Your Starter Toolkit
A free starting kit, a first paid upgrade, and what to skip.
Free Toolkit
If you are brand new to AI and not ready to spend anything, here is what I would set up today. All free.
Claude for writing, thinking, and brainstorming. Perplexity for research with sources. NotebookLM for studying documents and the podcast feature. Suno for music if you are curious. CapCut for video editing with AI captions. Kling AI for experimenting with AI video generation.
That combination covers writing, research, documents, music, video editing, and video generation, all without spending a cent. Use these for a few weeks. See which ones you actually use. Then consider paying.
When you are ready to upgrade
If you are prepared to spend A$30-65 per month to get significantly better results, here is what I would prioritise, in order:
First: Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus (A$32/month). Pick one. This is the single most valuable AI subscription you can have. It will be the tool you use every day. I recommend Claude, but try both free tiers and see which clicks for you.
Second: Perplexity Pro (A$32/month). Only if you do a lot of research. The free tier is generous, so only upgrade if you are consistently hitting limits or need the deeper research capabilities.
Third: Midjourney (A$16/month). Only if you create images regularly. If you just need occasional images, ChatGPT's built-in image generation on the Plus plan may be enough.
Everything else: Stay on free tiers until you have a specific reason to upgrade. The tools that justify paid subscriptions will become obvious through your actual usage patterns.