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The Best AI Tools for 2026: From Must-Have to Niche
If you're going to learn a new AI tool, make sure it's one of these
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Over the past three years, I’ve tried dozens of AI tools for different tasks.
Some were great
Some were terrible
Some don’t exist anymore
Here are the best AI tools I’ve found, organized by category and ranked into the following tiers. You’ll also find guides to learn most tools
Best AI tools:
- S tier: AI tools everyone must use
- A tier: AI tools most people should use
- B tier: Best AI tools for specific nichesS tier: AI tools everyone must use (choose at least one)
Without a doubt, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are the best AI tools to date. They can provide answers to your everyday questions, do web searches, help with writing, and more.
Here’s what they’re best at:
ChatGPT: Best at deep research and voice mode
Claude: Best at writing and coding
Gemini: Best at image and video generation. Great for learning
In the next sections, I’ll show you in more detail why they’re best at those tasks.
A tier: AI tools most people should use
For learning: NotebookLM
NotebookLM is an AI research tool powered by Gemini that is grounded in your own documents. You can upload PDFs, Google Docs, and transcripts into NotebookLM, and it’ll generate summaries, answer questions with citations, and even podcasts.
The best part? Its answers are limited to the information in your documents!
That means little to no hallucination. NotebookLM responds with references to the exact source document. I use it to understand papers and get more from books.
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For AI web searching & browsing: Perplexity and Comet
If you’re tired of Google Chrome, you should try Perplexity:
Perplexity provides direct answers to your questions with inline citations
Perplexity remembers questions. You can ask follow-ups and dig deeper
There are no ads or sponsored sites on top of your searches
I like Perplexity, but lately I’ve been using its AI-powered browser Comet more often. Comet is designed to act as a personal assistant for browsing the web. With Comet, you can automate tasks, research the web, organize your email, and more
