The research desk

Guides, opinionated reviews, and original data on the AI tools worth your time — from the team that curates the directory.

Aug 24, 2026 Copywriting

AI Tools for Marketing in 2026: What's Free vs What's Worth Paying For

Half the AI marketing category is free to start — the paywall is the quota, not the feature. We priced the whole field at live checkouts: three honest stacks from $0 to $95/mo. Aug 19, 2026 Sales

AI Tools for B2B Prospecting in 2026: What's Worth Paying For (Prices Verified)

The AI prospecting category is flooded with GPT wrappers. We went through our directory, verified prices at checkout, and kept the tools that do one job well — from a $9 stack to a full SDR setup. Aug 19, 2026 Productivity

Notion AI Pricing in 2026: It's Bundled Now — Here's What It Really Costs

Notion AI isn't a $10 add-on anymore — it's bundled into Business, and the pricing page shows yearly rates by default. We verified every plan at monthly billing and decoded the new credit pricing. Aug 10, 2026 Research

Is PimEyes Free? What the Free Search Shows — and the Real Alternatives

PimEyes lets anyone run a face search for free — but the results you actually need sit behind a paywall. We checked every plan at the live checkout and lined up the real alternatives. Aug 10, 2026 Text To Speech

ElevenLabs Pricing, Verified: What Every Plan Actually Costs in 2026

Six plans, a credits system, and a headline price that only lasts a month. We verified every ElevenLabs tier at the live checkout — here's the honest math, per minute of audio. Jul 28, 2026 Human Resources

AI Tools for HR in 2026: What Actually Works — and What’s Actually Free

Half of “HR AI” is actually job-seeker AI, and the real tools split into $10 candidate apps and call-us enterprise suites. A vendor-neutral map of what serves HR teams — with hand-verified pricing. Jul 7, 2026

The Annual-Billing Illusion: How AI Tools Advertise One Price and Charge Another

That $12/month AI tool? It's $30 if you actually pay monthly. We re-verified pricing across our directory and found the annual-rate-as-monthly-price trick everywhere — receipts included. Jul 2, 2026

The Real Cost of an AI Content Stack (2026): Every Layer, Priced

We priced the full AI toolkit creators use to turn one recording into a week of content — record, edit, transcribe, repurpose, voice, distribute. Start free; a serious stack runs about $60–100/month. Jul 1, 2026

The Real Price of AI: What 150 Tools Actually Cost

We re-verified the live pricing of 150 AI tools in July 2026. The median starts at $15/month — but two-thirds offer a way in for free, and the truly expensive tools are rarer than the hype suggests. Jul 1, 2026

The .ai Gold Rush: How 1,559 AI Tools Name Themselves

Nearly a third of AI tools now live on a .ai domain and a quarter put “AI” in the name. But the biggest group does neither — what 1,559 tools reveal about AI branding. Jul 1, 2026 Productivity

The Most Crowded Corners of AI: Where 1,562 Tools Actually Cluster

We mapped every tool in the toolhunter.ai directory across 54 categories. Ten soak up 42% of them — while dating, fitness, and fashion sit nearly empty. The saturation map.