About Automate Basics
Automate Basics teaches people who aren't engineers to use AI at work: free step-by-step guides and courses, and AI tools compared from each vendor's own pages.
Guides
Step-by-step guides for doing a real task with AI: triaging an inbox, filing attachments, reporting from a spreadsheet. Plus guides from the companies that make the tools, marked as theirs and reviewed before they go live.
Read the guidesThe directory
212 AI and automation tools in 26 categories. Plans, prices, free-plan limits and platforms come from each vendor's own pages, with the sources and the date listed on every page; the current set was checked 27 October 2026.
Browse the toolsCourses
8 free courses on the assistants themselves and 4 assessed certifications. Every lesson and the assessment are free; a verifiable certificate is $49 to $149, asked for only after a pass.
See the coursesFor companies
If your company makes an AI or automation tool, list it ($9.99, refunded if it is not approved) and write guides for the people who use it. An editor reviews every listing and guide first.
Submit your toolWhy it exists
The tools arrived on almost every desk in about two years. The help people need to choose and use them did not follow.
88%
of organisations now use AI in at least one business function
36%
of workers say they have the training and resources they need to use AI
41%
of workers say their employer has done nothing to prepare them to use AI
What we hold ourselves to
Facts from the source
Tool facts come from the vendor's own pages, dated, with the pages listed. Where we could not confirm a price, we quote none.
No invented scores
No star ratings or scores: we have no reviews to base them on, and a rating without them would mislead you.
Nothing for sale in the editorial
Sponsored placements exist and are always labelled Sponsored. They never change a tool's facts or its place in a list.
Company guides say who wrote them
A guide written by the company that makes a tool carries the company's name and says it makes the tool.
Honest about limits
Every tool page lists what the free plan does not include and where the tool falls short.
Anu Verma
Tech and automation writer
Who writes Automate Basics
Anu Verma is a tech and automation enthusiast who writes about AI tools and automation.
On Automate Basics she writes for people who use these tools at work rather than build them: what a tool actually does, what it costs, and the steps to put it to use.