ToolPulse Weekly #1: The Baseline — 30 AI Tools We Track
ToolPulse starts tracking prices and plans of 30 AI tools; 25 are verified from official pages as of Sept 29, 2026. Change reports start next week.
This is the first ToolPulse Weekly, and it is a starting line, not a change report. We captured the current plans and prices of 30 AI and productivity tools from their official pages on Sept 29, 2026.
From the next issue on, every report will say what changed since that snapshot — with source and date. One thing is already worth knowing: GitHub Copilot has been shipping a lot of budget and cost controls in its changelog, without changing its listed prices.
What we track
The watchlist covers 30 tools in seven categories. It is a starting set and will grow. Tools marked with * could not be verified automatically (see below).
| Category | Tools | Which ones |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace & notes | 4 | Notion, Coda (now Superhuman Docs)*, ClickUp, Craft |
| Automation | 3 | Zapier, Make, n8n |
| Meeting notes | 5 | Fathom (meeting notes), Otter.ai, Granola, Fireflies.ai, tl;dv |
| Writing & assistants | 5 | Grammarly, Jasper, Copy.ai, Perplexity*, ChatGPT Plus* |
| Newsletter & analytics | 5 | Beehiiv, Substack, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), Mailchimp, Ghost |
| Image, video & audio | 5 | Midjourney*, Descript, Loom, Canva*, ElevenLabs |
| Coding assistants | 3 | GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Replit |
How we verify
For every tool we read the vendor's own pricing page (and its changelog where one exists) and store the tiers and prices with the retrieval date. Each week we read the same pages again and compare. Everything published here comes from public information; ToolPulse does not test tools hands-on. If we cannot trace a number to an official source retrieved that week, we do not publish it.
What we could and could not verify
25 of 30 tools are verified. For 24 of them we read the official pricing page directly. For Substack we used its official help-center article on fees (10% of subscription revenue plus payment-processing fees, no flat monthly charge), because its help pages block automated retrieval.
5 of 30 tools are not verified yet: Superhuman Docs (formerly Coda), Perplexity, ChatGPT Plus, Canva and Midjourney. Their pricing pages either render only in JavaScript or block automated requests (bot protection). That does not mean their prices changed — we simply cannot confirm them automatically. We will not publish numbers for these five until we can trace them to an official source. If you plan to buy one of them, check the vendor's pricing page directly.
One item to watch: GitHub Copilot's changelog
GitHub Copilot's official changelog lists several entries between Sept 14 and Sept 29, 2026: a new model (GPT-6.1 Sol), "Copilot budget increase requests" becoming generally available, expiration dates for per-user budgets, cost and quality controls for automatic model selection, and default-enablement changes for Business and Enterprise plans. None of these changes a listed price. Together they show Copilot building enterprise-style budget and credit controls around its existing per-seat pricing. If you manage Copilot for a team and want to cap AI spend per seat, these admin features are worth a look; they are opt-in.
What comes next
ToolPulse Weekly will report confirmed changes since the previous snapshot: price increases, new or removed plans, limit changes and notable feature changes. In weeks without a confirmed change, we will not publish a filler issue. Alongside, we will publish comparison posts when a change makes people reconsider their tools.
Sources
All figures were read from the vendors' own pages on Sept 29, 2026 (not hands-on tested).
- GitHub Copilot — changelog
- Notion — Pricing
- ClickUp — Pricing
- Craft — Pricing
- Zapier — Pricing
- Make — Pricing
- n8n — Pricing
- Fathom — Pricing
- Otter.ai — Pricing
- Granola — Pricing
- Fireflies.ai — pricing breakdown
- tl;dv — Pricing
- Grammarly — Plans
- Jasper — Pricing
- Copy.ai — Pricing
- beehiiv — Pricing
- Kit — Pricing
- Mailchimp — Pricing
- Ghost(Pro) — Pricing
- Descript — Pricing
- Loom — Pricing
- ElevenLabs — Pricing
- GitHub Copilot — Plans
- Cursor — Pricing
- Replit — Pricing
- Substack — How much does Substack cost
Tools in this post
GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant offering inline code suggestions, chat and agent modes across editors, the CLI and G…
- Free plan
- From $10/month · Pro
- Prices checked Sept 29, 2026
Substack
Substack is a newsletter publishing platform with no flat platform fee for free publishing; it instead takes a percentage of …
- Free plan
- From $0.30 per transaction · Paid subscriptions
- Prices checked Sept 29, 2026
ChatGPT Plus
ChatGPT is OpenAI's conversational AI assistant; the paid Plus tier adds higher usage limits, broader model and reasoning opt…
- Prices not verified
Perplexity
Perplexity is an AI answer engine that combines web search with cited, sourced responses; the paid Pro tier adds more citatio…
- Prices not verified
Get ToolPulse Weekly
What changed in the prices, plans and features of the AI tools you use, once a week, with source and date.