10 AI Subscriptions Our Editors Refuse to Cancel (2025 Edition)
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Every tech site has a "best AI tools" list. Almost none of them tell you whether the writers would spend their own money on the picks. So we did something a little uncomfortable: we audited our own credit card statements, pooled our subscriptions, and compared notes over a long Slack thread.
The ground rules were simple. Every tool below is one that at least one editor pays for personally or bills to our company card. Each entry includes what it costs, what it replaced, and — more importantly — where it falls apart. If a tool couldn't survive that scrutiny, it didn't make the cut.
1. ChatGPT Plus — $20/month
The default answer, and for good reason. Our managing editor uses it daily for everything from outlining product comparisons to rewriting clunky paragraphs.
What it replaced: A chunk of her Grammarly bill and half her Google searches.
Where it fails: Long documents. Feed it a 40-page PDF and it gets lazy around page 20. It also has a gift for sounding confident when it's flat-out wrong.
2. Claude Pro — $20/month
Our senior writer's pick, and the one tool where editors argued the most. She finds Claude better at long-form editing — it holds context across a 3,000-word draft without losing the thread, and its feedback reads like an actual editor instead of a cheerleader.
What it replaced: Her freelance copyeditor for first-pass structural notes.
Where it fails: It's overly cautious. Ask it to write something with a little edge and you'll get a lecture disguised as a refusal.
3. Otter.ai Pro — $16.99/month
Meeting transcription is a solved problem in 2025, but Otter is the tool our video producer keeps paying for. It joins Zoom calls automatically and produces searchable transcripts with speaker labels that are accurate about 90% of the time.
What it replaced: Two hours a week of manually scrubbing meeting recordings.
Where it fails: Anyone with a strong accent or a bad headset mic. It mangles names constantly — ours included.
4. Notion AI — $10/month
Our operations lead runs the entire editorial calendar in Notion, and the AI add-on earns its keep by summarizing comment threads and drafting project briefs from messy notes.
What it replaced: A workflow of copying notes into ChatGPT and pasting results back.
Where it fails: It's not a standalone assistant. Outside of Notion, it doesn't exist — and the per-seat pricing adds up fast on a small team.
5. Midjourney — $10/month
The only creative tool on the list. Our designer pays for the basic tier to mock up blog headers and social graphics in minutes.
What it replaced: A stock photo budget that ran about $30 a month.
Where it fails: Text. Any image with words in it needs a manual fix in Canva. Hands are still a coin flip, too.
6. Perplexity Pro — $20/month
Our research editor's pick. Perplexity cites its sources inline, which cuts fact-checking time dramatically. For a site whose entire business is being right, that matters.
What it replaced: Half her Google Scholar rabbit holes.
Where it fails: Niche technical topics where the source pool is thin. It'll cite a 2019 blog post and treat it like gospel.
7. Zapier with AI — from $19.99/month
Not flashy, but our automation lead swears by it. AI-generated Zap steps mean he can build integrations by describing them in plain English instead of reverse-engineering dropdown menus.
What it replaced: A contractor he paid $400 to build the same automations.
Where it fails: Complex multi-step workflows. The AI gets the first two steps right and then hallucinates an API that doesn't exist.
8. Grammarly Premium — $12/month
Yes, it's still around, and yes, it's still worth it — at least for our social media manager, who writes 30 posts a day across platforms.
What it replaced: Nothing, technically. It's a layer on top of everything else.
Where it fails: Its suggestions trend toward bland. Accept every one and your writing starts sounding like a corporate HR memo.
9. ElevenLabs Starter — $5/month
Our podcast editor uses ElevenLabs to clean up rough voiceover takes and generate scratch audio for video drafts.
What it replaced: Rescheduling voice artists for every minor script change.
Where it fails: Emotional delivery. Anything that needs genuine warmth or humor still requires a human.
10. Gemini Advanced — $19.99/month
Our data reporter's pick, mostly because it comes bundled with the Google One plan he already paid for — and because its integration with Sheets and Gmail means his research workflow stays in one place.
What it replaced: Exporting data into a separate chatbot to ask questions about it.
Where it fails: Creative writing. It's competent, not clever.
The Bottom Line
Total monthly damage across the team: roughly $150 per person, though nobody pays for all ten. If you're only picking one, ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro remains the highest-utility $20 you'll spend this year. The rest are specialists — worth it only if the specific problem they solve is one you have every week.
We'll re-run this audit in six months. If history is any guide, at least two of these picks won't survive it.
