6 Free AI Apps & Tools: Smart Solutions, Zero Cost

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to advance rapidly, free AI apps make its powerful capabilities accessible to everyone. These tools let individuals and budget-conscious organizations use AI without the hefty price tag. I evaluated a range of free apps designed to help you refine your writing, generate high-quality visuals, and automate processes to compare features and pros and cons. Here are my picks for the six best free AI tools for the most popular use cases:

ChatGPT: Best for Conversational AI

Grammarly: Best for Writing Assistance

Synthesia: Best for Custom AI Videos

Canva: Best for Design and Media Creation

ClickUp: Best for Workflow Automation

Stable Diffusion: Best for Creative Image Generation



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Best Free AI Apps Comparison

The following table gives an overview of our recommended free AI apps and their overall ratings, key capabilities, output quality, and free usage limitations.

Free AI Tool
Overall Rating
Key Attributes
Pros
Cons

ChatGPT
★★★★★
Advanced conversational capabilities
Multimodal interactions and diverse applications
Strict usage limits even for paid plans

Grammarly
★★★★★
Grammar and style checks
Comprehensive writing assistance for grammar, style, and tone
May not capture the nuances of creative writing styles

Synthesia
★★★★☆
AI video generation with avatars
Significantly reduces video production costs
Only accessible on its web platform

Canva
★★★☆☆
Design templates and layout suggestions
Extensive library of templates and design elements
Usage of AI features limited to 50 interactions

ClickUp
★★★☆☆
Knowledge and project management
Effective AI tool for project management workflows
Extensive feature set can overwhelm new users

Stable Diffusion
★★★☆☆
Text-to-image generation
High-quality, detailed images from text prompts
Open-source nature requires some technical knowledge to get started

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ToggleChatGPTGrammarlySynthesiaCanvaClickUpStable DiffusionHow I Evaluated the Best Free AI AppsFrequently Asked Questions (FAQs)Bottom Line: Explore the Best Free AI Apps

ChatGPT

Best for Conversational AI

Overall Rating: 5/5

Effectiveness: ✔

User Experience: ✔

Performance: ✔

Accessibility: ✔

Renewable Free Access: ✔

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a popular and versatile conversational AI that can engage you in natural language interactions. It generates coherent and contextually relevant text, making it excellent for casual and deep conversations. This free AI tool can also help with coding, writing content, and answering questions.

Unlike traditional chatbots that rely on scripted responses, ChatGPT uses a sophisticated machine learning algorithm that adapts and learns from user interactions. It remembers context from previous conversations, maintaining continuity in exchanges. It also outperforms other conversational AI chatbots in terms of accuracy and relevance of responses.

OpenAI strongly focuses on making AI more accessible for everyone. In a recent update, it added two major features to ChatGPT’s free version, including the ability to upload files for analysis and generate images through DALL-E 3 for free.

Visit ChatGPT

Interface Design

ChatGPT has a minimalistic interface with a text box where you can type your prompts or converse with the tool. It also displays your past AI interactions so you can get back to them and continue conversations.

Why I Picked ChatGPT

ChatGPT made it to my list because of its remarkable versatility and accessibility. It can be used for text generation, summarization, image generation, and coding and prioritizes accessibility by giving users access to features originally available only to paid users.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

Advanced conversational capabilities with diverse applications
Occasional inaccuracies in outputs

Multimodal interactions enhance user experience
Creative limitations compared to human imagination

Continuous updates and evolution expand its capabilities 
Strict usage limits, even for paid plans

Pricing

Free: Up to 10 messages to GPT-4o every three hours and up to three image generations from DALL-E 3

Plus: $20 per user, per month

Team: $30 per user, per month

Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

Human-like text generation

Multimodal interaction capabilities

Accessibility features for inclusive use

Image generation

Grammarly

Best for Writing Assistance

Overall Rating: 5/5

Effectiveness: ✔

User Experience: ✔

Performance: ✔

Accessibility: ✔

Renewable Free Access: ✔

Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that can help inspire new ideas and build outlines for different types of written content, including articles and emails. AI-generated suggestions guide you on web browsers, desktops, and mobile devices. With Grammarly, you can adjust your writing to match a particular style, tone, or brand, and this AI tool can also summarize emails and help you compose replies quickly using context-specific prompts. It can generate stories, rate aspects of your writing, and check your work for possible plagiarism.

To bring responsible AI use to the next level, Grammarly recently launched its AI detection tool, Grammarly Authorship. Authorship is designed to produce a detailed report about a piece of content, identifying which sections are human-typed, AI-generated, or edited using AI tools.

Visit Grammarly

Interface Design

Grammarly has a clean interface with an AI assistant, chatbox, and formatting icons to help you refine your content. It offers capabilities such as content scoring, generative AI, and a plagiarism checker while maintaining simplicity.

Why I Picked Grammarly

I picked Grammarly as one of the best AI tools because its in-depth features go beyond basic spell-check to analyze text in real time and give instant suggestions and refinements to improve content quality and readability. It helps individuals become more confident in their writing without spending a dime.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

Comprehensive writing assistance for grammar, style, and tone
Limit of 100 prompts a month

Real-time suggestions enhance writing efficiency
May not capture the nuances of creative writing styles

Personalized feedback adapts to individual writing styles
Needs an Internet connection for full functionality

Pricing

Free: 100 prompts per month

Pro: $12 per user, per month

Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

Real-time grammar, punctuation, and style corrections

Personalized writing suggestions and feedback

Multi-platform accessibility

Generative AI assistance

Synthesia

Best for Custom AI Videos

Overall Rating: 4/5

Effectiveness: ✔

User Experience: ✔

Performance: ✔

Accessibility: ✘

Renewable Free Access: ✔

Synthesia is an AI video creation platform that uses AI-generated avatars and voiceovers to make studio-quality custom videos. It has numerous features for crafting videos for different purposes and voiceovers in more than 140 languages to help you reach a wider audience. One of my favorite things about Synthesia is how you can quickly create high-quality videos without breaking the bank by producing videos with simple prompts, making custom avatars, and cloning your voice. It offers a broad selection of customizable AI avatars and video templates as a starting point for creating training, marketing, and sales enablement videos. The free version includes three minutes of videos per month.

Synthesia regularly enhances its offering by adding new features to its platform, such as expressive AI avatars and Personal Avatars. Expressive AI avatars display emotions and empathy to connect with audiences more effectively, while a Personal Avatar is a digital twin that mimics how you look and sound.

Visit Synthesia

Interface Design

Synthesia has a simple interface with clearly labeled icons for easy navigation. It lets you select an AI avatar for your video and has a text box where you can type your script. It also offers options to modify the video background and add music.

Why I Picked Synthesia

I highly recommend Synthesia because of its user-friendly platform and extensive customization options. The tool supports rapid video creation, even if you’re not an expert, and it has a wide range of features to tailor your videos to specific audiences.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

Significantly reduces video production costs
Only accessible on its web platform

Streamlines the creation of localized content
Issues with voiceovers syncing with the avatar

Enables rapid video content creation without specialized skills
Fewer visual styles compared to traditional video production

Pricing

Free: Three minutes of video per month, six stock avatars, and AI voices in more than 140 languages

Starter: $29 per month for one editor and three guests

Creator: $89 per month for one editor and five guests

Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

AI-driven video creation from text scripts

Custom avatar

Voiceovers in more than 140 languages

More than 120 AI avatars

Canva

Best for Design and Image Creation

Overall Rating: 3/5

Effectiveness: ✔

User Experience: ✔

Performance: ✘

Accessibility: ✔

Renewable Free Access: ✘

Canva is an online design and image creation platform celebrated for its user-friendly interface. Thousands of ready-to-use templates for diverse outputs, including logos, presentations, and infographics, simplify the design process for beginners and experienced users. Built-in AI capabilities improve the quality of the generated output. They’re free for the first 50 uses on the Canva Free account, after which you can upgrade to a paid plan starting at $10 per user, per month.

AI features include Magic Media—which generates high-quality images from text prompts—and Magic Design, which builds entire presentations from descriptions. The platform helps compose text outputs through Magic Write and Magic Edit features. It also provides enterprise users with AI indemnification at no additional cost in the event of intellectual property claims from content made with its AI tools.

Since its launch in 2013, Canva has worked steadily to expand its offerings and has acquired multiple businesses, including generative AI company Leonardo.Ai.

Visit Canva

Interface Design

Canva has a drag-and-drop, user-centric interface with comprehensive features neatly organized into collapsible icons for more efficient navigation. Clicking on an icon opens a selection of creative assets–including text, graphics, and user-uploaded content—that you can add to your content. It lets you resize, rename, or share your image without navigating to another page, which allows the tool to offer numerous capabilities and options without overwhelming you.

Why I Picked Canva

I recommend Canva for its ease of use, effectiveness, and accessibility. It serves its purpose well and helps free users create stunning images, graphics, and videos for personal and professional use. AI-generated visuals are also customizable, so you can tailor outputs to fit your requirements.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

Extensive library of templates and design elements
AI features limited to 50 interactions overall

AI design assistant suggests layouts and elements based on content
High-quality assets and advanced features may require Pro subscription

User-friendly interface
Customization can be limited compared to professional design software

Pricing

Free: 50 uses per account 

Pro: $15 per user, per month for 500 images

Teams: $10 per user, per month for 500 monthly uses

Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

AI design assistant 

Extensive template library

Magic Studio 

Magic Media

Canva Shield

ClickUp

Best for Workflow Automation

Overall Rating: 3/5

Effectiveness: ✔

User Experience: ✘

Performance: ✔

Accessibility: ✔

Renewable Free Access: ✘

ClickUp is all-in-one project management software with artificial intelligence capabilities that streamline workflow automation. It offers customizable dashboards, real-time chat for team collaboration, and visual widgets to track team members, tasks, sprints, and time. Its AI assistant, ClickUp Brain, combines conversational, contextual, and role-based AI within the platform to connect tasks, docs, and people in one place, making every part of your workflow more efficient. It also assists with quickly drafting project plans and creating subtasks from task details. In addition, it can generate real-time project summaries and updates. Signing up for a free ClickUp account gives you access to its AI tool.

ClickUp continues to upgrade ClickUp Brain and recently launched the Salesforce Connected Search and AI feature. This enhancement allows users to locate and get answers to Salesforce content from the platform through the AI assistant.

Visit ClickUp

Interface Design

ClickUp Brain’s interface has many options for tasks, documents, and other connected applications. It also has recommended questions you might want to ask and a chatbox to start AI conversations. While designed to be helpful, these options can be excessive and overwhelming. 

Why I Picked ClickUp

I selected ClickUp because its AI feature provides central assistance to manage several aspects of your workflow without navigating from your current tasks, increasing efficiency.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

AI integrates seamlessly with existing project management features
Extensive feature set can overwhelm new users 

Highly relevant and effective AI tool for project management workflows
Add-on costs $7 per user, per month

AI assistance for various tasks
Free AI limited to 25 uses

Pricing

Free: First 25 uses, per Workspace

Paid Add-on: After reaching the free usage limit, ClickUp AI costs an additional $7 per user, per month on top of ClickUp’s paid plans, which start at $7 per user, per month

Features

Conversational AI

Recommended questions

Page summarization

Role-based AI

Stable Diffusion

Best for Creative Image Generation

Overall Rating: 4/5

Effectiveness: ✔

User Experience: ✔

Performance: ✘

Accessibility: ✔

Renewable Free Access: ✔

Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion is a powerful text-to-image AI model for generating images in a wide variety of styles. Based on a simple text prompt, it can create anything from photorealistic landscapes to abstract art, making it suitable for creative image generation. You can add images to your prompts to influence the output’s composition and style.

One of Stable Diffusion’s key strengths is generating highly detailed characters depicting a strong sense of mood. The model also supports inpainting and outpainting, allowing for modifications of existing images and adding to its versatility. Stable Diffusion is an open source tool on GitHub, with a Community License for free use. It is also accessible via DreamStudio and Hugging Face.

Stable Diffusion has evolved significantly since its launch, with a recent update introducing Stable Diffusion 3. This new model upgrades performance in multi-subject prompts, image quality, and spelling abilities.

Visit Stable Diffusion

Interface Design

Stable Diffusion can be accessed and downloaded from GitHub, though setting it up may be complex for those without technical expertise. However, the AI tool is also available through online platforms like DreamStudio and Hugging Face, offering the same model in a more accessible format. DreamStudio, in particular, has a straightforward interface with options to select styles, adjust image orientation, and choose the number of output variations. You can also add image and negative prompts, making it much easier for beginners to customize the images.

Why I Picked Stable Diffusion

I recommend Stable Diffusion because of its remarkable capabilities in generating high-quality, intricate images. Its community license and open source nature also democratize access to advanced AI technology so individuals and small businesses can experiment and innovate without financial barriers.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

High-quality, detailed images from text prompts
Slow image generation process

Multi-platform availability
Open source nature requires some technical knowledge to get started

Supports a diverse array of styles and themes
Free version only for research, non-commercial, and small commercial organizations

Pricing

Community License: Free for researchers, non-commercial organizations, and businesses with annual revenues under $1 million

Enterprise License: Custom pricing

Features

Advanced text-to-image generation capabilities

High degree of customization for creative expression

Inpainting and outpainting for modifying existing images

Open source model encourages community development and innovation

How I Evaluated the Best Free AI Apps

I assessed each free AI app individually based on five key criteria: relevance and effectiveness, user experience, performance, accessibility, and renewable free access. I assigned a binary yes or no for each criterion and gave each “yes” a point before adding the total for each tool, with a maximum score of five.

Relevance and Effectiveness: I evaluated each AI app to determine how effectively it fulfills its intended purpose.

User Experience: I measured the free AI tool’s user-friendliness, taking ease of navigation and intuitive design into consideration

Performance: I gauged the tool’s efficiency, speed, and accuracy in performing its designated task.

Accessibility: I checked if the tool’s free version is available across different platforms and devices.

Renewable Free Access: I determined if the tool’s free version has usage limits and if these limits reset periodically, allowing for continued free access without requiring payment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the Best Free AI App?
There isn’t a best free AI app since the choice depends on your specific needs, but this guide highlights top options for diverse use cases. For even more free options, look for AI trends, as new tools are frequently introduced as technology advances and more companies enter the market.

Is There a Totally Free AI App?
There are many free AI applications. All the AI apps in this guide are completely free.

What is the Best Free AI Chatbot App?
Our research shows that ChatGPT by OpenAI is the best free AI chatbot app. It has advanced language capabilities, and is versatile, free, and easy to use.

Bottom Line: Explore the Best Free AI Apps

Exploring the best free AI apps on our list is a smart move if you want to gain firsthand experience and see how AI apps can enhance your daily tasks. With countless AI tools being launched daily, it’s worth trying what’s out there to find the ones that can benefit you or your business. Free AI tools can be surprisingly effective, providing valuable solutions without financial commitment.

This guide was designed to help you find the top free AI apps for various use cases, whether you’re interested in writing, graphic design, or project management. However, while these options are a great resource, it’s important to be mindful of their limitations and set realistic expectations.

Find the top AI industry leaders in our guide to the 150 top AI companies.
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