whatplugin’s mission is helping you make quick, confident decisions about which AI tool to use for any task. We’re a slowly growing catalog of high-quality recommendations for which AI tool to use for the tasks you need the most, and we personally test every tool that we feature. We do our work with complete editorial independence, recommending tools because we’ve tested them and found them to be great.

whatplugin.ai was created by Dario Chincha in 2023. As chief editor, Dario is committed to ensuring editorial independence and high ethical standards for this publication. We’re a small team of dedicated writers focused on producing honest, insightful reviews of AI tools.

Some of our product recommendations may contain affiliate links. This means we may receive a commission if you buy or subscribe to the tools in our reviews. However, all product recommendations we make are based on independent testing and research – never financial or marketing incentives. That means all the products you see in our reviews, including their ranking, are independently selected, researched and recommended. This aligns perfectly with our goal of making unbiased, high-quality reviews, as it allows us the freedom to be critical of any downsides related to each product to provide nuanced, insightful recommendations.

Reader trust is always the most valuable thing for us. We don’t accept freebies. We don’t accept preconditions for featuring any tool in our reviews. We don’t let others alter our rankings. We do not make paid endorsements or content – period. In a world where as a consumer, understanding the source of the information we see and hear, and whether it can be trusted, is increasingly difficult, we see it as vital to have clear and transparent editorial standards.

Our job is to empower you to leverage AI in your life and work by helping you find and choose quality tools. Unlike overcrowded AI tool directories, we deliver carefully reviewed tools for meaningful comparisons and recommendations.

There’s a lot of sites out there that lists all the new AI tools in one place (directories), which is awesome for exploring what’s new, but not so good for judging what’s worthwhile. Typically, these sites are saturated with low-quality apps and have superficial descriptions about each product (often AI-generated or slightly rewritten from the tool’s website).

We wanted to create a more quality-oriented resource, where you can find recommendations on which tool to use for your tasks based on thorough research and real-world testing. We believe our approach is better suited for most people when looking for which AI tool to choose.

We meticulously research and test AI tools to provide carefully considered recommendations based on real-life experience.

Our process starts by thoroughly researching the category of tools for each specific task that we will write about. We think about who these products are for and identify the leading brands in the category. We then scout a variety of sources including tool directories, niche forums, AI newsletters and customer reviews to narrow down a list of contenders to test.

Once we’ve narrowed down the list of the most promising  tools, our writers lay out a plan for how to go about testing them, and where our focus should be – our key criteria. We carry out tests using structured notes to ensure comparability and we spend the time necessary to get sufficient experience to make an informed judgement about the tools.

Our reviews are focused on real-life experience with the product. While we try to stay as objective as possible, every reviewer will inevitably have some variation in how they assess the tools. We incorporate several standard criteria (such as pricing) for each review, but leave our framework flexible enough to capture qualities that don’t fit inside rigid evaluation criteria and for the personal experience of each reviewer to shine through. We always strive to allocate a significant amount of testing time with each tool, and preferably build it into our daily work and routine, to get the best foundation for evaluating it.

AI is developing fast, and what’s the best today isn’t necessarily the best tomorrow. Our reviews are best viewed as a snapshot in time of the reviewer’s experience compared to the other tools we tested. We strive to keep our articles continually updated, to reflect this rapid pace of innovation and provide up-to-date recommendations.

Our editorial team consists of smart, curious individuals passionate about using technology to enhance our work and life. We’re not machine learning engineers or chief scientists—just regular professionals like you, leveraging AI to improve what we do.

We see this as an advantage in providing useful reviews because we think like users—because we are users. We prioritise how useful and helpful a product is in real-world scenarios, making an effort to explain things simply so anyone can understand. Our focus is on what matters to regular people and businesses making decisions about which tools to use.

We believe in technology as an engine of progress in the world – and we’re optimistic about AIs potential to be a force of good.

Great AI tools have the potential to unlock new levels of productivity and creativity for individuals and businesses. They can automate away tedious work to focus on what really matters, and empower us to create whatever we can imagine.

There’s specific types of AI tools out there – general-purpose assistants (think chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini) and task-specific tools. In our work and personal lives, we use both general AI assistants and task-specific tools, and we believe a mix of these is the best arsenal to have.

On this site we’re reviewing AI products for specific tasks and use cases. These can be available across devices including browser-based, mobile apps, desktop programs, and more. These tools have the massive advantage that they’re not constrained by the user interface of chatbots. The key is that they adapt and optimise the user interface and experience completely for a specific type of task. If the product is worth its salt, that translates into more capable tools that are easier to use and yield better results for their specific purpose than the general assistants.

There’s new use cases for AI popping up on a daily basis. We see the market right now as divided into tools for productivity, creativity, companionship and personal growth. We’re watching the market of AI tools closely and the themes and groupings might change over time – our main goal is to stay pragmatic and relevant in our categorisation as new genres of useful tools are born.

Do you have a task not covered here that you want to use an AI tool for? We’d love to hear from you about it, and we might do an article on it. Please get in touch.

We've also made a contact form for general feedback, available here. We’d be grateful to hear from you with any comments or suggestions you have on how to improve our site.