Which AI Subscription is Actually Worth Your Money?

The Real-World Guide for Developers and Non-Developers alike

As an ML Engineer at Meta and now Roku, I've watched AI tools evolve from research projects to daily workflow essentials. Last week, Cursor helped me convert my caching backend from Redis to Aero in minutes—a task that would have taken hours. The month before, Claude generated project documentation in 20 minutes that would have taken me an entire afternoon.

But there's one thing that bothers me: most guides about AI tools are either too surface-level ("ChatGPT is great!") or too academic to be useful. Most folks don’t really know which tools are good and what they are good at.

I realized that what I needed was a no-nonsense breakdown of tools that actually work, cost less money, and get integrated into my existing workflows without making me try everything out myself. But I was not able to find anything so thought of writing about it myself and try everything out myself as well.

So, I've been testing the top contenders for months, and some are genuinely worth every penny while others... well, let's just say the hype doesn't match reality. In this post, I will try to breakdown the main features I am using from these tools and how they have now become an integral part of my “work” life.

TL;DR: If you're coding, get Claude Pro + Cursor. For research and admin, start with Gemini's generous free tier. Skip the annual plans—this space moves too fast.

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I will start with, You guessed it right:

Claude - My Advisor

Claude has been my favourite and a go-to subscription for serious development work as well as general queries related to both code as well as life. I just keep asking questions like it's Stack Overflow, but it works much better.

Here's why I think its Pro subscription ($20/month) is genuinely worth it:

Projects feature - the game changer(for me atleast):

Okay, if you don’t know about this one, you are in for a treat. The “Projects” feature in Claude Pro is hands down the most underrated capability in the AI space. Its like NotebookLM but better.