FWIW, Since some of you asked, I wanted to share the various AI tools that I currently pay for
If readers have other AI tools that you think are worthwhile paying for, please let the collective know.
Many readers may not realise that it is not possible in Hong Kong where I reside to create end-user or developer accounts of OpenAI, Gemini, Clause by their respective organisations For ChatGPT, the hoops to jump to create even an account to access the free tier of ChatGPT are substantial
a) You have to VPN outside of Hong Kong
b) You need a non-Hong Kong mobile number to sign-up
c) If you want to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus then you need a credit card which isn't issued by a Hong Kong bank
The reasons for lack of access to AI models and their frontends are speculated to be geopolitics considerations between the United States and China.
So if you are an existing ChatGPT/ChatGPT Plus and/or a Gemini/Claude user and visiting Hong Kong (I, for one, welcome our tourist overlords and their tourist dollars 😃 ) remember that you will have to enable a VPN and connect to an endpoint outside of HK to use those services
Therefore I tend to look out for wrappers of LLM’s that I can use without a VPN as well as recommend to friends and associates in Hong Kong
| Tool | Price | Short explanation of the tool |
|---|---|---|
| [Perplexity](https://perplexity.ai/pro?referral_code=3GSLJ2WN**](https://perplexity.ai/pro?referral_code=3GSLJ2WN) | USD 20/month | |
| USD 200/yr | Perplexity AI is an answer/research engine that uses AI to provide accurate answers to user queries by gathering information from web in real-time then reasoning through the question and providing the answer. Perplexity Pro which is the paid subscription gives me access to multiple LLM’s (4o, o1, 3.7-Sonnet, R1, Gemini 2.0 Flash, Grok v2, ) as well as ability to search on image/file uploads. Invaluable for research. Pace of shipping by the team is relentless. Read below for social signals from A-listers. Available via Web, iOS, Android, native MacOS/Windows app | |
| poe.com | USD 20/month | |
| USD 200/yr | Wrapper over many AI model both text and image generation, very rapid integration of new models. Switched to yearly plan | |
| Bearly | USD 20/month | |
| USD 200/yr | Bearly AI is a multiple platform desktop app [Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS] which wraps various LLM’s. It provides for the ability for users to create and store custom prompts which can be applied to chats, documents (in effect, a RAG [retrival augmented generation] tool. | |
| It also provides interfaces to transcription services powered by Whisper as well as image generation services powered by Flux | ||
| There are overlaps with poe.com but the community and dev team intrigue me enough to keep me invested into their vision. | ||
| ChatLLM | USD 10/month | You get access to all the state-of-the-art LLMs including o3-minihigh, DeepSeek v3/R1, Sonnet-3.5 and Gemini 2.0-Flash. We will also add any new state-of-the-art LLM that is launched as soon as possible to the product. You can query the web, generate images, execute code, chat with PDFs, humanize your text, analyze charts, create custom chatbots and AI agents, access our playground feature and much more. |
| MacWhisper Pro | Euro 20 one-time | MacWhisper is a macOS application that uses OpenAI's Whisper technology to transcribe audio files into text locally on your device, ensuring privacy and security |
| Whilst the free version could work for me, I think ethically and given the cost , its was worth paying for the Pro version. Relentless updates by the developer. I’m now able to send transcripts to LLM’s via openrouter.ai | ||
| Eightify | USD 36/yr | Generates summaries for Youtube videos. Chrome extension. Combined with Youtube Premium this lets me consume YT content at a much faster pace. |
| Tool | Cost | |
|---|---|---|
| Granola | USD 10/month | Key features... |
For those who host and/or organise Twitter Spaces and are looking to generate content after these spaces are concluded, Alphy is a tool I've come across which can transcribe them [you can them use the transcription downstream in LLM's for summarization to use in X , Farcaster, Threads or even long form or use HeyGen with its Avataar 3.0 system to create visual/video content as well as localize it
Since the nature of my work does not always involve generatiing art in the form of static images, motion design, video. I keep abreast of such tools (eg, Midjourney, Adobe Creative Suite, Scenario, Layer, Capsule) but don’t actively seek subscriptions to them
Once in a while I see discounted offers for subscriptions and I may decide to purchase a subscription.
Currently I have the following