I've read a hundred "best tools for developers" articles. Most of them are written by someone who clearly hasn't used the tools — they're ranking things by affiliate commission rate, not actual usefulness.
So this is different. This is literally what I have open right now, on a normal Tuesday, doing normal software engineering work. I'm going to tell you what each tool costs me, why I keep paying for it, and what I'd switch to if I had to cut it.
No padding. No fake superlatives. Just what's actually running.
The AI Coding Assistant: Cursor
I switched to Cursor about six months ago and it changed how I write code more than anything since I learned to touch-type.
The short version: it's VS Code, but the AI actually understands your entire codebase. You can ask it to "refactor this function to handle edge cases like the ones in auth.py" — and it knows what auth.py looks like. You can describe a bug in plain English and it'll find it. You can tell it to write tests for a specific function and they'll actually be tests that work.
I was skeptical. I'd used GitHub Copilot and found it useful but shallow — good at completing lines, not at understanding what I was trying to build. Cursor is different. It's slower sometimes, and it hallucinates occasionally, but when it's right, it saves me 20–30 minutes on tasks I'd otherwise spend grinding through alone.
Cost: ~$20/month (Pro). Worth it for me because I write code professionally — it earns back its cost in the first few days of the month.
Who should skip it: If you're just learning to code, don't use AI assistants heavily. You'll learn to write prompts instead of learning to think. Come back to it once you have fundamentals.
The AI for Everything Else: Claude
For anything that isn't code — writing documentation, drafting technical specs, summarizing long reports, debugging my own thinking — I use Claude.
I tried using ChatGPT for this for a long time. The difference isn't dramatic, but Claude handles long context better (you can paste an entire file and ask questions about it) and the writing it produces feels less like a press release. It doesn't over-explain or add unnecessary fluff.
The specific thing I use it for most: pasting a long Slack thread or email chain and asking "what decision needs to be made here and what are the options?" Saves me from reading 40 messages carefully.
Cost: Claude Pro is ~$20/month. I've used the free version and it's fine for occasional use — rate limits aren't a problem unless you use it heavily during the day.
The VPN: NordVPN
I almost cancelled this one. Let me be honest about that.
I was using it mainly on public Wi-Fi, and I started working from home full-time, so I thought — why am I paying for this? Then I read about a DNS attack that affected a coworker's home router and I kept it.
The real reasons I keep NordVPN:
- I do side projects. Testing things in different regions, checking what a site looks like from the US vs. Europe — this comes up more than I expected.
- Occasionally I work from cafes. On public Wi-Fi, a VPN is just basic hygiene at this point.
- The Meshnet feature. NordVPN has this feature where you can connect your devices directly across the internet, like your own private network. I use it to access my home desktop from my laptop without any other setup. Underrated.
The speed is fast enough that I genuinely forget it's on most of the time. NordLynx protocol (their WireGuard implementation) makes it nearly as fast as no VPN.
Cost: ~$3.49/month on the 2-year plan. Lowest-friction security purchase I make.
The Note-Taking / Second Brain: Notion
This one I've had the most complicated relationship with.
Notion is extremely powerful and extremely easy to turn into a graveyard of half-organized notes you never look at again. I've done that twice. The third time I set strict rules: only three databases. Tasks, Projects, and Reference. Nothing else.
With that constraint, it's become genuinely useful. My tasks database has a simple Kanban view. My Projects database has one page per project with context, decisions, and links. My Reference database is searchable notes organized by topic.
What I do NOT use Notion for: daily journaling, meeting notes, or anything time-sensitive. Those go into a plain text file that I delete weekly. Notion is for things I'll want to find in six months.
Cost: Free plan is sufficient for a single user. I'm on free.
The Password Manager: Bitwarden
Every developer should have a password manager. If you don't, stop reading this and go set one up — you need it before you need anything else on this list.
I used LastPass for years, switched to Bitwarden after LastPass's 2022 breach, and haven't looked back. It's open source (you can audit the code yourself), the browser extension works flawlessly, and it syncs across every device.
Cost: Free. The paid version ($10/year) adds emergency access and some 2FA features, but the free version handles everything I need.
There is no reason to use any other password manager. Bitwarden is free, open-source, and audited. 1Password is good if you prefer a polished UI and don't mind paying. Those are your two options. Everything else is worse.
The SEO Tool: Semrush (When I Need It)
I'll be honest: I don't use Semrush every day. It's too expensive to use casually (~$140/month for a real plan).
But when I'm doing keyword research for a project — like when I started this site — it's irreplaceable. The keyword difficulty scores, the traffic estimates, the competitor analysis. There's nothing better for understanding whether a topic is worth writing about before you spend hours on it.
My current setup: I use the free version for basic lookups (limited to 10 searches per day) and occasionally do a one-month subscription when I need to do serious research, then cancel.
If you're running a blog or doing SEO professionally, the paid plan pays for itself quickly. If you're casual about it, the free tier plus Google Search Console is enough to start.
The One I Tried and Cut
Grammarly. I tried it for two months. It's not bad, but it made my writing sound like everyone else's writing. Every suggestion pushed toward a corporate-smooth, hedged, neutral tone that I don't actually want. I write how I think, and Grammarly kept trying to make me sound like a company blog.
Claude handles grammar if I need it. More importantly, it doesn't sand off your voice.
If English is your second language, Grammarly is much more useful — it catches things that native speakers don't notice. For native speakers writing conversationally, I'd skip it.
The Side Project Stack
Since I also run this site, I'll add the tools specific to that:
- Hosting: Vercel free tier. Zero config, automatic deploys from GitHub, fast CDN. For a static Next.js site, it's perfect.
- Domain: Spaceship. Much cheaper than GoDaddy or Namecheap for .com renewals.
- Email forwarding: ImprovMX free tier. Forwards aman@whatpeopleuse.com to my personal email. No mail server needed.
- Analytics: Google Analytics 4. Free, and the data is sufficient for a small site.
For hosting, if I needed a backend (I don't, for this site), I'd use Hostinger — the best price-to-reliability ratio I've found, particularly for VPS. I've used it for other projects and their support is genuinely fast.
The Actual Cost Breakdown
Here's what I'm actually paying monthly, rounded:
| Tool | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Cursor Pro | $20 |
| Claude Pro | $20 |
| NordVPN (2yr plan) | $3.49 |
| Notion | $0 |
| Bitwarden | $0 |
| Semrush | $0 (free tier) |
| Vercel | $0 |
| Total | ~$43.50/month |
That's it. About $43/month for my complete productive setup as a software engineer. I've seen people drop $200+/month on tools they barely use.
The principle I try to follow: if I can't describe a specific way a tool saved me time this week, I'm probably not using it enough to justify keeping it.
What's Not On This List
Some things people always ask about:
GitHub Copilot: Replaced by Cursor. Copilot is fine, Cursor is better for the same price. Unless you're locked into VS Code extensions only, Cursor wins.
Slack: I use it for work (company mandate), but I don't think of it as "my" tool. It's infrastructure.
Linear/Jira: Work provides it. Not something I'd pay for personally for side projects — Notion's Kanban is enough.
Docker Desktop: Free for personal use. If you're not using containers yet, start. You don't need to pay for anything in the container ecosystem as an individual developer.
The point of this isn't that you should use exactly what I use. It's that you should be intentional about what you actually open, what it actually costs, and what you'd keep if you had to cut your software spend in half.
Most people would be surprised how little they'd actually miss.
Some links on this site are affiliate links. This list represents tools I actually use — nothing here is sponsored.