Actually, I disagree about the free tiers being nerfed. Using a targeted toolset has made me very satisfied with the free options available this year.

• NotebookLM by Google is honestly great for history research and summarizing piles of PDFs.
• Cursor Code Editor Free Tier works well for your CS debugging without constant limits. These are reliable tools and I have no complaints about the reliability of their free features.

@Reply #3 - good point! In my experience, relying on AI for citations is risky business. I once caught a model making up a whole primary source for a history paper... super scary. I've tried many tools over the years, but these are my core safety picks:

• Phind AI Search Engine Free Tier for coding syntax.
• Zotero Reference Manager 7.0 to verify sources. Stay skeptical.

This thread is gold. Bookmarking for future reference 🔖

Saw this earlier and wanted to jump in because honestly, the free tiers have been getting kinda nerfed lately. If you try to write a 10-page paper using just the web version of Claude, you are gonna hit a wall in like twenty minutes, which is super annoying when you are in the zone.

• For your CS side, definitely grab the GitHub Copilot Free for Students. Since you are at UMich, you get the full version for zero dollars through the GitHub Student Developer Pack. It is way better than copy-pasting code into a chat box.
• For the History research, skip the base Perplexity if you are worried about accuracy. Use Google NotebookLM instead. It is free right now and you can upload a ton of PDFs. It only answers based on the sources you actually give it, so the hallucinations are way less of an issue compared to random web searches. Don't bother with the paid subs, just stack these specific student perks... they actually work.

tl;dr: Combine a search-focused tool for history and a standard chat model for coding syntax to stay under free limits. Honestly, I have been very happy with the free tiers lately. They work well for my research needs and I have no complaints about the speed for basic tasks. I have found that using one tool for finding sources and another for drafting works best because no single free tool does it all perfectly. You just have to be cautious and verify the citations yourself since they do hallucinate occasionally, but I am satisfied with the reliability for general structure and brainstorming. Quick question tho—are you mostly looking for help with high-level concept explanations for your CS labs, or do you need something that can parse through huge stacks of historical documents at once? Knowing your typical file size would help a lot.

Re: "tl;dr: Combine a search-focused tool for history and..."

• Honestly, I kinda disagree with the idea of needing a massive stack of different tools. It just gets confusing when youre switching between five tabs mid-study session. I usually just stick to these two for a good balance:
• Perplexity AI Free Tier is my top pick for the history side. People worry about hallucinations, but since it actually cites its sources, you can just click the link to see if it made it up. Its way more reliable than standard bots for factual research.
• Google Gemini 1.5 Flash Free Tier is what I use for the heavy lifting in CS. The context window is huge, so you can dump a whole 50-page PDF or a massive block of code and it wont forget the beginning by the time you reach the end. Perplexity is better for finding facts, but Gemini is definitely faster for just getting a general summary of your reading material. Just dont trust either of them to write the whole paper... theyre better as research assistants than ghostwriters.