“Best free AI tools” is the wrong search if you have a job to finish this week. The plan either fits that job or it does not.
Measure your week
Note how long the material is, how many times you will run it, and whether it contains client data or unreleased code. Those three lines remove most products before you create an account.
Four limits
| Limit | Failure you feel | Question |
|---|---|---|
| Quota | It stops on Wednesday | Does my week fit? |
| Context | The summary ignores the last pages | Does my longest file fit? |
| Freshness | It invents a current price or flag | Does this task need today’s docs? |
| Training use | You cannot explain the policy | May this file leave the company? |
Retrying will not lengthen the context window. It only spends the quota.
One tool per job
Writing: a free tier is often enough if the text is short and the format sticks. Coding: free personal chat is the wrong place for a private repo. Long PDFs: if the tool cannot take the file, do not paste it in slices and trust the ending. Repeated cleanup: this is where free quotas die first. Pay after the workflow is real, not before.
Test with last week’s work, including one question you can verify on an official page. Two failures out of three means you do not keep the account. A wider map is in Choose AI tools that save time.