Compare AI tools

	Perplexity S	NotebookLM S	Ideogram S	Runway S
Tagline	AI search done right. Cited answers, not chat theater.	Google's research notebook. Turns your docs into a podcast.	The one that actually gets text in images right.	The pro's AI video tool. Gen-4 is the current bar.
Category	Research	Research	Image	Video
Pricing	Free + $20/mo Pro	Free	Free + $8/mo + $20/mo + $60/mo	Free + $15-$95/mo
Best for	Replacing Google for any question where you want a cited answer in seconds.	Students, researchers, anyone with a stack of PDFs or a topic to learn.	Anything with text — posters, ads, album covers, slide decks.	Marketing video, pitch decks, b-roll, creative shorts.
Strengths	Sources every claim Fast, current answers Pro Search runs multi-step research Spaces for persistent context	Upload anything, ask questions, get cited answers Audio Overview turns docs into a 10-min podcast Great for studying	Best text rendering in the game Strong free tier Good for logos, posters, thumbnails	Most mature video workflow Character consistency via Act-One Gen-4 quality is production-grade
Weaknesses	Not a general chatbot Answers can be shallow on complex topics	Google-only Can be slow on large corpora	Aesthetic ceiling below Midjourney Less style variety	Expensive at scale Still needs post-editing
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 study. The Audio Overview is a killer feature. Try it with three of your favorite PDFs.	S-tier for text-in-image. Use this for posters, Midjourney for art.	S-tier. Market leader with reason. Start here for serious video.
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