Been thinking about your question since I’ve basically been in that same spot for years. Ngl, the free limits on ChatGPT are the worst when you're actually getting work done. Since someone already mentioned Copilot, here is what I would suggest:

1. Claude 3.5 Sonnet - Honestly, it's way better at writing. It feels more human and less "bot-like" for essays, but be careful because the free message limit is pretty low compared to others.

2. Perplexity AI - This is the real hidden gem for students. It's basically a search engine that cites every source properly. It's great if you're worried about accuracy.

I've found that rotating between these helps me avoid the paywalls lol. Just gotta be mindful of the daily caps. Good luck!

Honestly, I was in the same boat last semester trying to finish my thesis without going broke. I found that Perplexity AI is a total lifesaver for research because it actually cites its sources for free, which saves sooo much time. Also, if you need to summarize huge PDFs, definitely check out Humata AI—they have a free tier that's way more generous for students than the basic ChatGPT limits. Good luck with the studies!!

Ok so I feel u on the budget thing, honestly the $20 for ChatGPT is way too much for a student. I was using it for my bio labs but kept hitting that annoying limit... it's literally the worst when you're in the middle of a flow.

I would suggest checking out Microsoft Copilot because it's basically GPT-4 for free and it actually cites its sources with little footnotes, which is highkey a lifesaver for research. Another one I use a lot is Claude.ai from Anthropic. The free version of Claude 3.5 Sonnet is sooo much better at writing and summarizing long papers without sounding like a robot, though the message limit is kinda low sometimes.

If you're doing heavy research, try Perplexity AI. It's more of a search engine style but it's great for finding actual sources. But yeah, these tools still have limits, which sucks, but rotating between them usually gets me through the day. gl with your finals!!

late to the party but honestly i feel u on the struggle... I had such a bad experience last week when ChatGPT Free Version cut me off right before my history paper was due and i basically panicked lol. Since Microsoft Copilot and Claude 3.5 Sonnet were already mentioned, i found a few other things that are actually safe and won't wreck your budget:

1. NotebookLM by Google - This is literally a hidden gem for students. It's totally free and you can upload like 50 PDFs at once. It only uses the info you give it so it's way more reliable for citations.
2. HuggingFace Chat - You can pick different models here for free. It's a bit more techy but it doesnt bug you to upgrade every five seconds which is nice.
3. DuckDuckGo AI Chat - If you're worried about privacy, this one is great because it's anonymous and lets you use models like Llama for free.

It's kinda wierd how some of these aren't more popular tho? gl with your coursework!!

Solid advice 👍

Honestly i spent all of last semester trying to find the perfect setup without spending a dime and i learned the hard way that you gotta be super careful with these tools. I used to just copy-paste whatever the ai gave me but then i realized some of these free models will straight up lie about citations just to sound confident... like i actually found a fake source in one of my outlines and it would have been so embarrassing to hand that in. My advice is to basically use them for the heavy lifting of brainstorming but never trust the math or the specific page numbers without checking them yourself. Also watch out for those random free pdf readers you find on google search - half of them have terrible privacy or they just hallucinate parts of the text because their context window is too small. It is a bit of a diy process to verify everything but it is the only way to stay safe when you are not paying for the premium stuff.

^ This. Also, I spent a solid six months trying to bridge that gap between the free limits and actually getting my work done. I remember staying up until 3 AM last finals week, and the tool I was using just... stopped. It was like hitting a brick wall. I ended up looking into ways to run things myself on my own hardware. I had to learn the hard way that relying on one single site is a recipe for disaster. My current setup is basically a mix of a few open-source things I found online that dont have those annoying message caps. It took a bit of fiddling with my settings to get it running smoothly, but it was worth it not to have that upgrade to pro banner staring me in the face every five minutes. It isnt always as polished as the big names, but for just getting a summary or a quick logic check, it gets the job done without the stress of a ticking clock. I found that having a backup that runs through a less-known portal really saved my grades last term.

My buddy told me the exact same thing last week. Guess he was right lol.