Free alternatives: what to use instead of popular paid AI tools
A series that looks at the free options before you pay for a popular AI tool: ChatGPT Plus, Midjourney, ElevenLabs and what comes next.
Most AI tools are sold as monthly subscriptions, and stack a few of them and the bill grows fast. But not every job needs a paid plan. In this series we take popular paid tools one at a time and show how to get the same job done for free.
Every article asks the same questions: How much does the tool's own free plan cover? Which free alternative is good enough for which job? What's the hidden cost of free (limits, privacy, commercial licence)? And when is paying actually worth it? Free-plan details come from the vendors' official pages; we don't print numbers we can't verify.
Articles in the series
Free alternatives to ChatGPT Plus
How much free ChatGPT really does, where the free plans of Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Grok stand out, who running open models on your own computer suits, and when Plus is worth the money.
Is Midjourney free? The best free alternatives
Midjourney has no free plan. Leonardo's daily tokens, Ideogram for images with text, chat assistants' image generation and ComfyUI for unlimited local output; plus what to watch on commercial rights and public-by-default images.
Free alternatives to ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs' own free plan, system voices, CapCut, the local engine Piper, Kokoro and Murf's trial. Which one is enough for personal use, and which for publishing.
Coming next
The series continues with Grammarly, Canva Pro, Jasper, Perplexity Pro, Descript and HeyGen. If there's a tool you'd like covered, write to us.
General rules for picking a free tool
Check the tool's own free plan first. Very often the best free alternative is the free tier of the tool you were about to pay for.
Commercial use is a separate question. A monetised channel or client work counts as commercial use, which most free plans don't allow.
Don't forget privacy. Don't paste sensitive data into free cloud tools, and check the data-use settings.
Time has a price too. If hitting limits and switching tools costs you a few hours a month, a paid plan may be cheaper.
To compare paid plans, see our AI pricing page; to find the right tool for your needs, try our tool picker quiz. A broader list of free image tools is in this guide, and free vs paid writing tools are compared here.
That's it for this one. More articles