What this archive is
A running count of the software subscriptions a native AI feature made optional — and the ones that turned out to be worth keeping. Opinionated on purpose, correctable on purpose.
Every few weeks a major AI company ships something that quietly replaces a product somebody was charging for. A paraphraser. A meeting recap. A “chat with your PDF” button that used to be a subscription. Individually each one is a footnote. Together they have repriced whole categories of software, and nobody was keeping the list.
So this is the list: 1,358 tools across 36 categories, each with a price, a named AI feature that came for it, one of three answers, and — the part that makes it usable — the reason that answer was given. 696 of them are rated not really, because a model call was never the real moat.
A named, shipped AI feature does the core job this tool was paid for, and there is a free or already-bundled way to get that job done.
The headline feature is now bundled elsewhere, but the workflow, data, integrations or compliance around it are still doing real work.
A model overlaps with the tool but does not finish the job. The moat — workflow, proprietary data, taste or trust — held.
Every verdict shows its reasoning
The four criteria, who decides them, where the one-line reasons come from, and how complete the evidence actually is — all of it is published.
What each field means
- Price
- The advertised entry-level paid tier in USD per month; annual and one-time licences are stored as their monthly equivalent. It is a comparison anchor, not a quote — check the vendor before you budget.
- Threatened by
- The AI company whose launch changed the economics. Where several apply, we credit the one that moved first or moved hardest.
- Date
- The launch that did the damage, not the date we wrote the entry. This is what drives the timeline.
- Escape hatches
- Where you would actually go instead. Anything marked free has a tier that covers the core job without a card — 1,159 entries have at least one.
How it is paid for
Sponsor slots in the side rails, sold at a listed price, labelled where they appear. That is the whole business model. A sponsor cannot buy a verdict, a rating, a position on the list, or a mention on a tool page — and the traffic numbers quoted on the sponsor page are the same ones anyone can watch arrive on /live.
If an entry is wrong
Say so. 177 entries carry the harshest verdict and reasonable people will disagree with some of them. Every tool page has a “challenge this verdict” link that opens the form with the tool already filled in, and every challenge is read.