IMDA AI Tools List: 116 Tools, Only 2 for Finance

What is IMDA's AI tools list?

IMDA's AI tools list is the AI Tools page on the SMEs Go Digital portal: a curated directory of off-the-shelf AI tools that a business can sign up for directly with the vendor. IMDA describes the tools as "handpicked" and says the list was "curated from multiple sources, considering signals of market adoption with generally positive user sentiment and relevance to local SMEs needs."

Each tool card shows IMDA's labels: a business function (Finance, Human Resources, Sales & Marketing, Operations or AI Workplace Productivity), a pricing tier, up to three solution types and a popularity level. The page's data also carries a rating for each tool. Biks used those labels as published and did not re-rate any tool.

The list is not the same as IMDA's pre-approved solutions for grants. For the programmes announced alongside it, including the Slack, Singtel and Beyondsoft trials, see our guide to IMDA's free AI tools for SMEs.

How many tools on the IMDA AI tools list are free?

Pricing labels across all 116 tools, as IMDA shows them on 16 October 2026.

So the headline holds: 63% of IMDA's AI tools have a free tier, and 97% can be tried at no cost. Three of the four paid tools sit under AI Workplace Productivity (TESS AI, Midjourney and Qwen Studio); the fourth, Remote, is an HR tool.

The labels are IMDA's summary of each vendor's offer as of October 2026. Free tiers and trial lengths change often, so check the vendor's current pricing page before you plan around one.

Which business functions does the list cover?

Tools by IMDA business function and pricing label. Shares are of all 116 tools.

Two functions make up 91% of the list. Sales & Marketing covers CRM, outreach, email, video and design tools; AI Workplace Productivity covers general assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, plus office suites, project tools and app builders.

The pricing pattern differs by function. In AI Workplace Productivity, 36 of 49 tools (73%) have a free tier. In Sales & Marketing it is 33 of 57 (58%), because CRM and sales platforms lean towards time-limited trials.

Why are finance, HR and operations so thin on the list?

Finance, Human Resources and Operations together account for 10 tools, or 9% of the list. Finance has Xero and QuickBooks Online, both on a free trial. HR has BambooHR, Deel Payroll, Gusto, Remote and DingTalk; only DingTalk has a free tier. Operations has ClickUp, Jira and Odoo ERP, all with a free tier.

There is a plausible reason that is not a criticism of the list. Back-office tools hold the company's ledger, payroll and supplier records, so they are usually adopted as systems with set-up and data migration rather than tried in an afternoon. A self-serve directory of free tiers naturally favours tools you can open, test and drop. IMDA's pre-approved solutions on SMEs Go Digital cover accounting, HR and other business systems with grant support.

For an SME, the gap shows up in the daily work between systems: matching bank lines to invoices, chasing payments, answering customer and supplier questions on WhatsApp. That work rarely fits a single off-the-shelf tool. It is where Biks builds finance and accounting AI agents and customer operations agents that work with Xero, WhatsApp and the spreadsheets you already keep, with approvals staying with your team. Our free AI tools for finance and HR guide covers the listed options in detail.

What kinds of AI tools are on the list?

IMDA gives each tool up to three solution types. The most common labels:

Video is the single biggest category: 18 tools generate or edit video, more than the Finance, HR and Operations functions combined. Eight tools carry the "Agentic AI" label and eight "Customer Service Chatbot".

Three companies have three tools each: Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator, Firefly), HubSpot (Marketing, Sales and Service Hubs) and ByteDance (CapCut, Dreamina, Dola). Eleven more have two each, including Canva, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zoho and Intuit.

Where are the companies behind the tools headquartered?

Biks's classification of where each tool's company is headquartered, from the companies' own websites, as of October 2026.

The 12 China-headquartered tools are DeepSeek, CapCut, Dreamina, Hailuo AI, Kimi, Qwen Studio, Wan, DingTalk, Dola, Kling AI, MiniMax and Z.ai. The two Singapore-headquartered tools are Manus, whose operator Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd. is Singapore-registered, and Lark, whose site says Lark Technologies is headquartered in Singapore.

Headquarters is not where your data is stored, and many vendors run regional data centres. It is still a useful first question for the PDPA, because it tells you which companies you are sending data to. A few calls involve judgement: invideo's terms name a Singapore entity for most users while other sources place it in the US or India, and Gorgias was founded in Paris but contracts as a US company; both are counted as US here.

How popular and well rated are the tools?

IMDA labels 16 tools "Very high" popularity (14%), 70 "High" (60%) and 30 "Moderate" (26%). The "Very high" group includes Canva, Figma, Apollo.io, HeyGen and Deel Payroll.

The ratings in IMDA's data have a median of 4.5 out of 5, and 64 of the 116 tools are rated 4.5 or higher. Six tools sit at exactly 3.0: DingTalk, Dola, Kling AI, Lark, MiniMax and Z.ai. All six are labelled "Moderate" popularity. IMDA does not publish how the ratings are calculated, so treat them as one signal next to your own trial.

Free tier or free trial: which suits an SME?

• 1. Pick the task first: Choose one job, such as replying to product enquiries or drafting a weekly social post, and measure how long it takes today.
• 2. Use free tiers to learn: Most of the list (63%) lets you keep going at no cost, which suits slow, careful testing with your real workload.
• 3. Time trials to a real cycle: Start a CRM or payroll trial when a month-end, campaign or pay run is coming, so the trial sees the work it must handle.
• 4. Decide the keep-or-drop rule upfront: Write down the result that would justify paying, such as hours saved per week, before the trial ends.

A free tier is a permanent no-cost plan with limits; a free trial is a time-boxed taste of a paid plan. The difference decides how you test. With a free tier you can run a small workflow for weeks and only upgrade when you hit a limit. With a trial the clock starts at sign-up, so prepare before you click.

What should you check before putting customer data in a free AI tool?

• You stay responsible: PDPC's guide to managing data intermediaries explains that an organisation remains responsible for personal data a vendor processes on its behalf. Read the tool's terms on how inputs are stored and used.
• Purpose and consent: Use customer data only for purposes customers were told about, as PDPC's Advisory Guidelines on Key Concepts in the PDPA set out.
• Data leaving Singapore: With 114 of 116 tools from companies headquartered outside Singapore, the PDPA's Transfer Limitation Obligation is likely to be relevant: overseas recipients must protect the data to a comparable standard.
• Prefer business plans for real data: Test free tiers with dummy or non-personal data, and move customer data only onto a plan with admin controls and clear data terms.

The PDPA applies whether a tool is free or paid. Before staff paste customer names, phone numbers, chat logs or invoices into any tool on the list, settle these points.

Are the tools on IMDA's list covered by the EDGE Grant?

Not by default. The AI Tools page is a curated list of off-the-shelf tools with free tiers and trials; it is separate from IMDA's pre-approved solutions. Since 30 September 2026, Enterprise Singapore's EDGE Grant has replaced PSG, EDG and MRA for new applications. Its FAQ puts support at up to 50% of qualifying costs for SMEs, rising to 70% only for internationalisation and sustainability activities, for Singapore-registered companies with at least 30% local shareholding.

If you need advice on which solution fits, the old CTO-as-a-Service web address now redirects to the SMEs Go Digital homepage (checked 16 October 2026). There, the Go Digital Advisor suggests pre-approved solutions for a business problem you describe. Our Singapore SME AI grants guide covers how the grants fit together.

How did Biks build this dataset?

Source: IMDA's AI Tools page on SMEs Go Digital (smesgodigital.gov.sg/web/ai-solutions/explore), read through the public data feed behind the page on 16 October 2026. The page showed 116 results that day, and the feed returned the same 116 entries.

Pricing tier, business function, solution types, popularity and rating are IMDA's own labels, unchanged. Headquarters is Biks's classification from each company's own website: its stated headquarters, or the entity named in its terms where no headquarters is stated, as of October 2026. Shares are rounded to whole percentages.

The full table is free to reuse with credit: download the dataset (TSV, 116 rows). Cite it as "Biks analysis of IMDA's SMEs Go Digital AI Tools list, 16 October 2026". We will date any update.