AI tools we would tell you not to buy.
A quote is on your desk and the demo was excellent. These pages answer the only question that matters at that point — whether to sign — with a named product, a stated reason, the cheaper path in enough detail to act on this week, and roughly what saying no is worth per year.
Each page says whether it is verbatim generator output or desk-written to the same rules, and every price was checked against the vendor’s own page on the review date. No sponsorships, no affiliate links, no paid placements — which is the only reason a page like this can exist.
One product, one verdict
- Conversational analytics · 10 August 2026· ~7 min read
Should we buy ThoughtSpot Spotter? Not before the semantic model exists
Do not adopt yet. You are being quoted per seat for the interface, while the semantic model that decides whether any answer is correct stays your job.
Spend avoided: ~$60k–$180k/yr (100–300 seats at ThoughtSpot's published $25–$50/user/month, before enterprise uplift)Read the full call → - Enterprise AI search · 9 August 2026· ~7 min read
Should we buy Glean? Not until the bundled assistants have failed
Do not adopt yet. Score fifty real questions against the AI already bundled into your suite — that is the baseline Glean has to beat, and almost nobody measures it.
Spend avoided: Roughly $50k–$250k/yr depending on headcount and the seat minimum you are quoted — Glean publishes no list price, so treat any figure before a quote as unverifiedRead the full call → - Autonomous coding agent · 8 August 2026· ~6 min read
Should we buy Devin? Not as a rollout — as a metered two-week experiment
Do not adopt as a rollout. Buy the smallest metered plan for one named backlog for two weeks, measure merged-without-rework rate, and let that number decide.
Spend avoided: Unclear as a list price, and that is the point: ACU-metered agent spend can reach five figures a quarter once a team leaves agents running, with no seat count to cap itRead the full call → - AI code review · 7 August 2026· ~6 min read
Should we buy CodeRabbit? Not while Copilot's review sits switched off
Do not adopt yet. Copilot subscribers already have pull-request review; measure the share of its comments engineers act on before buying a second per-developer reviewer.
Spend avoided: ~$14k–$29k/yr for a 100-developer org at published $19–$30 per developer per month, if bought estate-wide rather than where it winsRead the full call →
Whole categories to refuse
- Vector search infrastructure · 6 August 2026· ~6 min read
Do we need a vector database? Not for your first AI feature
Do not adopt yet. Start with pgvector in the Postgres you already run, measure recall and p95 at your real corpus size, and let the numbers justify a second datastore.
Spend avoided: Often the entire line item at this stage — pgvector rides on Postgres you already pay for; a managed tier plus the engineering time to keep two stores in sync is typically low five figures a year at first-feature scaleRead the full call → - Meeting intelligence · 5 August 2026· ~6 min read
Should we buy an AI meeting notetaker? You are already paying for one
Do not adopt. Turn on the summariser in the conferencing platform you already pay for; buy a standalone tool only for a job the bundle genuinely cannot do.
Spend avoided: ~$12k–$36k/yr for a 100-person org at published $10–$30 per user per month, plus the security review and the retention exposureRead the full call → - LLM observability · 4 August 2026· ~6 min read
Should we buy an LLM observability platform? Self-host first, then decide
Do not adopt yet. Instrument with OpenTelemetry, self-host an MIT-licensed collector, and buy a platform when eval workflows — not tracing — become the bottleneck.
Spend avoided: Low five figures a year on a platform contract at this stage, plus the vendor review; unclear beyond that, because per-seat-plus-usage pricing scales with traffic nobody can forecast pre-launchRead the full call →
Longer evaluations, with adopt verdicts too · The daily newsletter archive