatically correcting a lot of my inept typing and saving me time on editing. Because the free version is more than adequate, I also save money on premium versions of similar tools.

Otter AI is a transcription tool that can capture and organize spoken content. As a remote worker, this is incredibly helpful for me. Otter AI generates searchable transcripts in real-time and integrates with most collaboration and productivity tools.

While the free version doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the paid level, it’s still a powerful tool with a lot of features.

How Otter AI saves me money

• It integrates with tools like Zoom, Slack, Office 365 and Google. However, the premium version is required for integration with other apps, including Dropbox.

• The free version allows up to 300 minutes of transcription per month with a limit of 30 minutes per recording.

• Otter AI Chat can be used to ask questions about the details of your transcripts. For example, you might ask, “What is the due date for the AI ​​article?” and Otter Chat will do the research for me.

Using Otter AI has eliminated the need for paid transcription services. It also saves me time spent manually taking notes, summarizing meetings, and making sure I don’t forget important points.

The ubiquitous PDF file has been around for decades. Despite being a widely used format, PDFs can still be difficult to work with without paying for an application like Adobe Acrobat. PDF Gear is an app that tackles this but does more. Not only can PDFGgear allows you to create and edit PDFs for free, but also has a built-in AI Copilot.

In addition to acting as a helper for the program, the ChatGPT-based Copilot can also provide insights into documents. For example, you can request to summarize PDF or even translate it into different languages.

How PDFGear saves me money

• Full-featured free PDF toolkit with editing, merging and signing features.

• Built-in chatbot for efficient work.

• OCR capabilities can convert scanned PDFs into TXT or Word documents with support for over thirty languages.

In addition to time-saving functions such as the synthesis of large documents, the main cost saving is to avoid the cost of subscriptions to suites such as Adobe Acrobat.

These five free AI tools offer powerful functionality without breaking the bank. Depending on your usage, these alternatives to premium AI tools can reduce those costly subscriptions without affecting your productivity or creativity.