Dan Martell - I Ranked the Best AI Tools to Make Money in 2026

00:00:00.000 I rank the best and worst AI tools to get rich in 2026. Some of these tools can 10x your business

00:00:06.300 and income while others are just a massive waste of time. And I've personally tested more than 500

00:00:11.720 AI tools at my company Martell Ventures because we're an AI incubator and we launch a new company

00:00:17.060 every single month. So I have to test them and know if they're going to create value.

00:00:21.020 And I'm going to rank the most popular AI tools that everybody's heard about that can actually

00:00:25.300 make you money and build wealth in 2026. We got the S tier, that's non-negotiable for the future.

00:00:31.180 The A tier, which is widespread, but not universally known. B tier, which is niche,

00:00:36.700 but valuable. The C tier might work in the rare cases, but most people won't see consistent ROI.

00:00:42.940 And then finally, the F tier. Essentially, don't fucking bother. It might be flashy, 0.97

00:00:47.240 but honestly, there's no real value. Number one is mid journey. Essentially,

00:00:50.700 it allows you to take prompts and generate images. It was like one of those early apps that when

00:00:56.660 ChatGPT came out, people were using it because it essentially used the same prompt structure to

00:01:01.700 create images. Can you make money? Yeah. A lot of people use MidJourney and act as a service to

00:01:06.840 create brand packages or website designs or any visual Photoshop type thing. Easy to use, super

00:01:14.820 simple. I just don't think long-term it'll be there. Where do I think this one sits? It is

00:01:20.780 kind of niche. You can do a lot of this and other tools. I'm going to put it in B.

00:01:25.120 Number two is RunwayML. Essentially, this is an AI-powered video generating tool. You can use

00:01:31.080 it to create marketing collateral, walkthroughs. Think of any video generation. So you can get

00:01:37.100 paid to do it for other businesses. You can also use it in your business to create marketing

00:01:41.000 collateral i think the easy use it's not there it's a lot harder to use than most of these tools

00:01:46.440 but i think like long term it's pretty good i would probably put it in a b every business no

00:01:53.000 video creators for sure but it's less for like everyday use i'm gonna put runway in front of

00:01:58.200 mid journey because video is more interesting to me than photos number three 11 labs now they're

00:02:04.040 kind of OG AI. They've been around for a while, produces uber realistic AI voices. We use it all

00:02:11.060 the time for this very specific use case where I mispronounce a word like rigorlessly. Yes,

00:02:17.440 make fun of me. I don't care. Then the team can actually use it to create what's called pickups

00:02:21.700 rigorously. So yes, this is Dan. Ouch. I'm pinching myself, not AI, but sometimes the voice

00:02:27.400 has to be AI because it saves me time from having to come back in the studio. If you're in a business

00:02:31.560 that generates a lot of creative that has voiceovers,

00:02:34.920 super powerful, huge opportunity to make a ton of money,

00:02:38.380 do it for yourself as a marketing thing, easy to use.

00:02:41.320 And then also like the future of voice,

00:02:43.900 I think they will be potentially the winner

00:02:46.640 in that category because it's nuanced

00:02:48.780 and you think it's easy, but it's not.

00:02:50.780 So I'm gonna give it a high score.

00:02:52.200 I'm actually gonna put this into A.

00:02:54.320 It's fantastic for content creators.

00:02:56.020 It's not essential for every business,

00:02:58.280 but it's like right on the edge.

00:03:00.260 Before I go any further,

00:03:00.940 I know that most entrepreneurs are literally struggling trying to figure out what are the

00:03:05.440 tools? How do I use them? How do I actually use them to grow my business? So that's why I built

00:03:09.360 the AI company OS. Essentially, it's the exact system my team and I use to automate and scale

00:03:15.120 every department across $100 million portfolio. So if you want a copy of that, just click the

00:03:19.900 link or scan the QR code and I'll get you a copy for free. That's my gift to you.

00:03:24.700 Number four is HeyJet, another tool that's been around since the beginning. It allows you to

00:03:28.920 create AI avatar videos from just text. And it's kind of leading the front. There's a few other

00:03:34.660 ones that are like coming up and they still are in private beta, but Hey Jen is really cool. And

00:03:38.940 a lot of people are using it for creating training videos, product explainers, marketing videos,

00:03:44.400 essentially it's a way for you to scale your content output. Money-making, if you can convince

00:03:49.360 a business owner to actually use the tool, they'll pay you to set it up. The easy use is high. So

00:03:55.180 So that's good.

00:03:56.020 I'd give it like an eight out of 10.

00:03:57.220 And then I would say the future of it being that platform

00:04:00.820 is pretty high.

00:04:02.220 Although there's a lot of other tools come in.

00:04:03.980 It's a fun tool, but limited use depending on your business.

00:04:08.500 So I'm gonna give it a B right next to Runway.

00:04:12.100 Cause Runway actually has a better product suite.

00:04:14.140 It's not as good as Runway, better than Midjury.

00:04:16.420 Number five, Gamma.app.

00:04:19.140 If you've never heard of it,

00:04:19.980 let me tell you about it.

00:04:20.820 Cause I use it every week.

00:04:21.660 Essentially it's like having a full-time designer

00:04:23.520 on your team to generate reports and proposals and outputs.

00:04:28.240 And it's awesome.

00:04:29.980 I think the money-making is there.

00:04:31.560 I just think that most people can use this tool

00:04:33.640 so they'll just do it themselves.

00:04:34.820 But I have friends that use it to create pitch decks

00:04:37.120 for clients, proposals for clients,

00:04:39.360 essentially visualize output so that the team

00:04:41.300 doesn't have to like stop and get distracted.

00:04:43.240 Easy to use, high, it's like a nine out of 10.

00:04:45.600 Is it gonna be relevant for the future?

00:04:47.220 They seem to be the category winner in this space.

00:04:50.540 So I'm gonna give them a good score there.

00:04:52.160 This one's gonna be controversial.

00:04:53.980 I'm gonna go S tier.

00:04:55.240 I think every business could use it.

00:04:56.660 I think they should make everything they produce

00:04:58.440 as an output prettier.

00:04:59.780 I think visuals are good.

00:05:01.040 I think teams communicate better.

00:05:02.780 Number six, it's Leonardo.ai.

00:05:05.720 Essentially generates concept art and branded visuals.

00:05:08.420 So if you ever had the idea of like,

00:05:09.720 oh, I wanna start my own like Nike,

00:05:11.720 you could do this really easily.

00:05:13.280 The problem is when you generate branded material,

00:05:16.200 you'll have sometimes hallucinations

00:05:17.880 so the consistency is not there.

00:05:19.220 So it's known for that.

00:05:20.180 styles the flexibility it makes it ideal for designers designers love this tool but can you

00:05:25.320 make money with this for most people you kind of need to be a designer so I'm going to give you a

00:05:29.620 low score there is it easy to use yep relatively easy is it going to be relevant for the future

00:05:34.180 again it's competitive it has a strong niche appeal like designers do love it but limited

00:05:38.920 to broad use so I'm going to put it in B it's very niche but valuable and I'm going to put it

00:05:45.160 third in the list. Number seven, Zapier. This one is really cool. It's a tool that helps you

00:05:51.420 automate your business processes. They've been around forever, way before AI. I've been using

00:05:55.740 it for, I think, close to a decade now. 6,000 apps to automate your workflow. The cool part

00:06:00.620 is no code required. I know hundreds of agencies that are using Zapier to make a ton of money,

00:06:06.940 automate business processes. It's relatively easy. When you get into some more sophisticated stuff,

00:06:11.160 it's there and they've been around for so long they have the enterprise space and they've added

00:06:15.480 the tools and they were quick to adopt ai i'm giving this s tier this one is one that's foundation

00:06:20.440 to any modern business i'm going to put it above gamma now we've got a competitor gum loop i love

00:06:28.040 it because i am a sucker for good user experience it's a visual ai workflow builder so same thing

00:06:35.080 automate workflows it's visual a lot more visual than zapier we built a whole bunch of financial

00:06:39.880 automation using Gumloop, recruiting processes using Gumloop. So I'm a fan. It's a solid option.

00:06:45.280 I think you can make money with this. It's a lot higher on ease of use, even though it's newer in

00:06:50.460 a smaller community, but it's making a bet long term. I just don't think you need it if you've

00:06:56.320 got Zapier. So I'm going to put it in the A tier. We're going to put it in front of 11 labs. You got

00:07:01.120 to automate your business. Number nine is N8N. What I love about it is open source. I'm a big

00:07:05.920 fan of open source open source essentially means that the code base is available for anybody to

00:07:11.380 look at it so you don't have to worry if the company is doing things right because you can

00:07:14.160 actually audit the code you don't have to pay for licenses it's essentially free if you can set up

00:07:19.280 your own servers it's a little best suited for like developers you can make money because it's

00:07:23.740 automation a lot a lot of people use it for more complicated workflows but the learning curve is a

00:07:28.500 lot harder so it's got a low score there and i think it's going to be relevant because it is

00:07:32.780 the open source tool of choice right now amongst technical people so i'm gonna give it a

00:07:45.340 you need a tool for workflow but you don't need that tool so i'm gonna put it on the end of an a

00:07:51.180 number 10 your atlas.com essentially anything voice and phone call it can automate and act

00:07:57.260 as like a revenue tool for you we use it for outbound qualifying we use it for inbound responses

00:08:04.140 full disclosure this is one of my portfolio companies at martell ventures but it's a tool

00:08:08.140 that not only do we use in all my portfolios but also my brother uses it my friends use it it is

00:08:13.820 a really cool tool big fan obviously i'm a little biased but let me tell you why i think it's cool

00:08:18.700 number one a lot of people are using atlas to get paid to set this up for companies so you can make

00:08:23.500 money really quick the learning curve is not that high i mean you just need to understand basic

00:08:28.300 prompt engineering and then the future of voice and ai i think every interface in the future will

00:08:33.900 go away and it'll all be voice you're probably doing this right now with ai you're talking to

00:08:37.740 it a lot if you look inside of some of the top tech companies they have these like little mics

00:08:41.820 with a long pole and a little mic and everybody's whisper prompting their prompts on their computer

00:08:46.220 it's really interesting the world's probably going to go there and your atlas.com is the

00:08:50.460 platform right now i think to do that you should just try it out go check out your atlas.com and

00:08:54.380 just like have it call you it's really cool as a business tool i just don't see you doing things

00:08:59.900 that don't involve calls i know it sounds self-serving so i don't want you to take it

00:09:03.580 the wrong way but i'm gonna put it at the top it's an s at the end of s number 11 fixer.ai

00:09:09.900 fixer ai is essentially an email ai tool so it'll help you like categorize your email get sorted

00:09:16.540 it's a tool to help you be more productive in your inbox clever idea super cool can you make

00:09:22.300 money with it it'll save you time i don't think you can like get paid from other people to set

00:09:26.300 it up learning how to use it is always a little bit difficult with kind of workflows because you

00:09:30.780 probably have a certain way you like to use your inbox so i'm gonna put it in c i think it's cool

00:09:35.740 i've mentioned it before but it's not a must considering the other tools number 12 is notion

00:09:41.740 AI. Notion is a project management workspace for businesses. The AI specific is their assistant.

00:09:49.100 It's built into Notion that helps you with writing and taking notes and organizational. So that's

00:09:53.640 what I'm essentially assessing. Cool part is it integrates naturally with your existing workspace

00:09:58.220 within Notion. So if you use Notion, thumbs up. Money making and save you time. It's cool. It's

00:10:03.560 still not where I need it to be. And I don't think anybody's going to pay you just for the AI part.

00:10:07.540 they might pay you to set up Notion for them.

00:10:09.340 Easy to use, super easy, love the interface,

00:10:12.120 integrated, long-term, is this the tool?

00:10:15.380 Well, if you didn't see that OpenAI launched

00:10:18.580 company knowledge, which is this new product

00:10:20.660 that is going to try to be the search or the brain

00:10:24.500 on top of your business knowledge,

00:10:26.280 that's where I think like a Notion AI

00:10:28.040 might lose some ground.

00:10:29.580 I'm gonna put it C, it's cool,

00:10:31.580 I just think it's tough to justify,

00:10:33.400 but I am gonna put it in front of Fixer.

00:10:35.240 I think check out the Notion AI,

00:10:36.580 it actually can do some cool stuff,

00:10:38.420 specifically if you're an ocean company.

00:10:40.140 Number 13, buddypro.ai.

00:10:42.360 Think of it this way.

00:10:43.320 If you had a knowledge base or a brain, an AI brain

00:10:46.740 that was specifically trained

00:10:47.920 on just your company's information,

00:10:50.140 and then your clients, instead of calling you,

00:10:52.880 they could call Buddy Pro.

00:10:54.120 Or instead of your team asking you,

00:10:56.180 they could ask Buddy Pro.

00:10:57.440 That's what it does.

00:10:58.520 Do I think it'll save you money?

00:11:00.780 Hell yeah.

00:11:01.460 Think about all those support emails, right?

00:11:03.460 The support emails only work

00:11:04.660 if they've been properly trained.

00:11:05.720 So now all of a sudden, Buddy Pro can power the response.

00:11:08.720 I think every business can use it.

00:11:10.680 I think it'll save you a lot of money.

00:11:13.120 And I think the way they built it technically,

00:11:16.020 because I know the founders,

00:11:17.160 it's a really smart way to solve this problem long-term

00:11:20.220 that's completely different than just like a custom GPT.

00:11:22.980 I'll rank it in tier A, but at the end.

00:11:25.320 Number 14, granola.ai.

00:11:27.980 The category of recording calls is big, okay?

00:11:31.480 You see them all the time.

00:11:32.520 You get on a Zoom call and you got the thing recording

00:11:34.440 and you're like, who's Firefly is this?

00:11:36.720 I just don't let them into my meetings.

00:11:38.420 I'll tell you why Granola's cooler.

00:11:39.780 Granola actually records on your end,

00:11:41.600 meaning the people that are on the call

00:11:43.240 don't know that you're recording.

00:11:45.280 It's not meant to be sneaky.

00:11:46.640 It's meant for you to take notes

00:11:47.780 so that you have clear understanding of what's been said,

00:11:50.060 recaps and action items and all that stuff.

00:11:51.940 And it does it auto-magically.

00:11:53.520 And the cool part is it works

00:11:54.480 across all the major video platforms.

00:11:56.520 Do I think it'll save you money?

00:11:58.240 If you're not the kind of person that writes things down,

00:12:00.600 yes.

00:12:00.900 If you don't have somebody in your meetings, yes.

00:12:02.440 Easy for you to use?

00:12:03.480 yep literally click click install it starts working is it going to be the one that's going

00:12:08.340 to win the future amongst all my smart technical ai people it's their favorite and that's usually

00:12:14.120 a good sign so i'm going to make it mandatory i think it's s i think everybody should use granola

00:12:20.000 i think it's in front of your atlas for sure and honestly even in front of gamma if you don't use

00:12:25.020 it check it out i think you'll be happy you do number 15 we got chat gpt the big dog the one

00:12:30.360 that started it all okay two and a half years ago do you know close to 700 million people use

00:12:34.980 chat gpt every week as bananas conversational ai for writing coding automation it does more than

00:12:41.680 most people realize obviously it's going to make you a ton of money it's incredibly easy to use

00:12:46.780 literally if you want to learn how to use ai ask ai it'll tell you wild i know they've raised so

00:12:52.620 much money that they're at the point where they're too big to fail so where do i put gpt at the very

00:12:58.340 very, very front. It's dominating the market. It's number one S. Use it. If you're not using

00:13:03.460 it, learn it. I created a whole masterclass video on chat GPT. You can search for that.

00:13:08.180 It'll teach you how to become next level. It's number one. Number 16, Claude, which is the AI

00:13:14.320 by Anthropic. I use all the AIs and I'm going to rank them today, but Claude's one specifically

00:13:19.480 for writing and for code. Yes, GPT-5 is getting better, but still on certain types of projects,

00:13:25.880 it's still winning there will it make you money less than chat gpt because i think it's a use case

00:13:31.320 if you're not using as much very easy to use are they going to be around long term yeah they're

00:13:35.400 not going anywhere they'll probably get bought by somebody i'm going to put it in front of zapier

00:13:39.240 number 17 we've got perplexity.ai this is like the battle of the language models perplexity was the

00:13:45.960 first search engine that was powered by ai now it's kind of like everywhere gpt launched atlas

00:13:52.360 their own browser google's got the ai answers integrating the search results but perplexity

00:13:57.000 was the first one and what's unique is that feedback is verified sources which is cool

00:14:01.240 because sometimes you have a hallucination with the other language models in many ways it's kind

00:14:04.600 of a novelty i'm not going to put it even after granola we're going to go zapier granola perplexity

00:14:10.040 some of you guys will be like oh i disagree that's cool my ranking that's where i'm going to put it

00:14:13.880 number 18 gemini google what google is doing that it's got an advantage over is that it integrates

00:14:20.440 all of its existing tools so here's the thing is it would go ahead of everybody if it was not

00:14:27.000 integrated but if you're not a google ecosystem customer then i'm going to put it third behind

00:14:32.920 claude number 19 notebook lm essentially it's google's ai for analyzing and summarizing files

00:14:39.960 information research there's one use case that i think most people don't know about where you can

00:14:44.600 feed it to like youtube videos and actually tell it to like talk to you through the videos

00:14:50.200 but it generates like a narrative back and forth it's like creating your own podcast and i think

00:14:55.120 it's really tailored for like researchers writers and students so it's not in every company i wouldn't

00:15:00.040 even say it's an a it's kind of a niche thing if you want to get nerdy on this stuff it's in the c

00:15:04.900 it's interesting but it's not necessarily needed number 20 is grok elon buys x takes the ai team

00:15:13.580 spins it out as XAI, brands it as Grok, raises a bunch of money, built this crazy data center.

00:15:20.500 The reason why it's on this list is because I use it more and more. It keeps getting better

00:15:26.000 week over week. I actually use Grok Heavy, which is the $300 a month plan. It is the best one for

00:15:32.700 accuracy, depth of research that I've found. I'm just looking long term. I'm thinking it's way

00:15:38.140 better than Gemini. I think he's going to beat Claude and I think it's going to be number two

00:15:42.480 behind openai's chat gbt that's where i'm putting it i see the updates i see the focus the first

00:15:47.620 principles approach it's one i'm going to bet on number 21 revio if you do any kind of selling

00:15:53.960 over chat i'm talking support emails linkedin instagram facebook then having an ai sales

00:16:02.060 assistant is key revio is one of our portfolio company inside of martel ventures we use it all

00:16:07.160 the time i use it my wife uses it can it make you money a ton of money most people don't know that 0.85

00:16:13.480 if you talk to your followers on social media those are called leads you make money with leads

00:16:18.520 is it going to be relevant long term i think so i'm going to put it in c so it's tough to justify

00:16:23.880 but here's the deal if you use instagram for business it's a must okay so it's niche number

00:16:30.520 22 lovable now this is one of my favorites lovable has been around for a while it helps people that

00:16:36.120 are not technical build apps all my friends that come to me with they're like i've got a tech idea

00:16:41.160 dan i say just go play with lovable the cool part is you can use chat gpt to write the prompt to then

00:16:45.960 insert it into lovable so that it can create the app the way you want i think the future of business

00:16:51.000 is these disposable apps that help run departments right now we use spreadsheets in the future will

00:16:55.720 be apps lovable is that platform i know people that make a lot of money selling lovable apps to

00:17:01.080 businesses and charge $10,000, $15,000 for these apps that AI generated. And I know a lot of

00:17:06.220 businesses that are using it for that disposable idea to save time to build automation. You need

00:17:10.880 to know how to prompt so it's not as easy to use, but they're well-funded. I think they'll be around

00:17:15.940 for a while. The future is going there, but there's other tools that everybody should be using before

00:17:19.920 then in your business. So I'm going to put it at the end of the row B. Number 23 is Cursor AI.

00:17:25.460 If you're a technical person, Cursor is crazy cool.

00:17:29.020 It's an AI coding assistant.

00:17:30.680 It's an IDE, an integrated development environment

00:17:32.980 for you to write code.

00:17:34.660 It's super technical, super nerdy.

00:17:36.540 I'm gonna put it at the end of C.

00:17:38.160 It's really cool.

00:17:39.320 It's just super niche.

00:17:40.700 Number 24, Apple Intelligence.

00:17:42.580 I love that Apple branded AI, Apple Intelligence.

00:17:46.240 Like if you saw their ads, they were like Apple Intelligence.

00:17:48.980 AI for the rest of us. 0.99

00:17:50.660 If you didn't know this, it sucks. 1.00

00:17:53.680 It has always sucked. 0.97

00:17:55.000 nobody uses it people that try to go back to the other ai tools they focus on privacy which is kind

00:18:00.700 of a cornerstone to apple's brand the problem is it's not good crazy i'm doing this because it's

00:18:05.780 an apple product apple hasn't innovated in a while so i'm putting it into f run away until

00:18:11.200 they launch something way better don't use it use any of the other tools so we've ranked all these

00:18:17.940 tools and i can understand it might feel super overwhelming here's what i want to encourage you

00:18:22.620 to do now take the one that you were like oh that's interesting I could see how I would use

00:18:27.320 that in my business and then just spend the next two weeks a installing it like right now go install

00:18:32.540 it then set it up and then just like force yourself to build the new habit to use it because

00:18:37.540 a lot of technology it's not can it do the thing is do you remember to use it go do a project and

00:18:43.160 start trying to habit stack connect the using of that new AI tool to another habit in your workday

00:18:49.080 so that it becomes second nature.

00:18:51.920 That's how we start the process of using these tools

00:18:54.780 to make you a lot more money

00:18:55.740 and getting a lot more time back.

00:18:57.740 And again, if you haven't grabbed

00:18:58.840 the internal AI company operating system doc

00:19:01.220 that my team uses with all of our AI prompts

00:19:03.720 that you can use by clicking the link below,

00:19:06.340 just do that.

00:19:07.200 That is my gift to you at no cost.

00:19:09.460 Now, if you wanna learn what are the best businesses

00:19:11.700 to start, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - January 09, 2026

I Ranked the Best AI Tools to Make Money in 2026

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