AI Tools · ranked shortlist
Best AI Tools software for Small Businesses in 2026
20 approved ai tools listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.
- Tools ranked
- 20
- Entry price range
- $0-$49
- Publish a $0 plan
- 9 of 20
How this ranking is derived
The sort key
Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.
Where the ratings come from
No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.
What the pool is
Approved ai tools listings, capped at 20 per page; 20 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the ai tools category page.
The ranking
Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.
- #1
AI21 Labs
Highest rated hereEnterprise language AI solutions
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $0.20 a month.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, API, ai21, Enterprise
- #2
Anthropic API
Claude API for developers
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $3 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $15.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, API, anthropic, claude
- #3
Anyword
AI copywriting with predictive analytics
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $49 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $99.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, copywriting, anyword, analytics
- #4
Banana
ML inference at scale
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $0 a month.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, cloud, banana, gpu
- #5
Character.AI
Chat with AI-powered characters
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $9.99 a month.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, characters, chat, roleplay
- #6C
Chatbase
Build AI chatbots trained on your data
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Billing
- subscription
- #7
Claude
AI assistant focused on helpfulness and safety
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $1 a month, with no free plan.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $20.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- ai, anthropic, claude, constitutional-ai
- #8
CoreWeave
Specialized cloud for GPU compute
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $0.35 a month.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, cloud, coreweave, gpu
- #9
D-ID
AI-powered talking avatar generation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Billing
- subscription
- Tags
- ai, video, d-id, avatars
- #10
DeepSeek
Chinese AI lab offering reasoning models via web and API
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- freemium
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- #11
ElevenLabs
AI voice generation and cloning platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $5 a month.
- 6 published tiers, topping out at $990.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 6 tiers
- Tags
- ai, voice, elevenlabs, text-to-speech
- #12
Fathom
Free AI meeting assistant
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Tags
- ai, meetings, fathom, Free
- #13
Grok
Conversational AI assistant from xAI with multimodal capabilities and local model support
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Billing
- quote
- #14
HeyGen
AI video generation with realistic avatars
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $29 a month.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $99.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai, video, heygen, avatars
- #15
Jasper
AI marketing and content platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $39 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $59.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, marketing, jasper, copywriting
- #16
Lambda Labs
GPU cloud for deep learning
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $1.10 a month.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- ai, cloud, lambda, gpu
- #17
Leonardo AI
AI-powered creative suite for image generation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $12 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $60.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai, leonardo, image-generation, game-assets
- #18L
LOVO
AI voice generator with emotion control
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $24 a month.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $48.
- Billing
- freemium
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai, voice, lovo, text-to-speech
- #19
Manus
General-purpose AI agent executing multi-step tasks in a hosted environment
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Billing
- subscription
- #20V
Voiceflow
Design, build, and launch AI agents
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Billing
- freemium
What ai tools software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 20 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $0Banana
- Median entry price
- $5across 13 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $49Anyword
- Publish a $0 plan
- 9of 20
Paid ai tools plans in this set start anywhere from $0 a month for Banana to $49 for Anyword. The median entry price across the 13 tools that publish one is $5, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is ElevenLabs's at $990 a month, 20.2× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
9 of 20 publish a $0 plan, and 1 of those charge nothing at all. 5 tools have no free tier of any kind.
1 of 20 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 20 ai tools listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- subscription
- 5
- usage-based
- 5
- freemium
- 3
- quote
- 1
Separately, 1 of 20 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What “AI Tools” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 20 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- ai15
- cloud3
- gpu3
- marketing3
- anthropic2
- API2
- avatars2
- claude2
- copywriting2
- Enterprise2
- text-to-speech2
- video2
Carried by a single tool: ai21, characters, content, deep-learning, entertainment, heygen, lambda, meetings. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
9 of 20 ai tools tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with volume discounts, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$0 to $49 is a $49 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $49 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
5 of 20 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, volume discounts, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 4 billing models: subscription on 5 listings, usage-based on 5, and 2 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare ai tools tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- AI21 Labs vs Anthropic API
- Anthropic API vs Anyword
- Anyword vs Banana
- Banana vs Character.AI
- Character.AI vs Chatbase
- Chatbase vs Claude
- Claude vs CoreWeave
- CoreWeave vs D-ID
Go straight to the numbers
- AI21 Labspricingalternatives
- Anthropic APIpricingalternatives
- Anywordpricingalternatives
- Bananapricingalternatives
- Character.AIpricingalternatives
- Chatbasepricingalternatives
Questions people ask about ai tools software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How is this ai tools ranking decided?
- Mechanically. The 20 approved ai tools listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
- Is this list re-ordered for small businesses?
- No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the small businesses framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.
- How much does ai tools software cost?
- Across the 20 ai tools tools listed here, paid plans start between $0 and $49 a month, with a median entry price of $5. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $990 a month (ElevenLabs). 9 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest ai tools software?
- 1 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Banana has the lowest published entry price at $0 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free ai tools software?
- Yes, 9 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 1 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- How is ai tools software usually billed?
- subscription (5), usage-based (5), freemium (3), quote (1), counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 1 of 20 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does ai tools software actually cover?
- The 20 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ai (15), cloud (3), gpu (3), marketing (3), anthropic (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under ai tools may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do ai tools tools offer?
- 14 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 5 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many ai tools tools are listed on Softwr?
- 20 approved ai tools listings appear on this page, including AI21 Labs, Anthropic API, Anyword, Banana. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/ai-tools, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
- Business Intelligence
- E-commerce & Retail
- Fitness & Wellness
- Productivity
- 3D & CAD
- Employee Engagement
- Cloud & Infrastructure
- Beauty & Salon
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.