Compare AI tools

	Perplexity S	Cursor S	Flux (Black Forest Labs) A	Fathom S
Tagline	AI search done right. Cited answers, not chat theater.	VS Code fork that made AI coding actually work.	Open weights + strong photorealism. The open-source answer.	Meeting notes, free forever for individuals.
Category	Research	Coding	Image	Meetings
Pricing	Free + $20/mo Pro	Free + $20/mo Pro + $40/mo Business	API + open weights (Schnell is Apache 2.0)	Free for individuals + $15-$29/user/mo teams
Best for	Replacing Google for any question where you want a cited answer in seconds.	Developers. Non-developers who want to ship working code.	Developers + power users who want control and privacy.	Solo operators, freelancers, small teams on a budget.
Strengths	Sources every claim Fast, current answers Pro Search runs multi-step research Spaces for persistent context	Tab completion feels like mind-reading Composer for multi-file edits Runs Claude, GPT, Gemini — you pick	Runs locally on a beefy GPU Very photoreal Best open-weight model	Unlimited free tier for solo use Strong summaries + action items Works in Zoom, Meet, Teams
Weaknesses	Not a general chatbot Answers can be shallow on complex topics	Can feel overwhelming for non-coders Expensive at scale	Harder to use than hosted tools Needs infra	Bot-joining model Team features gated
Kai's verdict	S-tier for search. I use it before Google now. If you're still Googling everything, try this for a week.	S-tier for coding. If you write code of any kind, this pays back the $20 in a day.	A-tier. S-tier if you self-host. The reason open-source image gen matters.	S-tier for solo + free. The best free option, hands down.
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