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Daily brief

Sunday, May 17, 2026

The AI tool we'd quit before the others + why bundles are getting better

If you had to cut one $20/mo AI subscription right now, which would it be? Here's the honest answer most reviewers won't give. Plus: the new wave of bundled tier deals worth your attention.

The honest cut question

If you're paying $20/mo each for ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Notion AI, and Grammarly Premium, that's $100/mo. Which gets cut first? Honest answer: Notion AI ($10/mo on top of Notion Plus) — unless you live deep inside Notion. The workspace-grounded answers are great but if you're a light Notion user, prompting Claude with the same docs pasted in works just as well at half the marginal cost.

The shift to watch

Bundle deals are improving. Anthropic's Claude Pro now includes Projects + 200K context as defaults. OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro at $200/mo includes Sora video generation. The 'separately priced features' era is ending — pick one heavyweight subscription and lean into it before paying for 5 niche tools.

Tool of the day

Claude. If you had to keep ONE AI subscription for everything (writing, code, analysis, long documents), Claude Pro is the strongest single bet in 2026. The 200K context window alone replaces three or four single-purpose tools.

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