6 tools, $0 to start, no card. Each card has exactly what the free plan includes as of August 2026, the link, and the catch. Then the ChatGPT app setup, and the 3 signs it's time to pay $20.
A year ago a free account got you the weakest model, about 10 messages, then a wall until tomorrow. That changed this month. ChatGPT dropped the message cap on free accounts in August. Claude gives free accounts the same default model paid accounts use. Gemini Notebook never charged in the first place.
So the question is not which one to pay for. It's which free one does the job in front of you. This page is that list, with the real numbers.
One warning. Every limit here was checked on August 30, 2026. Companies change these without telling anyone. If a number on a card doesn't match what you see in the app, the app is right.
Each card: what you use it for, what the free plan gives you, the catch nobody mentions, and the link. Start with the first one. It covers most of what a business of one needs.
Use it for: emails, captions, planning, first drafts, questions. This one covers most of your day.
Think button for harder questions.Text is unlimited. Voice mode, images, file uploads, Deep Research and the Work tab each have their own cap, and OpenAI doesn't publish the numbers. Check yours under Settings, then Usage.
Free accounts see sponsored suggestions under some answers. And your chats train the model unless you turn that off: Settings, then Data Controls. Setup steps for the app are further down this page.
Use it for: writing that has to sound like you, long documents, anything where the wording matters.
Usage is capped. You get a set amount every 5 hours, then you wait for the window to roll over. Anthropic doesn't publish the number, and it shrinks fast when you paste in long documents. Short, focused chats stretch it.
Claude Code and the heavier Research features stay on the paid side. For chat and writing, free is plenty.
Use it for: questions about your own files. Contracts, a supplier's manual, your notes, a recorded call. It answers only from what you upload, so it can't make things up from the internet.
50 questions a day sounds like a lot until you use it as a chatbot. It isn't one. Ask it about your files, and use ChatGPT or Claude for everything else. If you knew it as NotebookLM, same tool, new name.
Use it for: talking instead of typing. You say it the way you'd say it to a friend, ums and all, and the AI cleans it up. Most people type 40 words a minute and talk 150.
Settings, then General, then Keyboard, and turn on Enable Dictation. Android: the mic on the Gboard keyboard.None of these clean up your ums. That's the AI's job, and you have to ask. Dictate, then paste this under it.
Here's something I dictated, ums and all: [paste]. Clean it up: fix the grammar, cut the filler and the repeats, keep my words and my order. Don't add anything I didn't say. Give it back as [an email / a caption / a list of notes], under [number] words.
Use it for: client calls where you want to listen instead of scribble. The notes write themselves and you send the summary an hour later.
Google Meet's "take notes for me" and Zoom's AI Companion are paid features. A free Google account and a free Zoom Basic account don't get them. So the free path is a note-taker you add yourself.
30 minutes per conversation is the one that bites. A 45-minute call gets 30 minutes of notes and the last 15 are gone. For the long ones: record the call as a voice memo on your phone (tell the other person first), upload the audio to Gemini Notebook as a source, and ask it for the decisions, who does what, and the open questions. Free, no time cap.
Granola is the other option people like: it sits quietly on your Mac or PC and writes notes with no bot in the call. Its free plan records unlimited meetings; the catch is memory. Notes older than 30 days lock until you pay, so copy anything worth keeping into your own notes the same week.
Use them for: the graphic for the post and the typo in the email. Both have been free forever and both will nag you to upgrade. Ignore the nag.
Canva's 20 premium AI uses go in an afternoon. Build with the templates, write the words yourself or in ChatGPT, and save the AI credits for the one image you can't find. Grammarly's 100 prompts go fast too if you let it rewrite everything. Let it fix, not write.
Every AI is better in its own app than in a browser tab. The apps get the new features first: the connections to your other tools, the skills, the new models. The browser gets them later, or not at all. On the desktop, the Work tab only exists in the app. On the phone, the app is where dictation and voice live.
6 steps, about 10 minutes, once.
Settings, then ChatGPT, then Microphone. Mac: System Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Microphone, and switch ChatGPT on.Think before you send. The answer takes longer and is better. Then open Settings, then Usage, so you know where your caps are before one surprises you mid-task.Settings, then Data Controls. Free accounts train the model by default. If you paste client details into ChatGPT, turn it off.The small mic inside the text box is dictation: you talk, words appear, you fix them, you send. The big round button starts voice mode: a spoken conversation with a daily cap. For getting work done, use the small one. Save voice mode for thinking out loud on a walk.
Free is not a trial. You can run a business of one on this page for a long time. But there is a moment when $20 a month buys back hours, and it helps to know what it looks like so you don't pay early out of guilt, or late out of stubbornness.
Pick the app you open most and pay for that one. ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro are both $20 a month. Give it 30 days, look at what you used, and only then decide about a second. Most people never need it.
Not a sign: Grammarly's upgrade pop-up, Canva's "Try Pro" button, or hitting a cap on a day you were playing. Those are marketing, not your business telling you something.