Awards 2026: nominations open Nov 10 — help crown the year's best AI
Tested, scored and dated AI tools — served as stacks (recipes) for real creator jobs. Small menu, everything tasted. English + Spanish, from a working filmmaker and musician, not a listing farm.
Featured AIs
View All →Featured stack
Popular
View All →Favlicious
View All →The paying partners our readers actually keep — favorites that fund the site without buying a single rank.
The Goat
View All →GOAT tier: the highest expert scores ever awarded here — the verified 2024 class, badges earned, never sold.
Reviews — the public scoreboard
Every tool page carries a public 5-star rating next to our expert score. Rate tools to shape this list — the average and the star distribution update instantly, and empty tools honestly say "No ratings yet".
The Tasting Notes — newsletter
One email per week: what changed, what died, what is worth your money. No spam, no ranking-for-sale, ever.
Static version: signups are stored only in this browser (localStorage) — no email is sent anywhere yet. Backend hook point noted in the code.
Tools — the tasted menu
A small catalogue on purpose. Every entry carries its current version and a verification stamp. Scores from 2024 are labelled as history; everything else is in 2026 testing — we never invent a score.
What changed in 2026
- Sora is discontinued — app shut Apr 26, 2026; API shut Sep 24, 2026; no OpenAI replacement.
- DALL·E 3 was replaced by ChatGPT Images (GPT Image 2.5) inside ChatGPT.
- Suno v6 family launched Sep 9, 2026 — all older models retired; download caps added (Pro 20/mo, Premier 60/mo).
- ElevenLabs v4 is the new voice flagship (Sep 28, 2026) — and Eleven Music now competes with Suno.
- Kling 4.0 launched Oct 15, 2026; Nano Banana (Google) arrived in image; Veo 3.1 leads video.
- Udio downloads are off since its label settlement — great model, nothing leaves the platform.
- Canva and Notion closed their affiliate programs to new applicants — they are anchors here, not paying partners.
Solutions — recipes, not ingredients
Directories list tools. We serve meals: a job, the exact tools in order, what it costs, and how much time it saves. Rule of the house: every recipe carries at least 2 paying affiliate links — or it is honestly tagged an editorial loss-leader.
Versus — tool battles
Head-to-head, with a declared verdict. Anchors fight payers here on merit only — rankings never follow commission.
The 2024 Ailicious Winners
Awards 2026 — the season
How judging works
70% tested score (our 100-point method, run on real projects) · 20% jury (working creators) · 10% public vote. The public vote also decides a standalone People's Choice. We publish shares and percentages — never raw vote counts. Entry is free in year one.
Tested 70% · the remaining 30% is jury + vote.
Nominate a tool
Static version: nominations are stored only in this browser (localStorage). Backend hook point noted in the code.
People's Choice — your vote
Pick one. Shares are shown as percentages only — raw counts are never published.
Static version: this is a demo ballot stored in this browser.
Deals — only when verified
We do not publish coupon codes we have not checked ourselves. Every card below is queued for verification in the weekly refresh.
Awards 2026 sponsorship
Nine categories, one season (Nov 10 – Dec 21, 2026). Category sponsorships open with the nominations phase — sponsors get placement around the awards, never a vote, never a rank.
Learn — Workflows Magazine
The magazine of AI workflows: how the stacks actually get cooked, in English and Spanish.
Learn AI Marketplace — Coming soon
Courses and stack guides from working creators, sold through BUILD U. Building now:
35% — curriculum drafted, first course in production.
Static version: stored only in this browser (localStorage).
How We Test
Every Ailicious score is dual: an expert score out of 100, plus the public 5-star rating you see on each tool page. The expert score is earned on real projects, weighted like this:
The ten parameters themselves are the original 2024 criteria, recovered from the design archive: Functionality · Performance · Integration · Support & Documentation · Cost · Security & Privacy · Innovation · Humanization · Substituting Human Input · Danger & Ethical Considerations. Each tool page shows how the 2026 weights map onto them.
Score badges: God >96 Goat >87 Hot >70 Underdog >60 Cold <40
Rankings never follow commission. Anchors that pay us nothing (ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney…) headline pages whenever they deserve to. Where a link pays, it is marked rel="sponsored" and disclosed. AI-assisted content we publish passes a SynthID check before it goes out.
Build My Stack
Four questions. One recipe: the best result, the best value, and the simplest way to get your job done.