Directory / By profession / Students
Best AI tools for students
Student time goes into reading, making sense of dense material, writing it up and presenting it, usually against a deadline. The tools worth using help you understand and study your sources faster; check your course's AI policy before submitting anything a model helped write.
- 01 Studying from your own course material: Gemini Notebook
- 02 Explaining concepts and brainstorming: ChatGPT
- 03 Finding sources with citations: Perplexity
- 04 Reading papers above your level: SciSpace
- 05 Proofreading assignments: Grammarly
- 06 Class presentations in Google Slides: SlidesAI
Studying from your own course material
Gemini Notebook
Free · Plus with Google One AI
Answers only from the lecture notes, PDFs, slides and YouTube links you upload, and links every claim to the exact passage. The free tier is generous: 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, 50 chat queries and 3 Audio Overviews a day. It will not search the open web for you.
- Free tier
- No account purchase needed. 100 notebooks, up to 50 sources/notebook (each up to ~500,000 words), 50 chat queries/day, 3 Audio Overviews/day, 3 Video Overviews/day, 10 reports/day, 10 Deep Research sessions/month
Explaining concepts and brainstorming
ChatGPT
Free · Plus from $20/mo
Unlimited everyday text chats on the free tier, voice mode on the mobile app for talking a problem through, and it reads uploaded PDFs and images. It struggles to hold a very long document accurately in one pass, so do not trust it to summarise a whole book.
- Free tier
- Unlimited everyday text chats (abuse safeguards apply); GPT-5 access capped around 10 messages per 5 hours, then falls back to a mini model
Finding sources with citations
Perplexity
Free · Pro from $20/mo
Every answer comes with numbered citations you can check, and a focus mode restricts results to academic papers. The free tier allows roughly 3 Pro Searches a day; Pro is $20/mo, which most students will not need.
- Free tier
- Limited daily searches (roughly 3 Pro Searches/day plus a small number of Deep Research queries), basic model access, capped file uploads (~40MB per file, 30-day retention)
Reading papers above your level
SciSpace
Free · from $12/mo (annual) / $20/mo (monthly)
Highlight a passage and it explains it in context, which helps when the maths in a paper is beyond you. The free plan allows roughly 5 PDF chats a month; Premium is $12/mo billed annually. It is a reading companion, not a way to find papers.
- Free tier
- Basic, $0, capped usage - roughly 5 lit-review searches, 5 PDF chats, 10 writer actions, 20 citations/month
Proofreading assignments
Grammarly
Free · Pro from $12/mo
Free spelling and grammar checking inside Word, Gmail and Notion without copy-paste. It edits what you already wrote rather than producing a draft from nothing.
- Free tier
- Spelling and grammar checking, writing-tone insights, 100 AI prompts
Class presentations in Google Slides
SlidesAI
Free (12 presentations/yr) · Pro from $10/mo
Paste your notes and it builds a themed deck directly inside Google Slides. The free plan allows 12 presentations a year with a 1,000-character input each, enough for a term of group projects.
- Free tier
- Yes: 12 AI-generated presentations per year, 1,000-character input per presentation, 120 AI credits/year
What you can skip
Jasper sells brand-voice enforcement for marketing teams from $59/mo with no free tier, and its listing says a $20 assistant matches its raw writing quality. Jasper profile.
Head-to-heads between these picks
Other professions
Some outbound links are affiliate links, marked sponsored. Several tools on this page pay us nothing. Affiliate status never decides what is picked or the order it appears in.