Every few months I do a stack audit - go through every subscription, every tool, and ask whether I would sign up for it again today knowing what I know now. March 2026 is a good time to publish this because the AI tool space has consolidated significantly in the last 12 months. A lot of the noise has cleared and the tools that are actually useful have pulled ahead.
Disclaimer on context: I use this stack across three workstreams - AI product work at HCLTech, content creation for this site and LinkedIn, and Ethlore (the D2C brand my brother and I run). Some tools serve all three; most are specific to one. I will flag which is which.
The Core AI Tools
Claude (Anthropic) - Claude Max Plan
What I use it for: Everything that requires sustained reasoning - product strategy documents, PRD drafts, deep research synthesis, code review, and content writing. Claude is my primary writing collaborator. I have been on Claude Max since it launched and it is the subscription I would be most reluctant to cancel.
Honest assessment: Claude Code (the agentic coding feature) changed how I work in ways I did not expect. It is not just autocomplete - it can read a codebase, understand the architecture, and make multi-file changes that respect the existing patterns. The context window (200K tokens) means I can paste an entire codebase or a full research paper and have a real conversation about it. For long-form content and complex reasoning, Claude remains best-in-class in my testing.
What I would cut: Nothing. This is the anchor of the stack.
Monthly cost: $100
ChatGPT Plus (OpenAI)
What I use it for: Image generation (DALL-E 3), voice conversations via the mobile app, and as a second opinion on things where I want to compare outputs. Also use it for tasks where the ChatGPT ecosystem's breadth of plugins and GPTs gives it an edge.
Honest assessment: I use ChatGPT less than I did in 2024. The gap between GPT-4o and Claude for my primary use cases (long-form writing, complex reasoning, code) has widened in Claude's favor. I keep the subscription primarily for DALL-E 3 (which I use for presentation graphics) and the mobile voice interface, which is genuinely good for thinking out loud during commutes.
What I would cut: If DALL-E 3 were available standalone, I would probably let this go.
Monthly cost: $20
Gemini Advanced (Google)
What I use it for: Google Workspace integration - drafting in Docs, summarizing email threads in Gmail, Slides drafting. The Gemini-in-Workspace integration is the most useful enterprise AI integration I have seen from any vendor.
Honest assessment: The model quality is competitive with GPT-4o for most tasks. Where Gemini genuinely stands out is the integration with the Google suite. Being able to say "summarize the last 20 emails from this thread and draft a reply" inside Gmail, or "generate slides from this document" inside Docs, removes friction that the standalone chat interfaces do not.
What I would cut: If I switched away from Google Workspace, this would go. The value is the integration, not the model.
Monthly cost: Bundled with Google One ($20/month total)
Development and Automation
Cursor (Anysphere)
What I use it for: All code editing. Cursor replaced VS Code for me completely. The Tab autocomplete, the Composer for multi-file changes, and the Chat for codebase Q&A are all genuinely useful daily.
Honest assessment: Cursor is the tool I recommend most consistently to people who write code but are not full-time engineers. It lowers the floor significantly - I can write Python automation scripts at a level that would have taken me three times as long before Cursor existed. The context-aware suggestions ("you are using the same pattern in three places, here is the abstraction") are where it earns its cost.
Monthly cost: $20 (Pro plan)
Modal (Modal Labs)
What I use it for: Running scheduled jobs and serverless Python functions that need more compute than my laptop - data processing pipelines, content automation, anything that I want to run on a cron or trigger via webhook without managing infrastructure.
Honest assessment: Modal is the most underrated tool in my stack. The developer experience is remarkable - you define infrastructure requirements in Python decorators, and Modal handles provisioning, scaling, and billing. For a non-infrastructure person running occasional heavy jobs, it is the right abstraction level. I use it for the automation pipelines behind several workflows on this site.
Monthly cost: Variable, typically $20-60 depending on compute usage
Content and Publishing
Ghost (Ghost Foundation)
What I use it for: This site. Ghost is the publishing platform for this blog and newsletter.
Honest assessment: Ghost is the right choice for a serious content creator who wants a clean writing experience, a built-in newsletter, membership tiers, and a platform that is not algorithmically controlled. The writing editor is excellent. The member management and email deliverability are solid. The theming system gives enough control without requiring full front-end development skills.
The main limitation: Ghost Pro pricing jumps sharply at scale. At 10,000 members, you are looking at $249/month. I am not there yet, but I have already started thinking about the self-hosted alternative.
Monthly cost: $25 (Starter plan)
HeyGen
What I use it for: AI video avatar for LinkedIn and YouTube content. I record audio, HeyGen generates a synchronized video of my digital avatar delivering it. Removes the camera and lighting setup from the content creation workflow.
Honest assessment: The quality has improved dramatically from 2023. At 4K resolution with a custom avatar trained on 5 minutes of footage, the output is convincing enough for B2B content - not indistinguishable from real video, but close enough that the audience engagement metrics are comparable. The ROI for async content creation is high: I can produce a 3-minute LinkedIn video in the same time it takes to record and edit a voiceover.
Monthly cost: $89 (Creator plan)
ElevenLabs
What I use it for: Voice cloning for video content and podcast-style audio. Used in combination with HeyGen for video content and standalone for audio summaries and listicle-style posts.
Honest assessment: The voice quality is excellent. The API integration is straightforward. My use is targeted - I do not use this for everything, just for content where audio quality matters and where my availability to record is constrained. The emotional range of AI voices has improved substantially in 2025-2026; the robotic quality that was obvious 18 months ago is mostly gone.
Monthly cost: $22 (Creator plan)
Analytics and Monitoring
PostHog
What I use it for: Product analytics for this site and Ghost membership. Tracks reading behavior, conversion funnels (visitor to subscriber), and feature usage on the membership portal.
Honest assessment: PostHog is the right tool for a solo creator who thinks like a PM. The funnel analysis, session recording, and A/B testing capabilities are enterprise-grade. The free tier is genuinely generous (1M events/month). The main friction is setup complexity - getting the right events instrumented requires more thinking than Google Analytics out of the box.
Monthly cost: $0 (free tier)
Google Analytics 4
What I use it for: Traffic sources, SEO performance, geographic distribution. GA4 alongside PostHog for the broader audience picture.
Honest assessment: GA4's reporting interface is worse than Universal Analytics was, but the data is better. The Search Console integration gives useful organic search performance data. I keep it because the SEO keyword data is valuable and because it integrates with Google Search Console and Google Ads if I ever run paid traffic.
Monthly cost: $0
APIs and Backend
Anthropic API (Claude)
What I use it for: Powering the automation workflows - content processing, summarization pipelines, the RAG systems I run for knowledge management.
Monthly cost: Variable, typically $30-80 depending on batch processing runs
OpenAI API
What I use it for: Embedding generation (text-embedding-3-small for my RAG systems) and occasional GPT-4o calls for tasks where multimodal capabilities are needed.
Monthly cost: Variable, typically $10-25
Slack
What I use it for: Internal notifications from all automation workflows - job completions, error alerts, and the changelog webhook that logs every Jarvis system change.
Honest assessment: Slack as a notification layer for automated systems is underrated. Getting a Slack message when a scheduled job completes (or fails) is the right interface for low-volume monitoring. I am on the free tier for personal use and it does everything I need.
Monthly cost: $0 (free tier)
The Full Cost Breakdown
- Claude Max: $100
- ChatGPT Plus: $20
- Google One (with Gemini Advanced): $20
- Cursor Pro: $20
- Modal: ~$40 (average)
- Ghost Starter: $25
- HeyGen Creator: $89
- ElevenLabs Creator: $22
- Anthropic API: ~$55 (average)
- OpenAI API: ~$17 (average)
Total: approximately $408/month
That number sounds high until I think about what it replaces: a video production team (HeyGen + ElevenLabs), a developer for automation work (Modal + Claude Code + Cursor), and the hours of work those tools compress.
What I Would Cut First
ChatGPT Plus. The DALL-E 3 access is the only reason I keep it and the value does not justify $20/month when Gemini Imagen and other image generation tools are available. If OpenAI launches a standalone image generation subscription, I would make the switch.
What I Would Double Down On
Claude Max. The context window, the reasoning quality, and Claude Code have changed my workflow at a level that no other tool in the stack has matched. If the price doubled tomorrow, I would still pay it.
HeyGen. The ROI on content velocity is the clearest in the stack. One HeyGen video session produces content that would require a half-day of camera setup, recording, and editing. For a solo creator with a full-time job, that trade is obvious.
What Is Missing From My Stack
A few tools I am evaluating but have not committed to: a dedicated SEO tool (currently using GA4 + Search Console which covers 80% of the need), a social media scheduling tool (manually posting, which does not scale), and a proper CRM for the newsletter list beyond Ghost's native tools. Those are the gaps I am watching.
