Updated May 28, 2026
The 3 AI Tools I Still Use (After Testing Over 200)
I've tested 200+ AI tools. Only three earned a permanent seat next to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude: NotebookLM, Notion, and Sider.ai. Here's why.
I talk about AI tools less than I used to, and that’s on purpose. Most of them are shiny baubles that pull me away from where the real work happens: the core models I run every day, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. (Which one to reach for, and when, is its own question. I built a routing guide for that.)
But a handful of tools have earned a permanent seat next to those models. They don’t replace the LLMs. They make the LLMs more useful. I’ve tested well over 200 AI tools, and these three are the ones I still open without thinking about it.
NotebookLM 📒
What it is: Google’s research assistant. You feed it your own documents and it turns them into conversational Q&A, study guides, and surprisingly listenable AI podcasts. Think of it as a model grounded in your material instead of the whole internet.
How I use it: I dump conference talks, research papers, and course materials into it, then generate an “Audio Overview” (an AI-hosted podcast) for the car. Hearing two AI voices walk through a dense topic does something a PDF never does for me. It makes the material stick.
Why test it: If you’re drowning in PDFs, or you need to get a teammate up to speed fast, you get an instant audio summary you can listen to on a commute. It’s free, there’s no waitlist, and the audio quality is a little eerie in how good it is.
Notion ✔️
What it is: My second brain, now fully AI-native. The built-in assistant can write, analyze, and pull across your entire knowledge base, not just the page you happen to have open.
How I use it: This is where everything MarketingAlec lives, plus 200+ SOPs for ScaledOn and roughly a thousand emails, notes, and PDFs. Notion turns that yard sale of scattered information into structured newsletter outlines, course drafts built from rough ideas, and meeting agendas that don’t put people to sleep. It’s quietly become my default work partner. I’m in it close to an hour a day, sometimes more.
Why test it: If you juggle a lot of projects and want AI that actually knows your context (not isolated, one-off prompts), Notion is the glue between a lot of randomness. The AI features sit on a paid tier, so the upgrade only pays off if you’ve got a real library of notes and pages to work against. Want a cheaper route? You can connect ChatGPT to Notion through the desktop app instead. I run both.
Sider.ai 🔑
What it is: A browser sidebar that drops most of the major AIs onto every webpage you visit. No copy-pasting, no tab-switching. Select text, get an answer right there.
How I use it: This is how I kick the tires on new models. Want to try a fresh release without paying for the full Gemini tier first? Sider lets you poke at it from the sidebar. I also lean on it to summarize YouTube videos, PDFs, and long web pages, and to run new ChatGPT releases against different content types before I commit to anything.
Why test it: If your day involves researching online (marketing, anyone?), Sider kills the friction between finding an insight and acting on it. There’s a free tier to start, and you can plug in your own API keys if you’d rather route through your own accounts. 🙌
A 30-minute challenge 💥
Pick one tool above and give it 30 focused minutes this week. That’s enough to know whether it fits the way you actually work.
The tool landscape is loud, and most of it overpromises and serves up a nothing burger. These three are the exceptions. They save me hours every week, which is the only test I really care about.
And the graveyard is real. I’ve tested more than 200 AI tools, and I’ve buried plenty of them after wasting more time than I’d like to admit. These three survived that pile. That’s the highest praise I can give a tool.
If you want the rest of the map, start with how I route work across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, then come back here for the tools that bolt onto them.
Three keepers out of 200. Want the next ones?
Most weeks I test a pile of new tools and keep almost none of them. The few that survive (and the ones I bury) go out in a free weekly email. If this post saved you one bad signup, the next issue will save you a few more.