Though there are hundreds of thousands of AI tools available now, most people’s default answer when you ask them what AI tool they use most is still ChatGPT. It’s become the go-to, almost reflexively. And while ChatGPT is admittedly powerful, many don't realize that it's not the only option and many alternatives exist.
ChatGPT also locks a lot of its best features behind paywalls (or sets frustrating limits you hit within minutes). The only way to avoid these restrictions and continue using ChatGPT is to subscribe to one of its premium tiers. To enjoy everything the AI chatbot has to offer, including unlimited messages and uploads and maximum access to the tool's features like Deep Research, you need a subscription to ChatGPT's Pro Plan, which costs an eye-watering $200 per month. Well, here's the thing: you don't really need ChatGPT Pro when NotebookLM and Perplexity exist.
Perplexity is built for real-time, accurate online research
It's designed to find what ChatGPT can't
Sometimes, you might’ve noticed that ChatGPT gives you an outdated answer when you ask it a question. Though the tool is capable of browsing the web, it doesn't do so by default. If you want ChatGPT to browse the web and answer a question, you need to hit the plus (+) icon, hover over More, and select Web search. With Perplexity, on the other hand, you don't need to worry about any of that.
If you aren't familiar with Perplexity, or have heard its name being thrown around but haven’t ever properly used it, it's an AI-powered conversational search engine, and its biggest strength is searching the internet in real time.
Ultimately, whenever you ask Perplexity a question, it uses LLM models like GPT-5 and Claude 4.0 Sonnet to understand the context of your question. It then searches the web and gathers information from various authoritative sources. The best part is every answer Perplexity gives you includes citations that link to the original sources. All the sources Perplexity used to compile the answer are included in a separate Sources section.
NotebookLM lets you upload files and interact with them for free
Work directly with your files
ChatGPT has a File Uploads feature, which lets you upload images and documents including PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, .txt files, .xlsx files, and more. You can then perform a range of tasks, like asking ChatGPT to summarize the document, provide feedback, compare different documents, find specific information, extract key insights, and more. However, the free plan only allows a limited number of file and image uploads.
Once you've hit the limit, you need to wait until later to upload files or images again. If you frequently upload files to ChatGPT and are considering upgrading to a premium tier just to be able to upload more documents, you need to try out Google's NotebookLM.
Unlike the vast majority of AI tools, including Perplexity and ChatGPT, NotebookLM isn't designed to relay new information from the web or its own intelligence. Instead, it helps you search and interact with the knowledge you've personally uploaded. NotebookLM lets you upload sources (PDFs, Google Docs, .txt or .markdown files, YouTube videos, webpage URLs, etc.) to notebooks.
Once your sources are uploaded and processed, you can ask any question you have, and the tool will only reference the content you've provided when answering. Similar to Perplexity, every claim NotebookLM makes includes a clickable citation. Hovering over the citation shows you exactly where NotebookLM picked up the information from.
You can also ask any follow-up questions (NotebookLM also suggests a few after every response), and the tool will pull in relevant context from your sources. Unlike ChatGPT, NotebookLM also has various learning tools, which are particularly beneficial for students. For instance, you can turn your documents into a podcast-style discussion (which NotebookLM calls Audio Overviews), a Khan Academy-like video (called Video Overviews), and even generate a Mind Map.
Perplexity and NotebookLM both have limits, but you’ll rarely hit them
The limits are actually generous
I’ve been using ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NotebookLM’s free tiers extensively, and I only ever seem to hit ChatGPT's daily limit — even though it's the tool I use the least out of the three!
I’ve been using Perplexity’s browser, Comet, as my default for a few weeks now, and the browser sets Perplexity as the default search engine. Though you have the option to manually change to a search engine of your choice, I’ve chosen to stick with Perplexity. This means every query I search is routed through Perplexity (unless I manually select Google Search for a certain query).
Given that I spend nearly half my day on my laptop, you can imagine how many questions I throw at it. Surprisingly, not once has Perplexity nudged me to upgrade to a premium plan because I’ve reached a usage limit, something that happens far too often with ChatGPT.
An article on Perplexity’s Help Center mentions that the Standard plan gives you practically unlimited basic searches. Perplexity automatically selects the best model for your query, so unless you’d like to manually choose a more advanced model, the tool’s free tier should be more than enough for the average user.
Similarly, while NotebookLM's free tier certainly has its limits when it comes to file uploads, they’re nowhere near as restrictive as ChatGPT’s. You can create up to 100 notebooks with up to 50 sources each, and there’s no cap on daily file uploads. Unfortunately, you can only ask 50 questions per day on the free tier, but for most users (including me), this is more than enough to explore and interact with your uploaded sources.
NotebookLM and Perplexity can do the same job for free
Unless you're adamant about using ChatGPT as the only AI tool you rely on and don’t want to mix and match, there’s really no reason to pay for ChatGPT Pro. The $200 tier comes with perks like more memory, expanded projects and tasks, custom GPTs, and expanded access to Sora 1 and Codex Agent.
But I’m not sure these benefits justify the steep $200 monthly price for most users. For the majority of everyday tasks, like researching online, interacting with files, generating summaries, and getting accurate, cited answers, NotebookLM and Perplexity handle everything effortlessly on their free tiers.