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Research tools

Research AI tools that are useful for real work

Research tools help you gather facts, check sources, summarize long pages, and prepare a first draft before you make a decision.

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7 tools in this category

Each card links to an individual guide and the official source page.

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Anthropic

Claude

Free plan

A conversational AI assistant often used for long documents, careful writing, coding help, and structured reasoning.

Working through long documents and messy notes
Drafting clear internal documents

Perplexity

Perplexity

Free plan

An answer engine for researching topics with visible source links and fast follow-up questions.

Getting a source-backed starting point
Comparing several pages quickly

DeepSeek

DeepSeek

Free plan

A low-cost AI assistant and open-weight model family from a Chinese AI lab, used for chat, coding help, and research at a fraction of the price of larger providers.

Getting strong reasoning and coding help without paying premium API rates
Running an open-weight model yourself when you need control over your data

xAI

Grok

Free plan

xAI's AI assistant, built into X and available on its own web and mobile apps, with live web and X search, voice, and image generation.

Fast answers that pull in current web and X posts
Working inside X without switching to another app

Google

NotebookLM

Free plan

Google's research assistant that answers questions and builds summaries, audio overviews, and study material grounded in the sources you upload.

Turning your own documents, PDFs, and notes into answers with citations
Making an audio or video overview to review material without reading all of it