The AI Stack Cheat Sheet

One pick per job. If the last column describes you, check our full rankings for the alternative. Prices change fast, so always confirm on the official pricing page.

Job	Our pick	Free tier	Skip it if…
AI coding editors/IDEs	Cursor A	Free $0 (limited agent/chat)	you want the cheapest paid entry or work in JetBrains/Xcode/Neovim: then GitHub Copilot Pro ($10/mo) is the better buy.
Coding agents (CLI/cloud)	Claude Code S	None (not in Claude Free)	you need open source or bring-your-own-model (OpenCode), or you already pay for ChatGPT and want to try its bundled Codex first.
App builders (prompt-to-app)	Lovable A	Free: 5 build credits/day (up to 30/mo) + 20 Cloud credits/mo	you build in Next.js/React and deploy on Vercel: then v0 fits your stack better.
AI model APIs	Anthropic Claude API S	None shown	you need a real free tier or heavy multimodal/long video (Gemini API), or you're adding voice (ElevenLabs).
Code review & testing	CodeRabbit A	Free forever for public repos	your team already pays for GitHub Copilot Pro: its built-in code review costs nothing extra, so try that first.
Design-to-code / UI generation	v0 by Vercel A	Free: 7 messages/day	you already pay for Claude: Claude Design is included in every Claude plan.
Docs & research for devs	Gemini Deep Research + Notebook A	Free: Deep Research, Notebook	you already pay for ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro: use the research mode you already have instead of adding another subscription.
Dev productivity	Granola A	Basic $0 (30-day history)	you only need an everyday assistant: ChatGPT scores higher as an all-rounder, and you probably already have one.

Tiers: S ≥ 8.8 · A ≥ 8.0 · B ≥ 7.0. Scores are editorial judgments from public benchmarks, reviews, and official pricing pages, not hands-on lab tests. How we rank · How we make money.

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