DEV Community

José D. Gutiérrez
José D. Gutiérrez

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at desdejupiter.hashnode.dev

Best productivity subscriptions worth paying for in 2025 🚀

It's crucial to invest in tools that truly enhance our productivity and experience, as they make our lives easier. These days, I've been thoroughly reviewing which services are worth keeping, and I'll explain it below.

🤖 Claude Pro

Claude

Claude, especially with its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, has transformed my workflow. Claude stands out for its deep understanding of technical context and its ability to generate precise responses in infrastructure and development topics.

I've been testing both ChatGPT and Claude in their free versions, and Claude not only has a much friendlier interface, but it also generated better responses in my opinion, thanks to its ethical and secure approach. Regarding code generation, I also noticed more accurate responses.

But don't just take my word for it. Check out a detailed objective comparison here

Advantages over the free plan:

  • Higher daily message limit

  • Priority access during peak hours

  • Ability to process longer documents

  • Faster and more consistent responses

The difference in my workflow is particularly noticeable in tasks like debugging, pipeline optimization, and infrastructure analysis or design.

💻 GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot has become a default extension in my development process. The recent integration with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, a model I've grown accustomed to using, has significantly improved its contextual understanding, and I'm confident it will continue receiving improvements.

Why Copilot over alternatives:

  • Seamless integration with VSCode and GitHub

  • More precise and contextual suggestions thanks to Claude

  • Faster response time (?)

  • Production-proven stability

Cursor Meme

Cursor offers a really interesting proposition with its "tab tab tab" style. It's quite impressive to use, I must admit. If you haven't tried it yet, I recommend giving it a shot.

However, it's still a VSCode fork in early stages. It feels "sluggish" and still has many bugs, especially during long sessions.

It's great for experimenting, but for day-to-day work, I prefer a more stable solution.

💡Tip: Recently, GitHub Copilot has added a free plan, obviously with limitations. If you haven't tried Copilot before, now's a good opportunity to do so.

🔑 1Password

1Password application popup offering categories to get started, developer tools, and most popular logins, with icons and options like login, credit card, passport, and API credential.

1Password is the most comprehensive password manager I've tried. Its versatility goes beyond just storing passwords by accepting a wide variety of items to always have them at hand. Ever had to go look for your passport just to see and copy the number? I have.

Key features:

  • Full PassKeys support

  • Windows Hello integration

  • SSH key management with OpenSSH replacement

  • Secure storage for sensitive documents

  • Password generator and review with Watchtower

What I like most is its developer-focused approach. It allows you to store database access, SSH keys, and server credentials. By replacing OpenSSH with its own agent, you can easily connect to remote servers.

🌎 Kagi

Kagi is a search engine, like Google or Bing, but with a different approach: Showing relevant results (sounds ironic, doesn't it?). Currently, the top results are usually ads and promoted sites, not to mention that search tools might not be very user-friendly.

Why_pay_for_search

I've been testing Kagi for a while, and it's really a productivity boost by helping me find what I actually want quickly. Plus, it's highly customizable.

Strong points:

  • Highly accurate results without ads

  • Intuitive advanced search tools

  • Customization of result sources

  • Focus on privacy and user experience

It also includes AI features like Global Summarizer to give you a website summary (works with YouTube videos too), ask questions based on a blog post, or translate sites.

If you're still not clear on why pay for search, they explain it better.

Conclusion

There are thousands of tools and services to cover our needs, and many of them are free. It's worth analyzing which tasks are the most important in your routine and identifying which services can really give you a "Power Up".

Investing in tools is necessary. You're investing in time, and time is invaluable...

Which services do you think are worth paying for?

Top comments (0)