Compare AI tools
Side-by-side: what they do, what they cost, what Kai actually thinks. Pass up to 4 tools via
?tools=claude,chatgpt,gemini.Pick tools (4 selected)
coding
image
productivity
writing
marketing
Cursor S | NotebookLM S | Recraft S | GitHub Copilot B | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tagline | VS Code fork that made AI coding actually work. | Google's research notebook. Turns your docs into a podcast. | Vector + raster AI for designers. Actually controls the output. | Microsoft/GitHub's autocomplete. Deep VS Code + JetBrains integration. |
| Category | coding | research | image | coding |
| Pricing | Free + $20/mo Pro + $40/mo Business | Free | Free + $12-$48/mo | Free (limited) + $10/mo Pro + $19/mo Business |
| Best for | Developers. Non-developers who want to ship working code. | Students, researchers, anyone with a stack of PDFs or a topic to learn. | Designers, brand teams, anyone needing vector output or tight style control. | Teams with GitHub already. Devs who don't want to change IDEs. |
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| Kai's verdict | S-tier for coding. If you write code of any kind, this pays back the $20 in a day. | S-tier for study. The Audio Overview is a killer feature. Try it with three of your favorite PDFs. | S-tier for designers. The only one that takes vectors seriously. | B-tier. Solid for autocomplete but the category moved past it. Pick Cursor unless you can't. |
| Link | Open → | Open → | Open → | Open → |