AI Tool Directory: Best AI Tools by Category (Free First)

This AI tool directory is my hand-picked list of AI tools sorted by the job you need doing, from making videos and images to writing, transcribing, building chatbots and getting found in search. It's for business owners, creators and students who want the right tool fast, and for AI tool makers who want their tool in front of a busy, practical audience.

Built an AI tool yourself and looking for places to list it? You want my separate list of AI tool directories to submit your tool to. This page is for people choosing a tool.

I've been in online marketing since the dial-up days, and I've watched a lot of shiny tools come and go. So here's how I pick what goes in. I lean on my own detailed guides to each category, I put free tiers first because most of you want to try before you commit, and I only list tools I'd be happy to recommend to a friend.

AI video generators

AI video generators turn a prompt, a script or a still image into moving footage. They're brilliant for social clips, ads and explainers when you don't have a camera crew or the time to film.

Runway: text to video and image to video with lots of creative control
Kling: realistic motion from short prompts
Luma Dream Machine: quick cinematic clips from text or images
Google Veo: high quality video generation inside Google's tools
Pika: playful short clips and effects for social
InVideo: turning a script into a finished video with stock and voiceover

My guides to AI video:

AI video editing, clips and thumbnails

Once you've got footage, AI editors cut the boring bits, add captions, reframe for vertical and pull out the best moments. This is where most small businesses save the most time.

CapCut: fast mobile and desktop editing with auto captions
Descript: editing video by editing the transcript
DaVinci Resolve: pro level editing with a free version
Opus Clip: turning long videos into short vertical clips
Clipchamp: simple browser editing, built into Windows
Canva: quick video edits, templates and thumbnails in one place

My guides to editing and repurposing video:

AI image generators

AI image generators create pictures from a text description. They're great for blog images, social posts, mood boards and fun personal projects, as long as you check the licence before using images commercially.

Midjourney: striking, artistic images with a strong style
ChatGPT image generation: easy images from plain English, with edits by chat
Adobe Firefly: images built with commercial use in mind
Leonardo AI: lots of styles and models, has a free tier
Ideogram: images with readable text inside them
Microsoft Designer: quick images and social graphics, has a free tier

My guides to AI images, from the practical to the fun:

AI photo editing, upscaling and restoration

AI photo editors fix lighting, remove unwanted objects, sharpen blurry shots and even bring old family photos back to life. Many of the best ones run on your phone.

Adobe Photoshop Generative Fill: adding or removing objects with a prompt
Snapseed: free mobile editing with smart fixes
Picsart: mobile editing with lots of AI effects
Google Photos Magic Eraser: removing distractions from photos
Upscayl: open source image upscaling on your computer
Let's Enhance: upscaling photos for print and web

My guides to editing and improving photos:

Background removal

Background removers cut a person or product out of a photo in seconds. They're a must for product shots, profile pictures and thumbnails.

remove.bg: one click background removal, has a free tier
Canva Background Remover: removing backgrounds inside your designs
Adobe Express: quick cut outs with templates to drop them into
Photoroom: product photos for online shops
Clipdrop: cut outs plus a set of handy image tools

My guide to removing backgrounds:

Where to remove an image background for free, and when free falls short

AI voice, voiceovers and text to speech

AI voice tools turn written text into natural sounding speech. They're handy for video voiceovers, audio versions of blog posts, training videos and accessibility.

ElevenLabs: very natural voices and voice cloning, has a free tier
Murf: studio style voiceovers for business videos
Speechify: listening to documents and articles out loud
Play.ht: lots of voices and languages

My guides to AI voice:

AI music and audio

AI music tools write full songs or background tracks from a prompt, while audio tools clean up recordings and split vocals from music. Always check the licence before using a track in a commercial video.

Suno: full songs with vocals from a text prompt, has a free tier
Udio: song generation with a lot of style control
Soundraw: background music you can shape to your video
Adobe Podcast Enhance: making rough recordings sound clean
Moises: separating vocals and instruments
LALAL.AI: removing vocals from songs

My guides to AI music and audio:

Transcription, subtitles, translation and meeting notes

These tools turn speech into text, add captions to your videos and translate them into other languages. They're also behind the AI note takers that sit in your meetings so you don't have to.

Otter.ai: live transcription and meeting notes, has a free tier
Whisper: OpenAI's open source speech to text model
Fireflies: recording and summarising meetings
Rev: transcription and captions
HeyGen video translation: translating and lip syncing videos
Rask: dubbing videos into other languages

My guides to transcription, captions and translation:

AI writing and AI chat

AI chat tools are the Swiss Army knife of the lot. They draft, summarise, brainstorm, answer questions and help you study. The trick is giving them good context and always editing what comes back.

ChatGPT: all round writing, ideas and research, has a free tier
Claude: long documents and natural sounding writing, has a free tier
Google Gemini: writing and research tied into Google's apps
Microsoft Copilot: chat plus help inside Word, Outlook and Excel
Perplexity: answers with sources you can check
NotebookLM: chatting with your own notes and documents
Grammarly: grammar, tone and clarity checks
QuillBot: paraphrasing and summarising

My guides to AI writing and chat:

AI presentations

AI presentation makers build a full slide deck from a prompt or a document. You still need to shape the story, but they take away the blank slide problem.

Gamma: decks, documents and simple web pages from a prompt, has a free tier
Canva Magic Design: designed slides from a short brief
Beautiful.ai: slides that keep their layout tidy as you edit
Microsoft PowerPoint with Copilot: drafting slides inside PowerPoint
Google Slides with Gemini: help with slides inside Google Workspace
Pitch: collaborative decks for teams

My guides to AI presentations:

Logos, flyers and design

AI design tools help you make logos, flyers, posters and carousels without a designer on call. They're perfect for getting a small business looking polished quickly.

Canva: templates and AI design tools for almost anything, has a free tier
Looka: AI logo and brand kit ideas
Adobe Express: quick social graphics and flyers
Kittl: logos, labels and print designs
Brandmark: logo concepts from your business name
Microsoft Designer: social posts and invitations from a prompt

My guides to AI design:

AI avatars and headshots

AI avatar tools create a talking presenter for your videos, and AI headshot tools turn a few selfies into professional looking profile photos. Both are worth testing carefully, because quality varies a lot.

HeyGen: talking avatar videos and video translation
Synthesia: presenter style training and explainer videos
D-ID: turning a photo into a talking head
Aragon AI: professional headshots from selfies
Canva: simple avatar style graphics

My guides to avatars and headshots:

AI chatbots and AI agents

Chatbot builders let you put an assistant on your website that answers questions from your own content. AI agent tools go a step further and carry out tasks for you, often without any coding.

Custom GPTs in ChatGPT: your own assistant trained on your instructions and files
Chatbase: website chatbots built from your content
Tidio: live chat plus an AI assistant for small shops
Botpress: more advanced chatbot building
Voiceflow: designing chat and voice assistants
Zapier: connecting apps and adding AI steps to workflows
n8n: open source automation and agents

My guides to chatbots and agents:

AI website builders

AI website builders draft a site from a few questions about your business. They're a fast way to get online, then you refine the words and pictures to sound like you.

Wix: AI site builder with a free plan
Framer: design-led sites with AI page generation
Hostinger Website Builder: quick AI built sites for small businesses
Durable: a one page business site in minutes
Squarespace: polished templates with AI help
WordPress: the most flexible option, with AI plugins

My guides to building a website with AI:

AI for small business: the all-rounders

If you run a small business and just want the handful of AI tools that will save you hours every week, start here. These are the generalists I come back to again and again.

ChatGPT: emails, content, planning and customer replies
Canva: all your marketing visuals in one place
Google Gemini in Workspace: help inside Gmail, Docs and Sheets
Notion AI: notes, plans and documents in one workspace
Zapier: automating the repetitive admin
Otter.ai: never taking meeting notes by hand again

My guides to free AI for small business:

AI SEO, content checks and AI visibility

AI SEO tools help you find what people search for, plan content and check how you show up in AI answers as well as Google. Content checkers help you make sure your writing reads like a human wrote it.

Google Search Console: seeing the searches that bring people to your site
Bing Webmaster Tools: search data from Bing, which also feeds Copilot
Semrush: keyword research and competitor insights
Ahrefs: backlink and keyword data
Surfer: optimising content against top ranking pages
Frase: content briefs from what already ranks

My guides to checking and humanising AI content:

AI resume and career tools

AI resume builders help you write and format a CV that gets past applicant tracking systems and in front of a real person.

Rezi: ATS focused resume writing
Teal: tracking applications and tailoring your resume
Kickresume: resume and cover letter templates with AI writing
Resume Worded: scoring and improving your resume
Canva: designed resume templates

My guides to AI resumes:

Learning AI and coding with AI

The best AI tool in the world is useless if you don't know how to use it. These are the places I point people to when they want to build real AI skills, including coding with an AI helper.

Google AI Essentials: a beginner friendly course from Google
Coursera: AI courses from universities and companies
freeCodeCamp: free coding lessons and projects
GitHub Copilot: an AI pair programmer inside your editor
Replit: coding in the browser with an AI assistant
Cursor: a code editor built around AI

My guides to learning AI:

Want your AI tool reviewed or featured?

If you've built an AI tool and you'd like it in front of my readers, I'd love to hear from you. I review tools for my roundups and guides, and I'm always looking for new ones that solve a real problem for business owners, creators and students.

Here's what makes a tool a good fit:

It does one job really well and it's clear who it's for.
There's a free tier or free trial so my readers can test it without a card.
I can get access to test it myself before I write about it.
It fits one of the categories in this directory, or it deserves a new one.

You can get your tool reviewed, featured in one of my roundups or written about in a guest article. Take a look at my write for me page for the details and how to get in touch, and tell me a little about your tool and who it helps.

Other free AI tool directories to submit your tool to

If you're launching an AI tool, getting listed on lots of directories is one of the quickest ways to get early users and links. I've pulled together a list of the best ones, with tips on what each one asks for when you submit.

Use the list of directories I linked at the top of this page, then come back and get in touch about a review here too.

Is your tool listed here? Add the badge

If your AI tool appears in this directory, you're welcome to show it on your own website. Copy the code below and paste it wherever you mention press or reviews.

<a href="https://www.lilachbullock.com/ai-tool-directory/" title="Featured in Lilach Bullock's AI Tool Directory">Featured in Lilach Bullock's AI Tool Directory</a>

It shows your visitors that your tool has been picked for a practical, hand-checked list.

AI tool directory FAQs

What is an AI tool directory?

An AI tool directory is a list of AI tools organised by category or job, so you can find the right tool without trawling through hundreds of launches. A good one is curated, explains what each tool is good for and keeps up with how fast this space changes.

How are the tools in this directory chosen?

I pick tools covered in my detailed guides, I put free tiers first, and I only include tools that do their job well. Nobody can buy a place in the editorial picks, so the list stays useful to you.

How do I get my AI tool listed or reviewed?

Head to my write for me page and tell me about your tool, who it's for and how I can test it. If it's a good fit for my readers, I'll look at reviewing it or featuring it in a relevant roundup.

Are the tools in this AI tool directory free?

Many of them have a free tier or a free version, and I've flagged the well-known ones. Free plans change often, though, so always check what the free version includes today before you rely on it.