The cheapest AI tools that are actually good enough
Ten tools, A to Z, that cost nothing or nearly nothing — and an honest note on where each one stops being good enough.
The most expensive thing about AI subscriptions is not their price. It is that most of them charge the same whether you open them daily or twice a month, and that a great many tasks people pay frontier prices for do not need a frontier model at all. Fixing a comma with the most expensive reasoning model on the market is the single most common way to overpay.
Everything in this list is free, nearly free, or priced per use. Listed alphabetically, each with the point at which its cheapness starts to cost you something else.
The list below is in alphabetical order, not ranked. aiCat is one of the tools in it, so any ranking we published would be worth what you would expect — instead, every entry says plainly which situation it is the right answer for, and which it is not.
What was actually compared
- The monthly floor, not the headline tier
- Whether the free tier does real work or only demonstrates the paid one
- What a month you barely use it costs
- Who chooses the model — you, the vendor, or nobody
- What you give up in exchange for the price
All 10, A to Z
| Tool | Price from | What it is | Languages | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiCat | Free · Premium from $6/mo | Every app, OS-wide | Any language the model speaks | One key that proof-reads, translates, explains, detects, dictates and reads aloud |
| Apple Intelligence | Free (supported hardware) | OS-level assistant | Growing, English-first | Built into the OS, with rewriting available in most text fields; On-device processing for most requests, which is a real privacy story |
| ChatGPT | Free · Plus from $20/mo | Chat assistant | Multilingual | General reasoning that is still at or near the top of the field; Long, open-ended sessions where the task changes as you go |
| Google Gemini | Free · from ~$20/mo | Chat assistant | Multilingual | Very cheap and very fast models at the small end of the range; Tied into Docs, Gmail and the rest of Workspace |
| Google Translate | Free | Translator | 240+ languages | Free, with no account and no limits worth worrying about; The widest language coverage of anything on this page, by a long way |
| Hemingway Editor | Free · Plus from ~$10/mo | Readability editor | English only | Making prose shorter and plainer, which most prose needs; A readability grade you can actually act on |
| LanguageTool | Free · Premium from ~$5/mo | Grammar checker | 30+, genuinely multilingual | Grammar and style checking across thirty-odd languages, not just English; An open-source core you can self-host, which very few competitors offer |
| Microsoft Translator | Free · API per character | Translator | 100+ languages | Free, with a solid phone app and conversation mode; Built into Office, Edge and Teams |
| Whisper (OpenAI) | Free to self-host · API per minute | Speech model | 90+ languages | Very good multilingual transcription for the price; Open weights, so it can run entirely on your own hardware |
| Windows Voice Access | Free | Built-in dictation | Several, English strongest | Free and built in, with full voice control of the OS as well as text; On-device processing on recent builds |
The list, A to Z
aiCat
The one where a quiet month costs nothing
Why: Priced by use rather than by month: 10 free aiCatCoins a month, Premium from $6, and coins bought outright at $1 = 200 that never expire. It also routes each task to the cheapest model that is good enough instead of billing frontier prices for a comma.
Watch out: Not free at volume, and it is an application you install rather than a page you open.
Download for free →Apple Intelligence
Free, and already on the machine
Why: Rewriting in most text fields, notification summaries, and most requests processed on-device. Nothing to install and nothing to cancel.
Watch out: Recent Apple hardware only, English-first, and it stops short the moment you want it to explain rather than tidy.
How aiCat's coins work →ChatGPT
The free tier that does more than it should
Why: For occasional use the free tier covers a genuinely large amount of ordinary work, and you are never charged for a month you did not open it.
Watch out: The moment you need it daily it is $20/month, flat, whatever your usage.
aiCat vs ChatGPT →Google Gemini
The cheapest capable models, if you are willing to go to them
Why: The small models at the bottom of Google's range are extremely cheap and fast, and the free consumer tier is generous.
Watch out: The best value is inside Google's own applications, and the paid consumer plan bundles storage you may not want.
How aiCat's coins work →Google Translate
Free translation with no asterisk
Why: 240-plus languages, no account, camera and conversation modes, offline packs. There is no cheaper credible option and there does not need to be.
Watch out: It costs you a tab every time, which is the expense that does not appear on the invoice.
aiCat vs Google Translate →Hemingway Editor
Free, and it fixes the most common problem in writing
Why: The web editor costs nothing and tells you the thing most drafts need to hear, which is that they are too long.
Watch out: English only, and paste-based. The AI-assisted tier starts from about $10/month.
How aiCat's coins work →LanguageTool
The best value on this page for grammar alone
Why: A free tier that is a product rather than a trial, thirty-plus languages, Premium from about $5/month, and a self-hosted server that costs nothing but a box to run it on.
Watch out: Grammar and style only, and it will never tell you a claim is wrong.
aiCat vs LanguageTool →Microsoft Translator
Free, wide, and already inside Office
Why: Over 100 languages at no cost, with live captions and conversation mode, and it is present in software most workplaces already licence.
Watch out: A step behind on hard text, and you leave your application to use the consumer version.
How aiCat's coins work →Whisper (OpenAI)
The cheapest transcription there is, if you can build the rest
Why: Open weights, free to run on your own hardware, and the hosted API is billed per minute — far cheaper than any dictation subscription for occasional use.
Watch out: It is a model, not an application: no hotkey, no cursor, no punctuation from context. Self-hosting means a GPU or patience.
How aiCat's coins work →Windows Voice Access
Free dictation you already own
Why: Built into Windows 11, on-device on recent builds, types into any application, and controls the OS by voice as well.
Watch out: Windows 11 only, quality behind the paid apps, and almost no cleanup of what you said.
How aiCat's coins work →Hands-on notes
First-person impressions from using these, not a benchmark. They are here because everything above this point is a table, and a table cannot tell you which tool you will still be opening in three months.
I came to this from the pay-per-use angle and stayed for a different reason. The coins are genuinely the right shape — a slow month costs nothing and nothing expires — but what changed the day was that dictation and text work live together, so the rough draft gets spoken and the tidy-up happens on the next key. It also remembers the things I have told it about what I am working on and brings them back where they help, which is not a feature I would have gone looking for. Downside, stated plainly: you install an application. If you want an assistant on the machine rather than in a tab, that is the price.
Ran the open weights on a laptop for a week to see whether paying for dictation was necessary. The transcription was good. Everything around it was missing — no hotkey, no caret, no punctuation of the context — and building those myself was two evenings I did not want to spend twice.
The best value on this page for anybody who only wants grammar. The free tier is not a trial, it is a product.
Free, already there, and fine for a quick rewrite in Mail. It stopped being enough about the third time I wanted it to explain something rather than tidy it.
One of them is a hotkey. Try it on the text you have open
Free to start with 10 aiCatCoins, no card. Premium starts from $6/month. macOS, Windows and Linux.
aiCat pricing at a glance
| Plan | Price | aiCatCoins / month | Max selection | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10 | 500 chars | Everything aiCat does, plus free dictation and your own memory |
| Premium | from $6/mo (list $10) | 3 000 | 5 000 chars | Think More, read-aloud, encrypted memory, premium models |
| Team + Offline | from $18/member | 12 000 | 50 000 chars | Edit your memory, MCP access, local models, team sync |
| Enterprise | from $90/member | 150 000 | Unlimited | SSO, audit, best coin rate |
Shortlist of one? Start with the one that costs nothing to try
aiCat's free tier includes every task, 10 aiCatCoins a month, and coins bought outright never expire. macOS, Windows and Linux.
Frequently asked
What is the cheapest way to get good AI on a desktop?
Start with what is already installed — Apple Intelligence or Windows Voice Access cost nothing — and add one paid tool only where the free ones visibly fail you. Pay-per-use pricing beats a subscription at anything under daily use.
Is a free tier ever enough?
For translation and dictation, often yes. For anything where you want the result to be better than adequate several times a day, the free tiers are sized to run out.
Why does model choice affect the price so much?
Because model prices differ by more than an order of magnitude for tasks where the output is indistinguishable. A tool that routes a simple task to a cheap model and a hard one to an expensive model costs a fraction of one that sends everything to the top.
Which operating systems does aiCat support?
macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows 10/11, and Linux as AppImage, .deb or .rpm.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Only the text you explicitly act on is sent to the model you selected, for that one request. Your history is stored locally on your device. Team + Offline can run a local model so nothing leaves the machine at all.