Quick answer: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity let you start without a paid subscription, within limits. Make has a free plan; n8n Cloud offers a trial. Self-hosting requires an operating budget. Choose by task, permitted data and maintenance cost, rather than the word “free”.
Editorial review: 9 October 2026. This selection separates AI assistants from automation, data and operational tools that can support them. They are not all AI products, and free access does not include every AI feature. We checked public documentation; we have not measured their relative performance.
Problem
A pricing table can hide the cost that decides the purchase: a quota consumed by retries, an expiring trial, a missing team permission or a server without an owner.
It can also confuse a free personal account with an approved environment for company documents. Check the plan and data handling before testing with internal information.
Thesis
A free plan is useful if it completes the work within limits your organisation accepts. It may remain sufficient in production. There is no universal deadline for upgrading: the trigger is a specific requirement for usage, control, continuity or support.
Framework
Assistants and research
| Tool | What you can try | What should trigger a plan review |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Free includes search, analysis and file uploads, subject to limits. | Capacity for the task and business controls, rather than a fixed message allowance assumed to last forever. |
| Claude | Free includes chat, search and file creation. | The usage and administration your team needs. Personal access is not a team plan. |
| Gemini | Free access with a Google Account. | Distinguish that account from the capabilities in your Workspace edition. |
| Perplexity | Free Standard includes limited basic file uploads. | Research depth, volume or business controls. Open the sources: citations still need checking. |
Automation and data
| Tool | What “free” means | Cost or limit to check |
|---|---|---|
| n8n | Self-hosted Community Edition; Cloud offers a trial, not a permanent free plan. | Hosting, maintenance, the applicable licence and consumption by connected services. |
| Make | Free allows up to 1,000 monthly credits and a minimum 15-minute interval between scheduled runs. | Measure the actual workflow. Branches, modules, AI and retries can change consumption. |
| Metabase | A free, self-hosted Open Source edition. | Database operation, infrastructure and the specific permissions or capabilities your use case needs. |
| Umami | Free Cloud Hobby: up to 100,000 monthly events, one website and six months of retention. | Volume, retention and team access. Choosing a tool does not replace a privacy review of your implementation. |
Business and software operations
| Tool | What you can try | When to review another edition |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Free CRM for organising customer information and sales work. | When the workflow needs automation, capacity or a permission your edition lacks. Check the limits of the product you activate. |
| Resend | A free email plan with a daily limit of 100 sends. | Daily peaks, volume and delivery requirements. Distinguish transactional and marketing email: Resend also offers Broadcasts. |
| Notion | Free includes a Notion AI trial, not unlimited AI usage. | Collaboration, permissions, history and AI features. Review the full plan instead of relying on an old add-on price. |
| Sentry | Free Developer plan with quotas by data category. | Errors, traces, logs and team requirements. Do not treat these as a single pool of “events”. |
These are conditions observed in the linked sources during our review. Confirm them in your account before committing a process: they can vary by plan, country, contract or provider changes.
The budget missing from the price tag
Complete this worksheet for the tool you want to evaluate. Do not add subscriptions until you can identify the problem each solves.
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Work | Input, acceptable output and reviewer. |
| Data | What may enter and what must stay out. |
| Usage | Consumption in a normal run, a retry and a peak. |
| Full cost | Licence, API, hosting, operation and review time. |
| Continuity | What happens when the quota runs out or the service fails. |
| Exit | How to export data, revoke access and replace the tool. |
| Decision | Keep, upgrade, replace or stop, with a reason and an owner. |
For assistants that consult documents or prepare actions, use the pilot evaluation CSV. It proposes tests; it contains no invented results or savings.
Why it matters now
Purchasing models change. Make uses credits, Notion distinguishes an AI trial from the features of its plans, and Sentry has updated how legacy Developer plans measure tracing. Copying an earlier comparison without reopening the sources can lead to the wrong decision.
Anti-example
A business adopts self-hosted n8n because it “costs nothing”, but nobody owns backups, updates or incidents. Another buys several assistants for the same drafting task while remaining unsure where approved documents live. Both have chosen tools before designing the work.
These are hypothetical examples, not customer cases or measured results.
Protocol (3 steps)
- Choose a task. Use synthetic or authorised data and define an acceptable result.
- Test the relevant limit. Observe quota, permissions, review and error recovery; record the date and plan tested.
- Decide using the full cost. Stay free if it meets your requirements. Pay or switch when you can identify the missing capability.
Related
- ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini: choosing a business plan.
- AI Tool Sprawl: too many tools, too little decision quality.
- Spanish version of this guide.
Sources consulted
- OpenAI: Free Tier FAQ.
- Anthropic: Claude plans.
- Google: Gemini plans.
- Perplexity: subscription plan comparison.
- n8n: plans, trials and Community Edition.
- Make: Free credits and limits.
- Metabase: Open Source and hosted plans.
- Umami: pricing and limits.
- HubSpot: free CRM.
- Resend: email limits and products.
- Notion: plans and AI inclusion.
- Sentry: changes to legacy Developer plans.
Correction in this edition: we removed unsupported message limits, the supposed permanent n8n Cloud free tier, a universal stack budget and the claim that a set of tools covers a fixed share of use cases. The original publication date is retained.
Next step
Complete the worksheet for a tool you already use. If nobody can own its costs, data and failures, review that process before adding another subscription. An AI audit helps organise that inventory and its decisions.