Collection
93 AI tools, ranked by rarity, with clear notes on China access and payment.
Chat
15
Talks about anything and does almost everything. Most people’s first AI card.
Strong at long-form writing and code, with careful, steady answers.
A leading open-weight model from China with strong reasoning. Free on the web.
Google’s multimodal model, wired into Gmail, Docs and the rest of Workspace.
Alibaba’s free assistant, formerly Tongyi Qianwen, that can also run tasks for you.
From xAI. Reads X (Twitter) in real time and has a looser personality.
Good at reading long documents and web pages. Drop in a PDF and ask.
ByteDance’s free assistant. Easy to start with, fine for everyday writing and Q&A.
Tencent’s assistant. It can search WeChat articles and fits neatly into the WeChat world.
Microsoft’s free assistant, built into Windows, Edge and Office.
One account for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and more, handy for comparing models.
The chat assistant for Zhipu’s GLM models. Free, and good with long text and code.
Baidu’s assistant, strong on Chinese knowledge and tied in with search.
iFlytek’s model, strongest at voice input and education.
Mistral’s assistant from France. Very fast, with a generous free tier.
Image
14
The image tool with taste. The better your prompt, the bigger the payoff.
Node-based workflows. The hardest to learn, with the highest ceiling.
From the CapCut team. Handles Chinese prompts well and makes both images and video.
China’s biggest AI art model community, with huge numbers of LoRA models to use online.
Gets text inside images right, ideal for posters, logos and lettering.
Real-time generation as you sketch, plus upscaling and video. Great creative feel.
Generates true vector art and icons, a shortcut for brand assets and illustration.
Alibaba’s image and video generator. Handles Chinese prompts well, with plenty of free credits.
A favourite for game art and concept design, with many models and styles.
A product-photo workhorse: remove backgrounds, swap scenes, batch edits.
One-click background removal. Does one thing and does it cleanly.
Meitu’s AI art and photo tool. Simple to use for everyday images.
A set of neat image tools: background removal, outpainting, cleanup and relighting.
Free, open-source image upscaling on your own machine. Great for old photos.
Video
11
OpenAI’s video model. Makes short clips with sound and a cinematic look.
Google’s filmmaking tool built on Veo, generating picture and sound together.
China’s go-to video editor, with AI captions, voiceover and one-click edits.
A top video generator from China, with steady camera work and motion.
A veteran of AI video: generate, extend and edit in one place.
MiniMax’s video generator, with natural motion and facial expressions.
Avatar talking-head videos, plus translation into many languages with lip sync.
Shengshu’s video model, known for keeping characters consistent from reference images.
Luma’s video generator with realistic camera moves and physics.
Playful video generation with effects and remix templates for social clips.
Turns long videos into captioned short clips automatically.
Coding
12
A coding agent in your terminal that understands the whole project, edits code and runs tests.
The editor that put AI at the center and changed how many people write code.
OpenAI’s coding agent that works through several tasks in parallel in the cloud.
Code completion inside the editor you already use. Works out of the box.
From Vercel. Describe it and get a working web UI or app, great for prototypes.
Build complete apps without coding, database and login included.
An AI editor that tracks context well for continuous changes in large projects.
An online coding environment with an AI agent that can ship what it builds.
Generates and runs full-stack apps right in the browser, deploy in one click.
ByteDance’s AI code editor. Works in China without a VPN.
Alibaba’s free coding plugin that works in China, for completion and Q&A.
Tencent Cloud’s coding tool in plugin, IDE and CLI forms. Free in China.
Search
6
An answer engine that cites a source for every claim.
Alibaba’s AI search with cloud storage, scanning and study tools, popular with students.
Ad-free AI search in Chinese that cites its sources.
AI search over Zhihu content, reliable for practical and professional questions.
360’s AI search that can turn results into videos, slides and mind maps.
Multilingual AI search that researches across languages and makes slides.
Office
7
AI inside your notes and wiki that summarizes, writes and searches everything you have.
The assistant inside WPS for documents, spreadsheets and slides.
Turns text into infographics and diagrams automatically, great for reports.
Records meetings, transcribes and writes minutes, linked to Lark Docs and Calendar.
Turn an outline into a decent slide deck in minutes.
Enter a topic or upload a document and get Chinese slides in minutes.
Real-time transcription and summaries for English meetings, joins Zoom and Teams.
Audio
9
Write one line, get a full song with vocals.
Lifelike voiceover and voice cloning in many languages.
An AI composer on par with Suno, with refined sound suited to fine-tuning.
A veteran speech-to-text service supporting many languages and dialects.
Turns meetings and lectures into text with summaries and to-dos. Accurate Chinese recognition.
Voice cloning and TTS that copies a voice from seconds of audio, strong in Chinese.
ByteDance’s free AI songwriter, good with Chinese lyrics and traditional styles.
Makes phone recordings sound studio-quality, removing noise and echo in one click.
Popular for short-video voiceovers, with many voices and adjustable emotion.
Writing
6
One of the best-regarded translators. DeepL Write also polishes your English.
A browser extension for side-by-side translation of pages, PDFs and video subtitles.
Grammar and style help for English writing, everywhere you type.
Chinese proofreading, rewriting and polishing for formal and social writing.
Paraphrasing for English text, popular with students writing papers.
A Chinese writing assistant with templates for reports, summaries and copy.
Design
6
The industry standard for interface design, with AI for mockups, prototypes and sites.
Template-rich online design with AI for images, layout and video.
Website builder for designers. AI drafts pages and you publish directly.
A design agent that makes posters, brand kits and videos from a brief.
Templates for e-commerce and social, with AI cutouts and product shots.
Meitu’s online design platform for AI product shots, posters and logos.
Agents
7
An open-source platform for AI apps with mature RAG and workflows, self-hostable.
Open-source workflow automation connecting hundreds of apps, with AI nodes for agents.
A general AI agent that researches, writes reports and builds pages from one request.
ByteDance’s agent builder with drag-and-drop workflows, publishable to Douyin and Lark.
A super agent that makes calls, builds spreadsheets and creates slides and video.
Zhipu’s phone and desktop agent that orders food, books tickets and operates websites.
Kunlun’s agent, good at in-depth reports, slides and spreadsheets.