The Best AI Tools for 2026: From Must-Have to NicheIf you're going to learn a new AI tool, make sure it's one of these
Over the past three years, I’ve tried dozens of AI tools for different tasks. Some were great 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 S 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:
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 useFor learning: NotebookLMNotebookLM 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. For AI web searching & browsing: Perplexity and CometIf you’re tired of Google Chrome, you should try Perplexity:
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 |