I was paying almost $200 a month for AI tools, one subscription at a time, until my bank account was eating cereal with no milk. Then I spent two weeks testing Google's free versions and cancelled three. Here's the stack:
1NotebookLM. Research locked to your own sources, plus audio overviews you can interrupt with questions. Replaces PDF-chat tools.
2Google AI Studio. Direct access to Gemini with build tools for apps. The one to remember if you only remember one.
3Gemini Canvas. Describe a deck, report or brief and refine it by chatting. Replaces paid slide builders.
4Google Colab. Free cloud notebooks with AI that writes and runs the code, so you can clean a messy spreadsheet without installing anything.
5Veo. Text-to-video clips for B-roll and product shots, so you're not paying for stock footage you use twice.
6Opal. Describe a small app and get a working prototype. Experimental, so save your work, but worth it before you pay for a no-code builder.
7The hidden control panel. Google's Natural Language and Speech APIs: sentiment on reviews and transcription, the engines inside many paid tools.
Free: The free Google AI stack cheat sheetEvery prompt from this video, ready to copy. One email unlocks it, plus the kits from every other video.
Not every free tool replaces every paid one. Here's how to decide, so you cancel the right subscription and not the one you actually rely on.
1 Audit before you cancel
List every AI subscription, its monthly cost and the last time you used it. Then match each one to a free tool above and try the free one on a real task for a week. Cancel only what the free tool fully replaced.
Subscription audit
Here are my paid AI subscriptions with price and what I use them for: [paste list]. For each one, tell me which free Google tool could replace it (NotebookLM, AI Studio, Gemini Canvas, Colab, Veo, Opal, or the Natural Language / Speech APIs), what I'd lose by switching, and a one-week test to prove it.
2 The three that cancelled my subscriptions
NotebookLM for research, AI Studio for automation and building, and Gemini Canvas for presentations. Start there: they cover the most common paid tools for a one-person business.
3 Ask NotebookLM what's missing
Summaries are the obvious use. The better one: upload a long report and ask what it doesn't say.
The gap question
Summarize the key insights from these sources. Then tell me what these sources don't cover that someone in [my situation] would need to know.
NotebookLM answers from your sources, which makes it much less likely to invent things. Still check anything you'll quote or rely on.
4 Free has fine print
Free tiers change, and some of these tools are experimental. Keep your files and prompts somewhere you control, so if a tool disappears you can walk into another one without losing your pipeline.
Quick fire
Which free tool would you open?
Five fast scenarios. Pick the tool. It's how you'll actually use the stack, so the answers stick.
Free resource
The free Google AI stack cheat sheet
One page: all seven tools, what each replaces, where to find it, and the first prompt to try, plus the subscription-audit prompt, so you can cancel the right tool this week.
