Every AI that matters.

Chapter 01 · Start here

Finn's picks: how to get started with AI

Finn’s top line

• There are two levels of AI. Level 1 is basic AI: chat assistants that answer questions. Level 2 is agents: AI that goes off and does the work. The most powerful of them all is an agent, and its name is Muse.
• Level 1, basic AI: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and friends, for chat, questions, drafts and everyday help. Start free anywhere. Cheapest real upgrade: Gemini AI Plus at $4.99. The free stack (DeepSeek + Qwen + Meta AI) costs $0.
• Level 2, agents, number 1: Muse. In our opinion the most powerful AI there is: Meta's personal agent, living in your chat, carrying work end to end: research, writing, building, booking, remembering. This guide was researched and built with Muse. The catch is access: Muse is new, live only in the US, Canada and Japan (Japan joined October 23, 2026), and Meta publishes no list of what comes next. Chapter 08 tracks the map.
• Want to make video? Start on Kling, free. Daily free credits, no card. The cheapest finished minute anywhere is Seedance at $1.30.
• Level 2, agents, number 2: Grok Bot. The other great agent, and the one almost anyone can open today: $0 to start, real time X search, voice and images, no card required.
• Coding is level two work too: Claude Code, $20. The strongest coding AI in the field, on Claude Pro, if you can get it. Free route: DeepSeek for the brain, plus the Codex free tier for a real agent. Full coding chapter below.
• Want to make music? Suno, free. About 10 songs a day on the free tier. Pro at $10 a month adds commercial rights.
• Want a voice? ElevenLabs, from $6. The most realistic voices and cloning in the field, with a free tier to try.

Every pick is priced and linked in the tables below. Rechecked every couple of days.

Your first ten minutes

• Minute one: open Grok Bot and ask it something real from your own life. That is AI, started.
• Minute five: make one free song on Suno and one free video clip on Kling. Two creations, $0.
• Minute ten: do nothing else. Only upgrade later, when a free limit actually stops you mid task, and start with the cheapest tier that removes it.

Chapter 02 · Basic AI

Basic AI: the chat assistants

This is level one: basic AI. The chat window is where almost everyone meets AI first, and these thirteen are the ones worth knowing, priced for a reader anywhere in the world. They answer, draft and explain. They do not go off and do the work; that is level two, the agents, in the next chapter. Country by country availability and payment rails are in Report 03, which ranks this same field for budget users outside the US.

Chapter 03 · Agents

The agents: AI that does the work, not just the talking

This is level two of AI work: the agent level, where AI stops answering and starts doing. An agent browses, books, codes and completes multi step tasks while you watch. Agent power is almost never free; it lives on paid tiers. The full ranking, country notes and budget ladders are in Report 03.

• Muse (Meta, free and paid plans): our number 1 agent, and in our opinion the most powerful AI there is. A personal agent that lives in your chat on its own dedicated computer, remembers your world, and carries real work end to end: research, writing, building sites, bookings, reminders. It helped research and build this guide. The catch is access: the US in September 2026, Canada days later, Japan on October 23, 2026, and nowhere else yet. Meta publishes no country list, so muse.ai itself is the live test. See Chapter 08.
• Claude (Pro $20, Max $100): the strongest agent from the big labs: Claude Code, Research and scheduled tasks in one subscription. Start here if you can get access; the door is its only weakness.
• Grok Bot (SuperGrok, $30): the agent tier of our number 2 chat pick, and the agent most people can actually start today.
• ChatGPT Plus ($20): Agent Mode, Deep Research and Codex. The best agent most people can buy.
• Google Gemini (AI Plus $4.99 and up): Deep Research on paid tiers, serious coding on Pro, billed locally almost everywhere.
• DeepSeek and Qwen: no consumer agent; their agent route is the API, wired into tools.
• Mistral Le Chat ($14.99): Work Mode and coding agents on the paid tier.

Chapter 04 · Video

The video models: price per finished minute

No model sells a minute directly, and none makes a full minute in one take: clips run 15 to 30 seconds, so a finished minute is assembled, and retakes mean a real budget of two to three times the list price. Full sourcing and the subscription tables are in Report 02.

Chapter 05 · Coding

Coding: the best AI for writing code

The short answer matches the chat answer: Claude, with the same catch. Independent head-to-head testing in October 2026 ranks Claude Code the best coding agent in the field, with OpenAI's Codex a close second and Gemini third. Claude's edge is consistency: code quality and debugging, task after task. Its weakness is not skill. It is the door: no free tier, a $20 floor, and payment rules that shut readers out by country.

A note on the scores you will see quoted elsewhere: the popular coding benchmarks (Terminal-Bench, SWE-bench Pro) are mostly vendor or roundup reported, and the vendors argue about them. The finding that survives every October 2026 comparison we read is the order: Claude Code first, Codex second, Gemini third, and DeepSeek as the free miracle.

Chapter 06 · Music and audio

Music: every song machine that matters

Type a sentence, get a finished song with vocals: this field moved faster in 2026 than any other on this page, and it has traps the video field does not, starting with downloads. Figures checked October 2026.

One more open source note: Meta's MusicGen is free to run but its weights are non-commercial, so ACE-Step is the open route we recommend for anyone publishing.

Chapter 07 · Voice

Voice: text to speech and voice agents

• ElevenLabs: the reference product. Free 10 minutes a month; Starter $6 (about 30 minutes, commercial license, instant voice cloning); Creator $22 adds professional cloning. The same account makes music, above.
• Cartesia: Pro $5. Built for real time voice agents, with very low latency.
• OpenAI TTS: API only, about $0.015 a minute. Eleven built in voices, no cloning, no studio.

Chapter 08 · Availability

Where each one is available

Power means nothing if the door is shut in your country. This is the map as of October 2026, with the official place to check each one. Country lists change quietly, so this section is rechecked on the same cycle as the prices.

• Muse (Meta): three countries so far: the United States (September 8, 2026), Canada (September 18) and Japan (October 23, 2026). Meta publishes no country list and no timeline, so muse.ai itself is the live test: where Muse is open, sign up works.
• Grok and Grok Bot (xAI): no official country list. Grok rides with X, and X's published rule is that Grok is available wherever X is available; paid plans on grok.com vary by location. Governments can shut the door locally: Indonesia and Malaysia blocked Grok for a stretch in January 2026.
• Claude (Anthropic): the model citizen, with one official list of 185 countries and territories at anthropic.com/supported-countries. Not offered in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Russia, Belarus, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, Afghanistan or Yemen.
• ChatGPT (OpenAI): an official list of 150 plus countries on OpenAI's help site. Mainland China is not supported, and OpenAI warns that using it from an unsupported country can get an account suspended.
• Gemini (Google): the widest net, 230 plus countries and territories for the app, with AI Plus pricing live in about 40 of them. Google posts current availability in its Gemini help pages.
• DeepSeek and Qwen: no lists at all. They simply work almost everywhere, including many countries the American tools refuse, which is half of why the free stack matters.

Method and sources

How we check, and where it came from

• One rule: every price on this page traces to a public source checked in October 2026, and the living figures are rechecked every couple of days against the official pricing pages watched by our checker.
• Video and agents: this page reuses the verified tables of Report 02 and Report 03; their source lists are the sourcing for those chapters.
• Coding: vendor pricing pages cross-checked against October 2026 coding roundups and head-to-head tests. Where sources conflict, we print no price: Cursor's ladder is mid shuffle after its 2026 acquisition.
• Music and voice: vendor pricing pages (suno.com/pricing, elevenlabs.io/pricing, mureka.ai, stableaudio.com, cartesia.ai) and the Gemini API pricing page, cross-checked against October 2026 pricing roundups that read those pages directly, because several music vendors render their prices inside their apps. Where sources conflicted, we printed the cautious version or no number at all: Stable Audio's hosted pricing and MiniMax's music plans are described, not priced.
• Availability: Chapter 08 follows the official country lists linked there (Anthropic's and OpenAI's), launch coverage for Muse, which publishes no list, and X's availability rule for Grok. Rechecked on the same cycle as the prices.
• Downloads warning: Udio's disabled downloads and Suno's September 2026 download caps are stated as of October 2026; both vendors say their terms are still moving.