By Wren Sun — Chapter 1, "The Free-Tool Test List," from Free AI for Nurses (Kindle $4.99, coming soon to Amazon). This is the full first chapter, free to read. The complete book adds Chapters 2–8 and an appendix of printable templates.
Charting eats the shift. Everyone knows it, and every "free AI tools" list on the internet is either an ad or out of date. This chapter is neither. I tested each tool below without paying for anything, and each entry carries the date I tested it. Free tiers change without notice — sometimes in a single month — so treat every number here as a snapshot, not a promise. The rule for this whole book: if a number matters to your workflow, re-check it before you build around it.
Six tools made the list. Not because they are the only free ones, but because they are the ones a working nurse will actually use: three chat tools for drafting, one search tool for looking things up, one notebook tool for working from your own documents, and one that lives on the Windows computer you already have. Pick two to start. The rest of this chapter tells you which two, and why.
What it is. The general-purpose chatbot most people mean when they say "AI."
What a nurse uses it for. Turning rough shift notes into a clean SOAP draft. Rephrasing a patient handout so a family can actually understand it. Finding the right words for a difficult conversation with a patient's daughter.
Free tier — verified November 9, 2026. Everyday text chat is unlimited. OpenAI removed the message cap in August 2026; the only condition is "subject to abuse guardrails." The number that actually stops you is file uploads: 3 per day — the one hard daily limit OpenAI publishes for free accounts. Image generation, voice, and deep research are limited, with no published counts. A free chat holds about 12 pages of pasted text. The free model is GPT-6 Luna (rolling out).
Where the paywall hits. Heavier reasoning, more uploads, and the Pro models are paid. Plus is $20 a month.
Verdict. The default first tool. If you only learn one, learn this one. But remember the 3-uploads-a-day cap: batch your files. Paste your three documents, get your three drafts, and stop uploading until tomorrow.
What it is. Anthropic's chatbot. Strong at careful rewriting and long documents.
What a nurse uses it for. Tightening a long narrative note. Turning a dense policy paragraph into plain language. Drafting a handoff that a tired night-shift nurse can read in thirty seconds.
Free tier — verified November 9, 2026. Anthropic publishes no message count. Usage runs on a rolling 5-hour window, and independent testing puts it at roughly 15–40 messages per window — about 30–100 a day if you spread them out. It is metered by tokens, not messages: a long pasted note spends the budget faster than ten short questions. The free plan runs Sonnet 5.5 (since September 28, 2026) plus Haiku for fast replies; Opus is paid only. File uploads work on free — up to 20 files per chat, 30 MB each. Web search, Projects, and Artifacts are included.
Where the paywall hits. Pro is $20 a month, roughly five times the free allowance.
Verdict. The best free writing partner for long notes. The worst habit: pasting a whole shift's notes in one message and burning the window. Paste in pieces, one note at a time.
What it is. Google's chatbot — the one most nurses already have, because it comes with a Google account.
What a nurse uses it for. Quick questions. Summarizing a PDF guideline. Drafting a short handout.
Free tier — verified November 9, 2026. Google publishes no prompt count. Limits are compute-based and refresh every 5 hours, up to a weekly cap. Since October 9, 2026, free accounts get Flash-Lite only — the lightest model; the heavier models need a paid plan. The free context window is 32,000 tokens, about 48 pages. Storage is 15 GB on your Google account. Deep Research may be unavailable at busy times for free users.
Where the paywall hits. Google AI Plus is $4.99 a month (twice the free limits, 128K context). Pro is $19.99 (four times, 1M context).
Verdict. Fine for quick questions, weakest of the three chat tools for long drafting on the free tier — Flash-Lite is fast but shallow. Use it when you already live in Google. For a long charting draft, use ChatGPT or Claude instead.
What it is. Microsoft's chatbot, built into Windows and Edge. Free with any Microsoft account.
What a nurse uses it for. The same drafting jobs as ChatGPT — and the most convenient option if your hospital or home computer runs Windows.
Free tier — verified November 9, 2026. Web chat has no stated message cap. "Think Deeper" reasoning is free and unlimited; paid users get priority when capacity is tight. File uploads: up to 20 per conversation. Web conversations cap at 30 turns before you start a fresh chat. Copilot inside Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint needs a Microsoft 365 subscription. Image generation: 15 fast images a day.
Where the paywall hits. Microsoft 365 Premium is $19.99 a month (priority, Office integration, storage). The old standalone Copilot Pro is gone — sales ended in October 2025.
Verdict. The best free option if you work on Windows. The 30-turn cap is the thing to remember: start a new chat per patient note. Do not carry one chat through a whole shift.
What it is. A search engine that answers in sentences and shows its sources. Not a chatbot for drafting — a research desk.
What a nurse uses it for. "What is the current CDC guidance on this?" — with citations you can check. Looking up a drug-interaction summary before you call the pharmacist. Finding a patient-education source you can actually trust.
Free tier — verified November 9, 2026. Basic searches are practically unlimited. Pro Search, the deeper mode, is capped at 3 per day. Deep Research is capped at 1 query per month. No advanced model picker and no image generation on free. File uploads are allowed within a small weekly allowance (exact number unpublished).
Where the paywall hits. Pro is $20 a month, which replaces the 3-a-day Pro Search cap with a weekly allowance.
Verdict. Use it for looking things up, not for writing. The 3 Pro Searches a day are the budget — spend them on questions where the answer matters, not on things you could have Googled.
What it is. Google's tool that answers only from documents you upload. You give it your sources; it never answers from the open web.
What a nurse uses it for. Upload your unit's policy PDF, a protocol, or a drug reference, then ask questions and get answers with citations to the page. Turn a long in-service handout into a one-page summary — or an audio overview for the drive home.
Free tier — verified November 9, 2026. 100 notebooks per account. 50 sources per notebook. Each source up to 500,000 words or 200 MB. Chat and generation run on a compute budget that refreshes every 5 hours up to a weekly cap; Google publishes no fixed count. Audio Overviews are included on free.
Where the paywall hits. Google AI Plus and Pro raise the ceilings — more notebooks, more sources per notebook, a larger usage budget. Pro is $19.99 a month.
Verdict. The most underrated tool in this book. It is the only one here that cannot invent a policy — it only quotes what you uploaded. For anything where "where did that come from?" matters, start here.
If you do nothing else: pick one chat tool — ChatGPT or Claude — and NotebookLM. The chat tool drafts. NotebookLM checks the draft against your real documents. That pair covers ninety percent of what this book teaches.
Two things before you paste anything real. First, every limit above was verified on November 9, 2026. Free tiers change without notice; the next edition of this book re-tests every entry, and you should re-check any number you build a workflow around. Second, read Chapter 6 before you paste a real note. The short version: never paste a patient's name, date of birth, medical record number, room number, or any detail that identifies a patient. De-identify first, then paste. Every example in this book is fictional — yours should be too.
Chapter 2 starts with the note itself: the SOAP draft, the template, and the self-check list before you sign.
That's the whole of Chapter 1. The full book adds Chapters 2–8 and a printable template appendix — Free AI for Nurses, Kindle $4.99, coming soon to Amazon.