Earlier this week, the NASDAQ’s most powerful software stocks took a massive nosedive because an AI provider published a plugin.

It sounds kind of silly, like the (probably apocryphal) thing where elephants are deathly afraid of mice. But the numbers don’t lie. Some of the biggest software platforms around — Intuit, Adobe, LegalZoom — did indeed lose hundreds of billions in market capitalization after Anthropic added a legal research plugin to their new Cowork product.

What are they worried about?

It’s not just about Anthropic competing with legal software. The real fear is that Claude and other AI tools can help anyone spin up passable alternatives to expensive SaaS products — an era of personal software. Who needs to pay QuickBooks $500 a year to balance their books when an AI can build you a custom replacement in an afternoon?

Is this fear justified? We’re going to find out by stress-testing our own software stack. We went through every recurring subscription we pay for and asked: Could we build a decent substitute using Claude? These are our top picks. Vote below to help us choose which one to tackle first.

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