I audited my subscriptions last month and it was grim. Eleven AI tools. Most of them I open once a week, feel mildly impressed, and forget. A couple I'd genuinely struggle to tell you what they do anymore.
But three of them stopped me cold. For those three, my honest reaction to "the price is doubling tomorrow" was: fine, take my money.
That's the only review metric that's ever told me the truth about software. Not features, not the demo, not the hype. Would I pay double? For most tools, no. For these three, instantly. Here's what separates them.
The AI tools worth double aren't the ones with the most features — they're the ones that disappear into your workflow and remove a recurring pain you'd otherwise pay a human to handle. For me that's a code-generation assistant, a flexible general AI assistant, and an automation tool that connects everything else. They share one trait: I'd notice their absence within an hour. Everything else is a nice-to-have I could cancel and barely feel.
Before I tell you the three, here's the filter, because it's more useful than my specific picks.
Ask of any tool: if this vanished tomorrow, how long until I felt the pain?
Most AI subscriptions live in that third bucket, propped up by FOMO and a vague sense that everyone should have them. The "pay double" tools live firmly in the first.
This is the one I'd defend with the most force.
I'm not a full-time engineer, but I build things — scripts, small apps, automations. A good AI coding assistant collapsed the distance between "I have an idea" and "it works" from days to hours. It writes the boilerplate, explains errors in plain English, and lets me do vibe coding for prototypes without context-switching into deep documentation dives.
What makes it double-worthy isn't that it writes code. Lots of tools do. It's that it writes code in my project, with my context, and explains itself when I ask. It feels less like a tool and more like a tireless pair-programmer who never sighs at my dumb questions — though as I learned when I tried coding with only AI for two weeks, the trust has limits you only feel once you hit them.
The best AI tools don't make you feel smart. They make you feel unblocked. There's a difference, and the second one is worth paying for.
If it doubled, I'd pay, because the alternative is either learning everything the slow way or hiring out every small build. Both cost more.
The second one is the AI assistant I keep open in a tab all day for everything that isn't code.
Drafting, summarizing a long thread, rephrasing a touchy email, brainstorming angles, explaining a concept I half-understand, turning a messy voice note into clean notes. It's a Swiss Army knife, and the value is in the breadth, not any single feature.
People underrate generalist tools because no single capability dazzles. But I use this thing twenty times a day in twenty small ways, and those small frictions removed add up to real hours. Surveys like McKinsey's State of AI report that the biggest realized gains tend to come from exactly this kind of broad, everyday assistance rather than one flashy use case.
The reason I'd pay double: it's the closest thing I have to a competent assistant who's available instantly, never tired, and costs less than a single lunch per month. Frame it that way and the price feels almost silly low.
The third pick is the least flashy and quietly the most valuable: an automation tool that connects my other apps and runs tasks without me.
New form submission triggers a follow-up. A spreadsheet row updates and three things happen downstream. Repetitive moves I used to do by hand, now invisible.
This one is double-worthy for a sneaky reason: it doesn't save me a task, it saves me remembering to do a task. The mental overhead of "don't forget to do X every time Y happens" is a tax on your attention, and automation pays it for you. Combined with AI agents that can make small decisions inside those flows, it's the closest thing I have to cloning myself for the boring parts.
Here's the honest comparison of why three made the cut and the rest didn't.
| Trait | The three keepers | The eight I'd cancel |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency of use | Daily, often hourly | Weekly at best |
| Pain if removed | Felt within an hour | Barely noticed |
| Replaces | A cost (time or hiring) | Another tool I half-use |
| Depth in my workflow | Load-bearing | Bolt-on |
The pattern is clear. The keepers each remove a recurring pain that would otherwise cost me time or money. The cancel pile mostly offered novelty, or overlapped with something I already had.
Novelty wears off in a week. Removed pain compounds forever.
I want to name why I had eleven tools in the first place, because the trap is universal and sneaky.
Every week a new AI tool launches with a slick demo and a chorus of people on social media calling it a game-changer. The demo is always impressive — demos are designed to be. So you sign up, poke at it for ten minutes, feel a flicker of "this could be useful," and forget to cancel. Repeat that a dozen times and you've built a graveyard of trials-turned-subscriptions, each draining a small amount monthly.
The psychology is fear of missing out, dressed as professional diligence. Everyone serious has this tool. If I don't, I'm falling behind. But "everyone has it" and "it's load-bearing for me" are completely different claims, and the gap between them is where your money quietly leaks.
A tool you might use someday is costing you today. Future-you is not paying that bill — present-you is.
The fix is unsentimental: a tool earns its place by what it removes from your actual week, not by what it might theoretically enable, and not by who else is excited about it.
After the great purge, I built a tiny ritual to keep the graveyard from refilling. Once a month, ten minutes, I open my subscriptions list and ask three questions of each one:
Anything that fails two of three gets cancelled on the spot. No "but maybe later." Later never comes, and if it does, re-subscribing takes ninety seconds.
This audit has saved me more money than any single tool has made me, and it keeps the three real keepers from getting buried under novelty again. Ten minutes a month to make sure I'm only paying for value, not for the feeling of being well-equipped.
If you're trying to decide which of your own AI subscriptions actually earn their place, the honest truth about AI productivity tools is the wider companion to this disappearance test.
Q: Why not just name the specific products? Because the category matters more than the brand, and the best pick in each category shifts fast. A code assistant, a strong general assistant, and an automation layer — find your favorite in each and you've covered the high-value ground.
Q: Aren't you just paying for hype? The "pay double" test exists precisely to strip out hype. Hype tools fail it instantly — you'd never pay double for something you forget you own. Only genuine value survives the question.
Q: How do I find my own three? Run the disappearance test on everything you pay for. List your AI subscriptions, ask "how fast would I feel this gone," and cancel the bottom half. Your three will reveal themselves.
Q: Is three the right number? Three is what shook out for me, not a law. The point isn't the count — it's that most people pay for many tools and deeply rely on few. Find the few. Fund those. Trim the rest.
I pay for eleven AI tools and would pay double for three: a code assistant that unblocks me, a general assistant that handles a hundred small jobs, and an automation layer that does the boring work while I sleep.
The lesson isn't "buy these." It's "find the ones you'd pay double for and stop pretending the rest earn their place." Most of your AI spend is probably novelty wearing a productivity costume.
So go run the test. Which of your tools would you actually pay double for tomorrow — and why are you still paying for the ones you wouldn't?
One person, output that looks like five. It isn't about working more hours — it's about a kind of leverage teams rarely have.
One idea a week to a published issue in under an hour. The boring system behind a newsletter I never dread sending.
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