I Ranked the Best AI Tools to Make Money in 2026

I rank the best and worst AI tools to get rich in 2026. Some of these tools can 10x your business and income, while others are just a massive waste of time. And I've personally tested more than 500 AI tools at my company, Martell Ventures, because we're an AI incubator and we launch a new company every single month. So I have to test them and know if they're going to create value. And I'm going to rank the most popular AI tools that everybody's heard about that can actually make you money and build wealth. In 2026 we got the S tier that's non negotiable for the future. The A tier which is widespread but not universally known. B tier which is niche but valuable. The C tier might work in the rare cases, but most people won't see consistent roi. And then finally the F tier essentially don't bother. It might be flashy but honestly there's no real value. Number one is Midjourney. Essentially it allows you to take prompts and generate images. It was like one of those early apps that when ChatGPT came out, people were it because it essentially use the same prompt structure to create images. Can you make money? Yeah. A lot of people use Mid Journey and act as a service to create brand packages or website designs or any visual Photoshop type thing. Easy to use, super simple. I just don't think long term it'll be there. Where do I think this one sits? It is kind of niche. You can do a lot of this in other tools. I'm going to put it in B. Number two is Runway ML. Essentially this is an AI powered video generating tool. You can use it to like create marketing collateral walkthroughs. Think of any video generation. So you can get paid to do it for other businesses. You can also use it in your business to create marketing collateral. I think the easy use, it's not there. It's a lot harder to use than most of these tools. But I think like long term it's pretty good. I would probably put it in A, B every business. No video creators for sure, but it's less for like everyday use. I'm going to put Runway in front of Mid Journey because video is more interesting to me than photos. Number three, 11 labs now they're kind of OG AI. They've been around for a while. Produces uber realistic AI voices. We use it all the time for this very specific use case where if I mispronounce a word like regular Leslie. Yes. Make fun of me. I don't care. Then the team can actually use it to create what's called pickups. Rigorously. So, yes, this is Dan. Ouch. I'm pinching myself. Not AI, but sometimes the voice has to be AI because it saves me time from having come back in the studio. If you're in a business that generates a lot of creative, that has voiceovers, super powerful, huge opportunity to make a ton of money, do it for yourself as a marketing thing, easy to use. And then also like the future of voice, I think they will be potentially the winner in that category because it's nuanced and you think it's easy, but it's not. So I'm going to give it a high score. I'm actually going to put this into a. It's fantastic for content creators. It's not essential for every business, but it's like right on the edge. Before I go any further, I know that most entrepreneurs are literally struggling trying to figure out what are the tools, how do I use them, how do I actually use them to grow my business? So that's why I built the AI company os. Essentially, it's the exact system my team and I use to automate and scale every department across $100 million portfolio. So if you want a copy of that, just click the link or scan the QR code and I'll get you a copy for free. That's my gift to you. Number four is HeyGen, another tool that's been around since the beginning. It allows you to create AI avatar videos from just text and it's kind of leading the front. There's a few other ones that are like coming up and they still are in private beta. But hey, Gen is really cool and a lot of people are using it for creating training videos, product explainers, marketing videos. Essentially it's a way for you to scale your content output. So money making. If you can convince a business owner to actually use the tool, they'll pay you to set it up. The easy use is high, so that's good. I'd give it like an 8 out of 10. And then I would say the future of it being that platform is pretty high. Although there's a lot of other tools come in, it's a fun tool but limited use, depending on your business. So I'm going to give it a B right next to Runway because Runway actually has a better product suite. It's not as good as Runway. Better than Midjourney. Number five, Gamma app. If you've never heard of it, let me tell you about it. Cause I use it every week. Essentially it's like having a full time designer on your team to generate reports and proposals and outputs and it's awesome. I think the money making is there. I just think that most people can use this tool so they'll just do it themselves. But I have friends that use it to create pitch decks for clients, proposals for clients. Essentially visualize output so that the team doesn't have to like stop and get distracted. Easy to use high. It's like a 9 out of 10. Is it gonna relevant for the future? They seem to be the category winner in the space, so I'm going to give them a good score there. This one's going to be controversial. I'm going to go S tier. I think every business could use it. I think they should make everything they produce as an output prettier. I think visuals are good, I think teams communicate better. Number six, it's Leonardo. AI essentially generates concept art and branded visuals. So if you ever had the idea of like, oh, I want to start my own, like Nike, you could do this really easily. The problem is when you generate branded material, you'll have sometimes hallucination, so the consistency is not there. So it's known for that style, the flexibility, it makes it ideal for designers. Designers love this tool, but can you make money with this? For most people you kind of need to be a designer. So I'm going to give you a low score there. Is it easy to use? Yep, relatively easy. Is it going to be relevant for the future? Again, it's competitive, it has a strong niche appeal, like designers do. Love it, but limited to broad use. So I'm going to put it in B. It's very niche but valuable. And I'm going to put it third in the list. Number seven, Zapier. This one is really cool. It's a tool that helps you automate your business processes. They've been around forever, way before AI. I've been using it for I think close to a decade now. 6,000 apps to automate your workflow. The cool part is no code required. I know hundreds of agencies that are using Zapier to make a ton of money. Automate business processes automatically. It's relatively easy. When you get into some more sophisticated stuff, it's there and they've been around for so long. They have the enterprise space and they've added the tools and they were quick to adopt AI. I'm giving this S tier. This one is one that's foundation to any modern business. I'm going to put it above Gamma. Now we've got a competitor, Gumloop. I love it because I am a sucker for good user experience. It's a visual AI workflow builder. So same thing, automate workflows. It's visual, a lot more visual than Zapier. We built a whole bunch of financial automation using Gumloop, recruiting processes using Gumloop. So I'm a fan. It's a solid option. I think you can make money with this. It's a lot higher on ease of use even though it's newer in a smaller community. But it's making a bet long term. I just don't think you need it if you've got Zapier. So I'm going to put it in the A tier. We're going to put it in front of 11 labs. You got to automate your business. Number nine is N8N. What I love about it, it's open source. I'm a big fan of open source. Open source essentially means that the code base is available for anybody to look at it. So you don't have to worry if the company's doing things right because you can actually audit the code. You don't have to pay for licenses. It's essentially free. If you can set up your own servers. It's a little best suited for like developers. You can make money because it's automation. A lot. A lot of people use it for more complicated workflows. But the learning curve is a lot harder. So it's got a low score there and I think it's going to be relevant because it is the open source tool of choice right now amongst technical people. So I'm going to give it a. You need a tool for workflow, but you don't need that tool. So I'm going to put it on the end of an A number 10. Your atlas.com essentially anything voice and phone call. It can automate and act as like a revenue tool for you. We use it for outbound qualifying. We use it for bound responses. Full disclosure. This is one of my portfolio companies at Martell Ventures, but it's a tool that not only do we use in all my portfolios, but also my brother uses it, my friends use it. It is a really cool tool. Big fan. Obviously I'm a little biased, but let me tell you why I think it's cool. Number one, a lot of people are using Atlas to get paid to set this up for companies so you can make money really quick. The learning curve is not that high. I mean you just need to Understand basic prompt engineering and then the future of Voice and AI. I think every interface in the future will go away and I'll all be voice. You're probably doing this right now with AI, you're talking to it a lot. If you look inside of some of the top tech companies, they have these like little mics with a long pole and a little mic and everybody's whisper prompting their prompts on their computer. It's really interesting. The world's probably going to go there and your atlas.com is the platform right now. I think to do that you should just try it out. Go check out your atlas.com and just like have it call you. It's really cool as a business tool. I just don't see you doing things that don't involve calls. I know it sounds self serving, so I don't want you to take it the wrong way, but I'm going to put it at the top. It's an S at the end of S number 11. Fixer AI. Fixer AI is essentially an email AI tool. So it'll help you like categorize your email, get sorted. It's a tool to help you be more productive in your inbox. Clever idea, super cool. Can you make money with it? It'll save you time. I don't think you can like get paid from other people to set it up. Learning how to use it is always a little bit difficult with kind of workflows because you probably have a certain way you like to use your inbox. So I'm going to put it in C. I think it's cool. I've mentioned it before but it's not a must considering the other tools. Number 12 is Notion AI. Notion is a project management workspace for businesses. The AI specific is their assistant. It's built into Notion that helps you with writing and taking notes and organizational. So that's what I'm essentially assessing. Cool part is it integrates naturally with your existing workspace within Notion. So if you use Notion, thumbs up money making and save you time, it's cool. It's still not where I need it to be and I don't think anybody's going to pay you just for the AI part. They might pay you to set up Notion for them. Ease to use. Super easy. Love the interface, integrated long term. Is this the tool? Well, if you didn't see that, OpenAI launched Company Knowledge, which is this new product that is going to try to be the search or the brain on top of your business knowledge. That's where I Think like a notion AI might lose some ground. I'm gonna put it c. It's cool. I just think it's tough to justify, but I am gonna put it in front of Fixer. I think check out the notion AI. It actually can do some cool stuff. Specifically if you're a notion company. Number 13, BuddyPro AI. Think of it this way. If you had a knowledge base or a brain, an AI brain that was specifically trained on just your company's information. And then your clients, instead of calling you, they could call Buddy Pro. Or instead of your team asking you, they could ask Buddy Pro. That's what it does. Do I think it'll save you money? Hell yeah. Think about all those support emails. Right? The support emails only work if they've been properly trained. So now all of a sudden Buddy Pro can power the response. I think every business can use it. I think it'll save you a lot of money. And I think the way they built it technically, because I know the founders, you, it's a really smart way to solve this problem long term. That's completely different than just like a custom GPT. I'll rank it in tier A, but at the end, number 14, granola. The category of recording calls is big. You see them all the time. You get on a zoom call and you got the thing recording and you're like, whose firefly is this? I just don't let them into my meetings. I'll tell you why granola is cooler. Granola actually records on your end, meaning the people that are on the call don't know that you're recording. It's not meant to be sneaky. It's meant for you to take notes so that you have clear understanding of what's been said, recaps and action items and all that stuff. And it does it automagically. And the cool part is it works across all the major video platforms. Do I think it'll save you money if you're not the kind of person that writes things down? Yes. If you don't have somebody in your meetings, yes. Easy for you to use. Yep. Literally, click, click, install it starts working. Is it going to be the one that's going to win the future? Amongst all my smart, technical AI people, it's their favorite and that's usually a good sign. So I'm gonna make it mandatory. I think it's s. I think everybody should use granola. I think it's in front of your atlas for sure. And honestly, even in front of Gamma, if you don't use it. Check it out. I think you'll be happy you do. Number 15, we got chat GPT, the big dog, the one that started it all. Okay. Two and a half years ago. Do you know close to 700 million people use Chat GPT every week is bananas. Conversational AI for writing, coding, automation. And it does more than most people realize. Obviously, it's going to make you a ton of money. It's incredibly easy to use. Literally, you want to learn how to use AI, ask AI. It'll tell you wild. I know they've raised so much money that they're at the point where they're too big to fail. So where do I put GPT? At the very, very, very front. It's dominating the market. It's number one. S Use it. If you're not using it, learn it. I created a whole Masterclass video on ChatGPT. You can search for that. It'll teach you how to become next level. It's number one. Number 16, Claude, which is the AI by anthropic. I use all the AIs and I'm going to rank them today. But Claude's one specifically for writing and for code. Yes, GPT5 is getting better, but still on certain types of projects, it's still winning there. Will it make you money less than ChatGPT? Because I think it's a use case if you're not using it as much. Very easy to use. Are they going to be around long term? Yeah, they're not going anywhere. They'll probably get bought by somebody. I'm going to put it in front of Zapier. Number 17. We've got perplexity AI. This is like the battle of the language models. Perplexity was the first search engine that was powered by AI. Now it's kind of like everywhere. GPT, launch Atlas, their own browser. Google's got the AI answers integrated in search results. But Perplexity was the first one. And what's unique is that feedback is verified sources, which is cool because sometimes you have hallucination with the other language models. In many ways it's kind of a novelty. I'm not going to put it even after Granola. Are we going to go Zapier Granola, Perplexity. Some of you guys would be like, no, I disagree. That's cool. My ranking, that's why I'm going to Put it number 18, Gemini Google. What Google is doing that it's got an advantage over is that it integrates all of its existing tools. So here's the thing, is it would go ahead of everybody if it was not integrated. But if you're not a Google ecosystem customer, then I'm going to put it third behind Claude. Number 19, Notebook LM. Essentially it's Google's AI for analyzing and summarizing files, information, research. There's one use case that I think most people don't know about where you can feed it to like YouTube videos and actually tell it to like talk to you through the videos. But it generates like a narrative back and forth. It's like creating your own podcast. And I think it's really tailored for like researchers, writers and students. So it's not an every company. I wouldn't even say it's an A. It's kind of a niche thing. If you want to get nerdy on this stuff, it's in the C. It's interesting but it's not necessarily needed. Number 20 is Grok. Elon buys X, takes the AI team, spins it out as X, AI brands it as Grok, raises a bunch of money, built this crazy data center. The reason why it's on this list is because I use it more and more. It keeps getting better week over week. I actually use Grok Heavy, which is the 300 doll a month plan. It is the best one for accuracy, depth of research that I found. I'm just looking long term. I'm thinking it's way better than Gemini. I think he's going to beat Claude and I think it's going to be number two behind OpenAI's chat GPT. That's where I'm putting it. I see the updates, I see the focus, the first principles approach. It's one I'm going to bet on. Number 21, Revio. If you do any kind of selling over chat, I'm talking support, emails, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, then having an AI sales assistant is key. Revio is one of our portfolio companies inside of Martell Ventures. We use it all the time. I use it, my wife uses it. Can it make you money? Ton of money. Most people don't know that. If you talk to your followers on social media, those are called leads. You make money with leads. Is it going to be relevant long term? I think so. I'm going to put it in C, so it's tough to justify. But here's the deal. If you use Instagram for business, it's a must. Okay, so it's niche. Number 22, lovable. Now this is one of my favorites. Lovable has been around for a while. It helps people that are not technical build Apps. All my friends that come to me with their like, I've got a tech idea, Dan. I say just go play with lovable. The cool part is you can use ChatGPT to write the prompt to then insert it into Lovable so that it can create the app the way you want. I think the future of business is these disposable apps that help run departments. Right now we use spreadsheets. In the future will be apps Lovable, that platform. I know people that make a lot of money selling lovable apps to businesses and charge $10,000, 15,000 for these apps that I generated. And I know a lot of businesses that are using it for that disposable idea. To save time to build automation, you need to know how to prompt. So it's not as easy to use. But they're well funded. I think they'll be around for a while. The future is going there. But there's other tools that everybody should be using before then in your business. So I'm going to put it at the end of the row B. Number 23 is cursor AI. If you're a technical person, Cursor is crazy cool. It's an AI coding assistant. It's an ide, an integrated development environment for you to write code. It's super technical, super nerdy. I'm going to put it at the end of C. It's really cool. It's just super niche. Number 24, Apple Intelligence. I love that Apple branded AI. Apple Intelligence. Like, if you saw their ads, they were like, apple Intelligence AI. For the rest of us, if you didn't know this, it sucks. It has always sucked. Nobody uses it. People that tried it go back to the other AI tools. They focus on privacy, which is kind of a cornerstone to Apple's brand. The problem is this is not good crazy. I'm doing this because it's an Apple product. Apple hasn't innovated in a while, so I'm putting it into F. Run away until they launch something way better. Don't use it. Use any of the other tools. So we've ranked all these tools and I can understand it might feel super overwhelming. Here's what I want to encourage you to do now. Take the one that you were like, oh, that's interesting. I could see how I would use that in my business and then just spend the next two weeks a installing it. Like right now. Go install it, then set it up and then just like force yourself to build the new habit to use it. Because a lot of technology, it's not can it do? The thing is, do you remember to use it? Go do a project and start trying to habit that. Connect the using of that new AI tool to another habit in your workday so that it becomes second nature. That's how we start the process of using these tools to make you a lot more money and getting a lot more time back. And again, if you haven't grabbed the internal AI company operating system doc that my team uses with all of our AI prompts that you can use by clicking the link below, just do that. That is my gift to you at no cost. Now, if you want to learn what are the best businesses to start, click here and I'll see you on the other side.