Students need two things from AI: a patient explainer and a way to make sense of their own course material. Most of that is available for free.
Start free: NotebookLM turns your readings into a tutor that only answers from your sources, and ChatGPT Free covers everyday questions with unlimited text chats. If you pay, Google AI Plus ($4.99/mo) raises both Gemini and NotebookLM limits for very little.
| App | Free tier | Paid from | Top plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) | Yes | $4.99/mo | $99.99–199.99/mo | Students, researchers, and analysts who need grounded answers and audio summaries from their own documents |
| ChatGPT | Yes | $8/mo | $500/mo | Everyday writing, brainstorming, image generation, casual coding |
| Gemini | Yes | $4.99/mo | $99.99–199.99/mo | Google ecosystem users, video generation, very long documents (1M tokens) |
| DeepSeek | Yes | — | — | Math, logic, coding for users on a budget — or curious experimenters |
| Mistral Vibe | Yes | $14.99/mo | $24.99/mo | Users who want a privacy-conscious European alternative to ChatGPT/Claude with all-day agentic coding built in |
| Perplexity | Yes | $20/mo | $200/mo | Research with verifiable sources, fact-checking, exploring unfamiliar topics |
Monthly prices in US dollars before tax, from each vendor's official pricing (US list price; weekly-billed plans converted to a monthly figure). Updated October 7, 2026
Upload lecture notes, PDFs and readings, then ask questions or generate Audio Overviews to listen to; answers stay grounded in your sources. The free tier allows 50 questions a day.
Pick it if: you're revising from a pile of your own course material.
Full NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) pricing →Unlimited text chats on Free and file uploads for worksheets or slides; Go at $8/mo adds memory and projects to keep each course organised.
Pick it if: you want one assistant for explanations, essay feedback and quick questions.
Full ChatGPT pricing →For $4.99/mo, NotebookLM jumps to 200 notebooks and 200 questions a day, Gemini's limits double with limited access to Gemini 3.1 Pro, and you get 400 GB of storage for coursework.
Pick it if: you already use Google Docs and Drive for coursework.
Full Gemini pricing →It shows its chain-of-thought, so you can follow the working on maths and logic problems step by step — free and unlimited.
Pick it if: you want to understand the method, not just get the answer.
Full DeepSeek pricing →The Education plan gives verified students the same limits as Pro for $5.99/mo, capped at 12 months — one of the few explicit student prices we track.
Pick it if: you're enrolled at an accredited institution and want a paid-tier assistant cheaply.
Full Mistral Vibe pricing →Cited answers make it easier to check facts and find real sources for essays. Perplexity also added an Education Pro plan in April 2026 — worth checking if you qualify.
Pick it if: you need references you can actually cite.
Full Perplexity pricing →Ask for explanations, practice questions and feedback on your own drafts — that's where these tools help most. Be wary of paraphrasing "humanizers": even our QuillBot listing notes that its humanized output can still trip AI detectors.
A few. Mistral Vibe has an Education plan at $5.99/mo for verified students (up to 12 months), and Perplexity launched an Education Pro plan in April 2026. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini don't list a student price in our data — their free tiers are the student option.
Yes, for everyone: 100 notebooks with 50 sources each, 50 chat questions and 3 Audio Overviews a day. Higher limits come only bundled with a Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription.
ChatGPT Free for general explanations, DeepSeek when you want to see the reasoning behind a maths answer, and NotebookLM when the answer should come from your own class material.
How we choose: prices come from each vendor's official pricing page and are re-checked every week. We take no affiliate fees, so rankings aren't for sale.