AI startups
Independent companies built around AI, from model labs to coding agents and video tools, as opposed to products from big tech.
- ChatGPT OpenAI
OpenAI’s assistant for writing, analysis, coding, image generation, voice conversations and web search.
Free plan + paid API - Claude Anthropic
Anthropic’s assistant for writing, analysis and coding, with projects, artifacts, skills and connectors to your tools.
Free plan + paid API - Grok xAI
xAI’s assistant with live access to posts on X, plus image generation.
Free plan + paid API - Le Chat Mistral AI
Mistral’s European assistant, with web search, document analysis and image generation.
Free plan + paid API - DeepSeek DeepSeek
A free chat assistant on DeepSeek’s open-weight models, known for strong reasoning.
Free Open source API - Claude Code Anthropic
Anthropic’s coding agent: it reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands and opens PRs, in the terminal, IDE, desktop and web.
Paid API - Cursor Anysphere
An AI code editor built on VS Code, with tab completion, chat and agents that change many files at once.
Free plan + paid - OpenAI Codex OpenAI
OpenAI’s coding agent, in ChatGPT, a terminal CLI and IDE extensions, that works on tasks in the cloud or locally.
Paid Open source API - Windsurf Cognition
An AI code editor with an agent, Cascade, that plans and carries out multi-file changes.
Free plan + paid - Devin Cognition
An autonomous software engineer that takes tickets, works in its own cloud environment and opens pull requests.
Paid API - Cline Cline
An open source coding agent for VS Code that works with any model provider and asks before each step.
Free Open source - Replit Replit
A browser IDE whose Agent builds, hosts and deploys full apps from a description.
Free plan + paid - Lovable Lovable
Describe a web app and Lovable builds it, with a database, auth and hosting, editable by chat.
Free plan + paid - Bolt.new StackBlitz
Prompt, run, edit and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser.
Free plan + paid - v0 Vercel
Vercel’s app builder that turns prompts and screenshots into React and Next.js apps.
Free plan + paid API - Tabnine Tabnine
Code completion and chat for companies that need private or on-premises deployment.
Paid - Perplexity Perplexity AI
An answer engine that searches the web and replies with cited sources, plus its Comet browser.
Free plan + paid API - You.com You.com
AI search and research agents for teams, with a web search API for developers.
Free plan + paid API - Exa Exa
A search engine API built for AI: finds pages by meaning and returns their contents.
Pay per use API - Midjourney Midjourney
An image generator known for its artistic, polished style, with editing and short video.
Paid - FLUX Black Forest Labs
Image models with open-weight versions, strong at prompt following and image editing.
Pay per use Open source API - Stable Diffusion Stability AI
Open-weight image models you can run yourself, with a large community of fine-tunes.
Free Open source API - Ideogram Ideogram
An image generator that renders legible text well, for posters, logos and graphics.
Free plan + paid API - Recraft Recraft
AI image generation for designers, including vector graphics, icons and brand styles.
Free plan + paid API - Krea Krea
Real-time image generation, upscaling and video, with many third-party models in one place.
Free plan + paid - Runway Runway
Video generation and editing models for filmmakers, from text, images or existing footage.
Free plan + paid API - Sora OpenAI
OpenAI’s video model and app, generating clips with sound from text and images.
Free plan + paid API - Luma Dream Machine Luma AI
Video and image generation with Luma’s Ray models, editable by chatting.
Free plan + paid API - Synthesia Synthesia
Presenter videos with AI avatars and voices, for training and corporate communication.
Free plan + paid API - HeyGen HeyGen
AI avatar videos and video translation with lip sync, for marketing and sales.
Free plan + paid API - ElevenLabs ElevenLabs
Lifelike text to speech, voice cloning, dubbing and voice agents, with a developer API.
Free plan + paid API - Suno Suno
Make complete songs, vocals included, from a text prompt or your own lyrics.
Free plan + paid - Descript Descript
Edit podcasts and videos by editing their transcript, with AI voice, clean-up and clips.
Free plan + paid - Otter.ai Otter.ai
Joins your meetings to transcribe them, write summaries and answer questions about them.
Free plan + paid - Notion AI Notion
AI in Notion that writes, searches your workspace and connected apps, and records meetings.
Paid - Grammarly Superhuman (formerly Grammarly)
Grammar, tone and rewriting suggestions wherever you type, in the browser and desktop apps.
Free plan + paid - DeepL DeepL
AI translation and a writing assistant, DeepL Write, with an API for developers.
Free plan + paid API - Jasper Jasper
AI content for marketing teams, in their brand voice, from campaigns to blog posts.
Paid API - Gamma Gamma
Generates presentations, documents and simple websites from a prompt or notes.
Free plan + paid API - Fireflies.ai Fireflies.ai
A meeting assistant that records, transcribes and summarizes calls on Zoom, Meet and Teams.
Free plan + paid API - n8n n8n
Workflow automation with AI agent steps, self-hostable under a fair-code licence.
Free plan + paid Open source API - Manus Manus
A general AI agent that researches, browses and builds things in its own cloud computer.
Free plan + paid API - LangChain LangChain
Open source frameworks for LLM apps and agents (LangChain, LangGraph) plus LangSmith for tracing.
Free Open source API - CrewAI CrewAI
An open source Python framework for teams of AI agents with roles, plus a hosted platform.
Free plan + paid Open source API - Claude Agent SDK Anthropic
The agent loop behind Claude Code as a TypeScript and Python library, with tools, skills, MCP and subagents.
Pay per use API - OpenAI API OpenAI
GPT models for text, vision, images, audio and realtime voice, plus the Agents SDK.
Pay per use API - Claude API Anthropic
Claude models for developers, with tool use, prompt caching, batches and skills; also on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.
Pay per use API - Mistral AI Mistral AI
European models, open-weight and commercial, with an API and on-premises deployment.
Pay per use Open source API - Cohere Cohere
Models for enterprise search and RAG: Command, Embed and Rerank, deployable privately.
Pay per use API - Hugging Face Hugging Face
The hub for open models and datasets, with Spaces for demos and inference endpoints.
Free plan + paid Open source API - OpenRouter OpenRouter
One API and bill for hundreds of models from every major provider, with fallbacks.
Pay per use API - Together AI Together AI
A cloud for running and fine-tuning open models, plus GPU clusters.
Pay per use API - Replicate Replicate (Cloudflare)
Run thousands of open image, video, audio and language models with one API call.
Pay per use API - Ollama Ollama
Run open models like Llama, Gemma, Qwen and DeepSeek on your own computer.
Free Open source API
At a glance
| Tool | Maker | Pricing | Open source | API | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Free plan + paid | Web, Desktop, Mobile | |||
| Anthropic | Free plan + paid | Web, Desktop, Mobile | |||
| xAI | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| Mistral AI | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| DeepSeek | Free | Web, Mobile, API | |||
| Anthropic | Paid | Terminal, IDE, Desktop, Web | |||
| Anysphere | Free plan + paid | IDE, Desktop, Terminal | |||
| OpenAI | Paid | Terminal, IDE, Web | |||
| Cognition | Free plan + paid | IDE, Desktop | |||
| Cognition | Paid | Web | |||
| Cline | Free | IDE, Terminal | |||
| Replit | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| Lovable | Free plan + paid | Web | |||
| StackBlitz | Free plan + paid | Web | |||
| Vercel | Free plan + paid | Web | |||
| Tabnine | Paid | IDE, Self-hosted | |||
| Perplexity AI | Free plan + paid | Web, Desktop, Mobile, API | |||
| You.com | Free plan + paid | Web, API | |||
| Exa | Pay per use | API | |||
| Tavily | Pay per use | API | |||
| Midjourney | Paid | Web | |||
| Black Forest Labs | Pay per use | API, Self-hosted | |||
| Stability AI | Free | API, Self-hosted | |||
| Ideogram | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile, API | |||
| Recraft | Free plan + paid | Web, API | |||
| Krea | Free plan + paid | Web | |||
| Runway | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile, API | |||
| OpenAI | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| Luma AI | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile, API | |||
| Pika Labs | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| Synthesia | Free plan + paid | Web, API | |||
| HeyGen | Free plan + paid | Web, API | |||
| ElevenLabs | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile, API | |||
| Suno | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| Udio | Free plan + paid | Web | |||
| Descript | Free plan + paid | Web, Desktop | |||
| Otter.ai | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| Notion | Paid | Web, Desktop, Mobile | |||
| Superhuman (formerly Grammarly) | Free plan + paid | Web, Desktop, Mobile | |||
| DeepL | Free plan + paid | Web, Desktop, Mobile, API | |||
| Jasper | Paid | Web | |||
| Gamma | Free plan + paid | Web | |||
| Fireflies.ai | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile, API | |||
| n8n | Free plan + paid | Web, Self-hosted | |||
| Manus | Free plan + paid | Web, Mobile | |||
| LangChain | Free | API, Self-hosted | |||
| CrewAI | Free plan + paid | API, Self-hosted | |||
| Anthropic | Pay per use | API | |||
| OpenAI | Pay per use | API | |||
| Anthropic | Pay per use | API | |||
| Mistral AI | Pay per use | API, Self-hosted | |||
| Cohere | Pay per use | API, Self-hosted | |||
| Hugging Face | Free plan + paid | Web, API | |||
| OpenRouter | Pay per use | API | |||
| Groq | Pay per use | API | |||
| Together AI | Pay per use | API | |||
| Replicate (Cloudflare) | Pay per use | API | |||
| Ollama | Free | Desktop, Terminal, Self-hosted |