11 Best AI Tools in 2026

Wispr Flow is an AI dictation tool that works anywhere you can type. Speaking a paragraph is faster than writing a paragraph. Which sounds obvious, but most dictation tools have been so annoying and unreliable that I never actually changed how I worked because of them. Wispr Flow was the first one where I thought, "Oh, okay, this is actually faster."

I use it everywhere now. Slack, Instagram, review drafts, and random thoughts I need to get out fast. I hit my keyboard shortcut, talk, and it gives me clean text, so I can keep moving instead of stopping to fix every other sentence. That's the whole reason it stuck.

That reliability is the whole point. I tried other tools for years, and the pattern was always the same: I'd start dictating, it would miss half of what I said, and I'd end up repeating myself until I gave up. If a dictation tool makes you repeat yourself all day, you are not going to use it. The only way they're going to succeed is if it works flawlessly, and with Wispr Flow, it works pretty damn close to flawlessly on every device.

One detail I found interesting is that Wispr Flow's original vision was apparently even bigger. They were trying to build toward a wearable that could turn your thoughts into text through muscle movement, but the tech is not there yet. So this is the step before that: you speak, it writes. Once you get used to it, it makes a huge difference in your day-to-day.

I think in the near future we will all be talking to our devices more than typing.

Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic, designed for professionals and operators who need more than a generic AI response. It tends to follow complex instructions more completely, sounds less generic, and holds onto more context when you give it a lot to work with. There's also Claude Code for developers and Claude Cowork, a desktop agent that works with files on your machine.

I'll be honest, I resisted trying Claude for a while. I'd been using ChatGPT for two years and it knows me and my writing style incredibly well. Every time I tried Claude before really committing to it, I was disappointed because it just lacked that context, and I'd walk away thinking "I don't get what everyone's talking about!" But the hype kept coming from people I respected, so I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing something.

What changed it for me was exporting all of my writing instructions from ChatGPT and loading them into Claude as a skill. After that, the experience improved dramatically. Claude started asking better questions and the writing output got a lot closer to what I actually wanted. Now I find myself reaching for Claude specifically when I'm doing deeper writing work. It pauses to ask clarifying questions more than ChatGPT does, and it genuinely seems to honor the context I've given it rather than just acknowledging it and moving on.

Is that because Claude is naturally more thoughtful, or because my prompt told it to ask more questions? Honestly, hard to say. Without the skill loaded in, my earlier experience was nowhere near as impressive as the internet made it sound. So if you're going to try Claude and you already have a strong writing brief (or any other brief) somewhere, move it over before you form an opinion.

Where it still falls short is the surrounding product experience, the Chrome extension, the cross-device memory in Cowork. Those feel like areas where ChatGPT has just gone a lot deeper on the day-to-day user experience, and you notice the gap when you hit them. For now I'm keeping both, especially because I use ChatGPT Atlas for browser work.

• Free: Limited access, good for testing the product before committing.
• Pro: $20/month. This is the tier most founders and operators will want. Gives you access to the full model and the features that actually matter for daily work.
• Max: $100/month. Higher usage limits and more capacity for longer, more intensive sessions. Worth considering if you're hitting limits regularly.
• Team: $30/month per user (minimum 5 users). Adds collaboration features and admin controls for teams.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Expanded security, compliance, and deployment options for larger organizations.

Kick is a new AI-powered bookkeeping and accounting platform that we are super bullish on. We’ve been stuck using QuickBooks Online (QBO) since 2010 because there weren’t many other options, but let’s be real—it’s dreadful to use. When we found Kick, we were stoked. If you’re a new business, we strongly recommend starting with Kick, it’s about 500 times more user-friendly than QBO.

The Stripe, PayPal, and Mercury integrations work seamlessly out of the box, unlike QBO’s nightmare setup. That said, if you need full accrual accounting, heavy inventory tracking, or complex e-commerce features, Kick isn’t quite there yet—but they’re catching up fast.

• Free: $0/mo. Best for businesses just starting out or evaluating the product (up to $25k in annual expenses). This is a genuinely useful free tier, not just a trial.
• Basic: $35/mo ($420/yr). Best for small businesses that want more customization and automation beyond the basics.
• Plus: $125/mo (billed quarterly). Best for growing businesses that need deeper financial reporting and more control.
• Custom: Starts at $200/mo. Best for larger or more complex businesses that need dedicated support, tax services, and advanced accounting.

You can manage multiple businesses within Kick, so keep that in mind too (as you'd normally need to pay for separate subscriptions per business).

Supercut is a video messaging tool built for teams that want to communicate through screen recordings instead of constantly jumping into meetings. It's insanely easy to use; you just hit record, walk someone through your screen, and send it off.

The functionality and simplicity don't stop at recording either; For every video you record, you get transcripts, an AI assistant that can pull insights or generate summaries, and a clean viewing experience that makes people want to watch.

It's great for SMBs that move fast and rely on clear communication (especially remote or async teams). Product and engineering teams can show bugs instead of writing them, and sales or support teams can walk through things without over-scheduling calls.

We originally found Supercut after asking for Loom alternatives on X, but none of the suggestions did anything to make my workflow easier. Loom was getting more and more bloated, and just as I was making peace with the fact I wasn't gonna find anything, I scrolled past and an X post about Supercut's launch.

After my first use of Supercut, I absolutely loved it! It's now part of our daily workflow team communication or bug reports. It's replaced a lot of our internal calls, and I've noticed we miss way less because everything is searchable and really easy to reference.

Compared to tools like Loom or Tella, Supercut feels so much more modern and intentional since it's focused on eliminating friction through user-friendly UI. Plus, other tools don't have AI assistants or keyboard shortcuts that actually make your life easier.

Recording in Supercut for the first time left us somewhere between shock and excitement. Everything was just FAST. The recording panel is clean, nothing gets in your way. You hit record, do your thing, and it's ready to share almost immediately.

Coming from Loom, this was a big shift. Loom started to feel sluggish and unpredictable for us (after Atlassian took over), especially when we were recording back-to-back. It would crash and we'd be re-recording the same thing sometimes 3 times over. We've been using Supercut since 2025 and found it's way more reliable and smooth, and that's exactly what's been missing from the video recording market.

Every video comes with a transcript, and we use it this way more than we expected. You can jump to specific moments or even share exact sentence links. When you're working across teams, like us, that's really helpful. Product can go straight to their section, sales can skip to theirs, and no one has to sit through the whole video just to find one detail.

We've even used transcripts to train custom GPTs and pull content into other workflows. It turns even one-off recordings into something you can reuse and search, all while keeping everyone accountable.

A lot of tools are rushing to add AI right now, but most of it ends up feeling bolted on. This doesn't. Supercut's "ask anything" feature lets you interact with your video almost like it's a document. You can ask things like "what are the action items?" and it'll pull the answer instantly.

I use it a lot when working with contractors, and I'm thinking, "I feel like I mentioned this in my video," so I'll quickly pop over to Supercut and search, "did I mention XYZ in this video?" and the AI assistant will provide me a time stamp and screenshot of the moment I mentioned it. Even more than that, it can go as far as to generate clear summaries, organized bug reports, and even full write-ups, which keeps me from context switching, and saves me tons of time.

Comments live directly on the video timeline, which keeps everything in context. Instead of getting Slack messages like "hey, at 4:12, what did you mean," the feedback is tied exactly to the moment it's about.

It's a small thing, but it changes how people interact with videos. There's even a cute keyboard shortcut ("c") that makes leaving comments speedy.

For client-facing teams, CTAs are insanely simple and useful. You can add a clear next step at the end of any video. It removes that awkward gap where someone watches your video and then… does nothing. It's a simple feature that pushes your viewers to book a call or review something.

The editor is amazing! It feels more like editing text than editing video. You highlight what you don't want, cut it, and move on. You can trim silences, clean things up, adjust layouts, and make quick improvements without having to re-record (which takes so much time).

It's not built for heavy production work, so don't expect to rearrange full sections or build complex edits like you would in something like Tella. But for day-to-day communication, it's perfect.

• Free 14-day Trial: Best for individuals testing async workflows. No credit card required.
• Pro: $15 monthly ($18/mo if paid annually). Best for professionals and teams who want full access to collaboration, branding, and AI features.
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing. Best for companies needing cross-departmental communication, advanced controls, and more security.

Don't forget to grab your Supercut Discount before creating an account.

Motion is a calendar-first, AI-powered project management system that brings your tasks, meetings, documentation, and team workload into one tool.

Previous to using Motion, we used Asana for seven years. It kept us organized enough, but I was spending at least an hour or two every week just "cleaning up" the tool so it wouldn't fall apart. Deadlines would shift, priorities would change, and suddenly half the board was out of date. That's why we switched to Motion five years ago and haven't looked back.

The core thing Motion does differently is it actually schedules your tasks onto your calendar automatically, based on deadlines, priorities, and availability.

And when plans change, which they always do, it updates everything for you. What really got me early on was the deadline visibility. If our team has 5 hours of meetings in a day and 8 hours of work scheduled, Motion flags that we're at risk before it becomes a problem.

We use it to manage our entire YouTube production process, from scripting and filming to editing, reviewing, and distributing.

Recently, Motion has become more of an all-in-one tool. On top of being a calendar and project management tool, you can also store all of your notes and documentation in the app via their AI Docs and meeting recorder. This is especially helpful as you can tie meeting notes to projects, and when asking the Motion AI Assistant it has full context on projects, discussions, and notes.

And they didn't just tack on these features either... their meeting recorder is one of the best we've used (for instance, it creates tasks automatically at the end of each call, allowing you to assign it to team members directly).

So if you want a project management tool that will help your team just focus on getting work done (instead of babysitting your project management tool), give it a shot.

• Pro AI: $19/seat/mo (billed annually). Best for professionals and small teams who want AI-powered project management, scheduling, and task planning.
• Business AI: $29/seat/mo (billed annually). Best for teams that need advanced reporting, capacity planning, time tracking, permissions, and centralized billing.
• AI Credits: Included with each plan. Pro AI includes 7,500 credits/seat/month and Business AI includes 15,000 credits/seat/month.