Here are the 6 best AI agents to streamline your work

AI agents are all the rage right now. Google announced its “agentic era” for Google Gemini back in spring 2025, while Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and the other big players in the AI space have each announced their own AI agents. As with any new technology, it’s possible to use these new tools for productivity at work. In fact, that’s why they were designed. 

So, what is an AI agent? The short version is that it’s an AI that can perform actions on behalf of a user. This can be anything from conducting deeper research to literally taking over your mouse and keyboard to perform tasks for you. It’s a very broad and inexact definition, but in short, if it can do more than a chatbot, then it’s largely considered an AI agent. 

If this is something you want to try, here are the best AI agents you can get right now.

Agent.ai

To start the list, there are a number of AI agent services out there that will let you build out your own AI agent for your specific use case. These services include Stack AI, n8n, Gumloop, Agent.ai, and many others. With some minor differences based on the platform, most of these services do the same general thing. They focus on giving users an easy way to create a custom agent without needing to know how to code. 

Another similarity that these services have is that they scale out for enterprise use, which is how most of their marketing is done. In any case, of the ones listed above, I think Agent.ai is arguably the best one for beginners. It’s set up like a marketplace of sorts where you can choose AI agents that perform the functions you want. Should one not be available, you can either request that one be made or you can create one yourself. 

Many of these charge a subscription fee. For example, Gumloop has a limited free version with a $37 per month Pro mode. So, if you decide to use one of these services, make sure to check out the price and the restrictions so you know what you’re getting into. 

Claude

Anthropic’s Claude is one of many AI chatbots with an AI agent function that can be taught to do things. This is a solid example of a more hardcore option as you essentially have to build your AI agent yourself using Claude as the AI powering the whole thing. This requires knowledge of development, APIs, and Anthropic’s development tools. The benefit is that once you get over the learning curve, you can customize your AI agent to do what you want. 

There are some “agentic tools,” according to Anthropic, that you can access right away. Claude Code is the biggest example. It’s a popular option for vibe coders. You can tell Claude Code what you want to make and the AI will whip something up for you. That’s the easiest way to get an AI agent from Anthropic. 

ChatGPT Agent

OpenAI was among the first big AI companies to jump on the AI agent bandwagon over the summer. Its agentic AI is something more in line with what you would expect from an AI agent. You can do things like ask it to check your calendar and brief you on the day ahead or ask it to make you a shopping list. The AI will then perform the task for you. In the future, AI agents will likely be able to complete purchases for you as well, but this functionality is limited.

Per OpenAI, ChatGPT performs these tasks on its own “virtual computer” of sorts, where it’ll store your data and recall it as needed, and then create things for you like the aforementioned notes and lists. ChatGPT’s Deep Research function technically falls under this purview as well. The only downside is that you can’t use the feature unless you’re a Pro or Enterprise subscriber. 

Google Gemini

Google has dived into the world of AI agents arguably more so than any other company. Google has this functionality baked into Gemini almost everywhere. So, let’s go down the list. Gemini CLI is an AI agent that lives in your terminal and helps you do things like fix bugs in your code, create new features, and test your software to make sure it works. This is different from Google’s Gemini Code Assist, which operates like Claude Code in that it creates new code based on natural language prompts. 

Google has even baked Gemini into Chrome. This allows Gemini to see what your browser sees and then tell you about the contents of the webpage. Google has been rapidly improving since it launched, and eventually, Google plans to add functionality that will allow it to actually control the browser on your behalf. So, you would, in theory, be able to tell it to go onto Amazon and order your shampoo, and then it would do it without additional input. To be clear, we're not quite there yet, as Amazon reportedly isn't super excited about AI agents replacing actual customers on its site.

Since ChatGPT Deep Research counts as an AI agent, Gemini’s Deep Research feature does as well. That’s accessible from the Gemini chat window. From there, ask it a question and it’ll put together a ton of resources to help research more complex topics. Toss in the ability to build your own AI agent through Google Cloud’s Agent Development Kit, and that covers almost all of the bases. 

Microsoft Copilot

Like Google, Microsoft has packed AI agents into a lot of its products. That includes Copilot Vision in Edge, which works like Google’s Gemini in Chrome where the AI can interact with your browser and summarize what it sees there. Much like Gemini in Chrome, there’s a bright future there but it only does basic stuff at this time. 

There are productivity agents available as well. You can create your own using Microsoft Copilot Studio. Microsoft says that these can do anything from analyzing data to helping with social media and automating various tasks. One such agent is available in Microsoft Visual Studio, where it functions like Claude Code and Gemini Code Assist. Microsoft also makes this available on GitHub. 

Perhaps the most interesting AI agent in Microsoft’s arsenal is Copilot Vision for Windows. This is an AI agent that works on your Windows PC and can see your web browser and other apps that you have open on the desktop. It’s currently fairly limited as it only works with up to two apps at once, but over time, it’ll likely gain the ability to do stuff on your computer whenever you want it to. 

Convergence Proxy

Convergence Proxy is arguably the most fun AI agent in terms of what it can do. It’s an AI agent that comes with several built-in workflows that can do the kind of cool sci-fi stuff that will be more common in the future. For example, you can have Proxy interact with your browser, and it’ll go to web pages and log into stuff for you. It’s not perfect, because things like CAPTCHA confuse it, but it’s still quite neat. 

In reality, this is best used for simple tasks like gathering data, solidifying travel plans, and other things like that, while its integrations with things like G Suite, Salesforce, Slack, BambooHR, and other products give it additional power to do more things. Pair that with its ability to learn from your habits, and there is a lot of potential here to have an AI handle your nonsense tasks while you do more work. 

It has a free version that lets you have up to five sessions per day as sort of a demo. There is a pro version for $20 per month that removes the roadblocks and lets you use it freely. 

There’s still a lot of room to improve

AI agents are pretty cool, but a common theme that I ran into while doing this article is that they are still fairly limited. Most AI agents are custom-built for a single task or workflow, while general use AI agents like Copilot Vision for Windows are largely in their infancy. So, the above options are about as good as it gets right now within a margin of error, but there is an expectation that this technology is on pace to get a lot better in the very near future.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.