There is a popular video making the rounds claiming you can replace over $200 a month in AI subscriptions with free tools and lose nothing. We watched it so you don't have to. The stack is real and worth knowing, especially if you want an ai side hustle with no upfront cost. Some of the claims deserve more skepticism than the video gives them, and we'll flag those as we go.
One note first: every limit and price below comes from the video's own claims. Free tiers are the single most unstable thing in AI right now. A tool that gives you 30 free images a day in July can give you 5 in September. Verify each one yourself before you build a workflow around it.
The writing layer: Copilot instead of ChatGPT Plus
The video's claim: Microsoft Copilot gives you a frontier model with real-time web access on the free tier, which is most of what the $20/month ChatGPT Plus subscription buys.
This one is mostly right in our experience, with a caveat. Free tiers of the big chat tools shuffle constantly, and "no limits" claims rarely survive contact with heavy use. What is true is that for scripting, outlining, and research, the free tiers of Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini have gotten good enough that paying $20/month is a convenience, not a requirement.
The useful part of this section isn't the tool. It's the prompt pattern: ask for the script AND a matching list of image prompts in one go. That single move connects the writing step to the visual step and saves you the most annoying part of the workflow.
The image layer: Leonardo AI instead of Midjourney
The claim: Leonardo's free tier gives you 150 tokens a day, roughly 30 images, no watermarks. Midjourney starts at $10/month with a cap that heavy users hit in a week.
We've found Leonardo's free tier perfectly usable for YouTube thumbnails and social posts. Is it "just as good as Midjourney" like the video says? No. Midjourney and the newest paid models are still better at realism and prompt adherence, and the video quietly admits this near the end. But "good enough to ship" and "best available" are different bars, and for a channel earning $0 so far, good enough wins.
The video layer: Qwen for image-to-video
The claim: Qwen does free image-to-video generation, no watermarks, while Veo and Sora sit behind expensive or hard-to-access subscriptions.
This is the section we'd trust least. Free video generation is where every provider is bleeding the most compute money, so these free tiers change fastest and queue times balloon when a tool gets popular. The video itself hedges here ("not quite Sora level"). Our read: fine for animating a few still images per video, not something to build a daily pipeline on without a backup plan.
The voice layer: TTS Maker instead of ElevenLabs
The claim: TTS Maker gives you unlimited text-to-speech with no account, versus ElevenLabs' 10 free minutes a month.
The honest trade here is the same as images: ElevenLabs voices are noticeably more natural. TTS Maker sounds like good TTS, not like a person. Whether that matters depends entirely on your niche. Faceless explainer channels get away with it. Anything where the voice IS the product does not.
The glue layer: Make instead of Zapier
The claim: Make's free plan covers 1,000 operations a month versus Zapier's 100 tasks.
If you're just starting, skip this layer entirely. Automation is for when you have a proven workflow producing content people actually watch. Wiring Google Drive to Slack before you've published anything is the productivity equivalent of buying running shoes instead of running.
The math the video skips
Here's the thing the "save $2,400 a year" framing glosses over. If your channel earns nothing yet, you weren't going to spend $200 a month anyway, so you didn't "save" it. The real value of the free stack is different: it removes the excuse. You can test whether your content idea works for $0, and only pay for tools once something is earning.
The catch is your time. Free tiers mean daily caps, queues, and juggling five separate websites. If your workflow takes 3 hours with free tools and 1 hour with paid ones, the free stack costs you 2 hours per video. At zero revenue that trade makes sense. Once you're earning even a few hundred a month, it probably doesn't. The video says this too, to its credit, right at the end where fewer people are still watching.
Also worth remembering: "free tool" videos are rarely free of incentives. Links in descriptions are usually affiliate links, and the recommendations can follow the payouts. Same skepticism applies to everyone, us included.
Where to learn this properly
You can assemble this whole stack from YouTube tutorials, and the video above is a decent start. If you'd rather have the workflow sequenced instead of scattered across twenty tabs, structured courses get you there faster. Full disclosure: Mindwand is our course, so weigh that recommendation accordingly. Coursera and Skool communities cover similar ground. Format matters more than brand. Pick one. Finish it.
For the broader picture of what's actually earning, see our ranked breakdown of 5 proven AI side hustles.