https://aikeryx.com Independent, hands-on reviews of AI tools for video, image, audio, coding and everyday work. Real pricing, real limits, no hype. en Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:24:56 GMT https://aikeryx.com/tools/claude https://aikeryx.com/tools/claude Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Claude is the assistant we reach for when the work is long, careful and written. Its advantage is not breadth of features but quality of reasoning over large inputs, and a tone that pushes back rather than agreeing. The weekly limits are the main frustration, and the Max tiers are priced for people who use it all day rather than all week. https://aikeryx.com/tools/cursor https://aikeryx.com/tools/cursor Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Cursor is the most complete agentic coding environment available, and the one we would put in front of a working developer today. It is genuinely good at the mechanical multi-file work that eats afternoons. It is not good at architectural judgement, and it will happily write plausible code that is wrong — so it rewards reviewers and punishes people who stop reading diffs. https://aikeryx.com/tools/elevenlabs https://aikeryx.com/tools/elevenlabs Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT ElevenLabs is the safest recommendation in AI audio and the one we would pay for ourselves. The quality gap is audible, the free tier is large enough to test properly, and the platform covers enough ground that you can consolidate several subscriptions into one. The only real friction is predicting what a long project will cost. https://aikeryx.com/tools/heygen https://aikeryx.com/tools/heygen Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT HeyGen is the avatar tool we would pick for marketing, and Synthesia the one we would pick for training. HeyGen gives you better-looking avatars, voice cloning and a faster editor, at the cost of weaker enterprise plumbing. If your videos need to look like your brand rather than like a compliance module, start here. https://aikeryx.com/tools/midjourney https://aikeryx.com/tools/midjourney Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Midjourney still produces the best-looking images, and it is the only major image tool with no free tier — which tells you exactly how confident it is. The aesthetic lead has narrowed as competitors improved, and the company carries real legal uncertainty, but if the image is the deliverable rather than a step in one, this is where we start. https://aikeryx.com/tools/runway https://aikeryx.com/tools/runway Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Runway is the least risky first subscription in AI video, because you are not betting on one model. You pay a premium for that flexibility, and the credit burn on video is real — but when a model falls behind, you simply switch to another one inside the same plan. That is worth more than any single benchmark score. https://aikeryx.com/tools/synthesia https://aikeryx.com/tools/synthesia Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Synthesia is a business tool wearing the clothes of a creative one. Judged as a video generator it looks expensive and limited; judged as a way to ship 40 consistent training modules in nine languages without booking a studio, it is cheaper than any alternative. Buy it for the workflow it was designed for and it is excellent. Buy it to make YouTube videos and you will be disappointed. https://aikeryx.com/tools/claude-code https://aikeryx.com/tools/claude-code Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Claude Code is the best value in AI coding, with one condition: you already pay for Claude. If you do, it costs nothing extra and its repo-scale reasoning is genuinely strong. If you do not, the entry price is a full Claude subscription rather than a cheap coding plan, and Cursor or Copilot will look better on paper. https://aikeryx.com/tools/descript https://aikeryx.com/tools/descript Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Descript is the rare AI tool that changes how you work rather than just speeding up a step. Editing a podcast by editing text is faster than any timeline once you adjust. The caveats are real — per-seat pricing, credit limits and occasional export problems — but for speech-driven content nothing else works quite this way. https://aikeryx.com/tools/gamma https://aikeryx.com/tools/gamma Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Gamma does one thing well: it gets you from nothing to a structured draft quickly. That is genuinely valuable and it is also the extent of it. The output looks like Gamma, the design control is shallow, and iteration burns credits. Use it to beat the blank page, then finish the deck yourself. https://aikeryx.com/tools/ideogram https://aikeryx.com/tools/ideogram Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Ideogram solves the one problem that made AI images useless for a lot of real design work: words come out spelled correctly. That is a narrow advantage, and it is enough to justify a subscription if you make posters, thumbnails, packaging or anything with a headline. For pure aesthetics, Midjourney is still ahead. https://aikeryx.com/tools/perplexity https://aikeryx.com/tools/perplexity Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Perplexity is the right tool when you need to know something and be able to prove it. The citations are the product, not a feature. It is weaker than Claude or ChatGPT at writing and reasoning, and the pricing jump to Max is hard to justify for anyone outside heavy research work — but for verification it has no real substitute. https://aikeryx.com/tools/suno https://aikeryx.com/tools/suno Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Suno is the only tool here that does something no stock library can: it produces a finished song, vocals included, in under a minute. The output is inconsistent and the licensing on the free tier is a trap, but for background music, social content and rough demo tracks it saves real money. Treat it as a generator, not a composer — you will throw away most of what it makes. https://aikeryx.com/blog/ai-coding-tool-costs https://aikeryx.com/blog/ai-coding-tool-costs Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and Windsurf compared on the thing that actually decides your bill: metered usage, weekly limits and what happens when an agent runs long. https://aikeryx.com/blog/ai-image-generator-which-one https://aikeryx.com/blog/ai-image-generator-which-one Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Midjourney, Ideogram and Recraft compared on the three jobs that actually come up: beautiful images, images with text, and brand-consistent editable assets. https://aikeryx.com/blog/ai-video-credit-pricing https://aikeryx.com/blog/ai-video-credit-pricing Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every serious AI video tool prices by compute, not by minutes. Here is how to model your real monthly cost before you subscribe — and when a flat-rate tool wins. https://aikeryx.com/blog/best-ai-video-tools https://aikeryx.com/blog/best-ai-video-tools Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT We tested Runway, Synthesia, HeyGen, Kling and Hailuo on real client-shaped work. Here is where each one wins, what the credits really cost, and which one to skip.