Guide · Jun 8, 2026
People sometimes ask why the directory has nineteen tools instead of ninety. The honest answer is that most tools we evaluate don't make it in. These are the five patterns that most often keep one out.
First: no visible pricing. If finding out what a tool costs requires booking a demo call, it's built for procurement departments, not for someone with a task due this afternoon. Our users need tools they can start using in the next five minutes.
Second: the output gallery is all cherry-picks. Every image tool shows its best work on the landing page, that's fine. But when we test with ordinary prompts and the results are nothing like the gallery, that gap tells you what the median experience will be.
Third: aggressive credit expiry. Tools that sell credits which evaporate in thirty days are monetizing your forgetfulness. We're not comfortable routing people into that.
Fourth: identity confusion. A surprising number of products are thin wrappers around the same underlying models, with markup and a coat of paint. If a tool's only distinguishing feature is its logo, you're better off going to the source, and we'll route you there instead.
Fifth, and this one is disqualifying on its own: publishing user inputs by default. A few tools quietly make everything you generate public unless you find the right toggle. For prompts that might contain business or personal details, that default matters enormously.
None of this makes the tools we do list perfect. But every one of them cleared these five bars at the time we added it, and we re-check when things change. When a listed tool starts failing one, it gets a warning in its write-up or comes out of the directory.