Top 5 Sakana AI alternatives for businesses in 2025

It’s easy to get excited about companies like Sakana AI. Their nature-inspired approach and projects like "The AI Scientist" are truly pushing the limits of what artificial intelligence can do. They’re basically trying to get AI to do its own scientific research, which is a wild concept.

But let’s get real for a moment. Most of us aren’t running AI research labs. We’re running businesses with very real, very immediate problems to solve. We need to answer customer questions faster, stop our teams from drowning in repetitive work, and generally make things run a bit smoother. The promise of an AI that writes its own research papers is cool, but it doesn’t help with the 100+ support tickets piling up right now.

That’s exactly why I put this list together. We’re going to look at the best Sakana AI alternatives that aren’t for theoretical research, but for getting tangible results and helping your business grow in 2025.

What is Sakana AI?

Sakana AI is a Tokyo-based research lab started by a couple of heavy hitters from Google’s AI team, David Ha and Llion Jones. Their whole thing is building new AI models by taking inspiration from nature, like how a school of fish swims together. It’s a pretty neat idea based on collective intelligence instead of just one giant, all-knowing AI.

Their main project, "The AI Scientist," is a system built to automate the whole scientific discovery process, from brainstorming ideas to writing the final paper. It’s groundbreaking stuff, for sure.

But here’s the catch: Sakana AI is a research and development lab, not a product company. They care about discovery, not deployment. If you go to their site looking for a pricing page or a "sign up" button, you won’t find one. This makes their work super important for the future of AI, but not very useful for the average company that just wants to automate its customer service.

My criteria for picking the best Sakana AI alternatives

Since Sakana AI is a research lab, a real "alternative" for a business isn’t another lab. It’s a platform that takes all that powerful AI tech and makes it accessible for everyday business problems. With that in mind, here’s what I looked for:

• Does it solve a real problem? I focused on tools that tackle common business headaches, like customer support, IT help desks, or internal knowledge gaps.

• Can you set it up quickly? I leaned towards platforms that are self-serve and don’t need a team of developers and a six-month project just to get started.

• Does it connect to your existing tools? A great AI tool should plug right into your helpdesk, CRM, and knowledge bases without forcing you to change your entire workflow.

• Is the pricing clear? I looked for platforms with straightforward pricing so you can easily figure out what you’re paying for and measure its impact.

A quick comparison of the top Sakana AI alternatives

Here’s a quick side-by-side look at how our top picks stack up.

A detailed look at the 5 best Sakana AI alternatives in 2025

While Sakana AI is thinking about what AI could do tomorrow, these platforms are all about what AI can do for your business today.

1. eesel AI

Description: eesel AI is my top recommendation for businesses that want to use AI right now. It’s not a general model you have to build on; it’s a specialized platform that connects directly to the tools you already use. Think Zendesk, Intercom, your help docs in Confluence or Google Docs, and your chat tools like Slack to automate support.

This infographic shows how eesel AI acts as a central knowledge hub, integrating with various company tools to provide comprehensive support, a practical approach compared to theoretical Sakana AI alternatives.::

Why it’s on the list: While Sakana AI is researching how to build new AI, eesel AI delivers the results of that advanced tech in a simple, self-serve package. It’s the perfect example of applying complicated technology to a real-world business need. Their whole approach is "go live in minutes, not months," and it shows. You can connect your helpdesk, let it learn from your past tickets and help docs, and have a working AI agent without ever talking to a sales rep.

Use Cases: Automating frontline customer support, drafting instant replies for human agents, automatically routing tickets, and creating an internal Q&A bot for your team.

A screenshot showing the eesel AI chatbot answering a team member's question in Slack, a key feature that makes it one of the top Sakana AI alternatives for internal support.::

Pros & Cons:

• Pros: It’s incredibly simple to set up, connects with over 100 tools, has a great simulation mode to test on past tickets without any risk, and offers clear, predictable pricing.

• Cons: It’s laser-focused on support and knowledge automation. If you’re looking for a general AI model to build a custom app from scratch, this isn’t the tool for you.

The eesel AI simulation mode, which allows businesses to test the AI's effectiveness on past tickets, highlighting its practical value as one of the best Sakana AI alternatives.::

Pricing:

eesel AI has straightforward, tiered plans with no surprise fees.

• Team: $299/month ($239/month if billed annually) for up to 1,000 AI interactions and 3 bots.

• Business: $799/month ($639/month if billed annually) for unlimited bots, up to 3,000 interactions, and unlocks key features like training on past tickets.

• Custom: You can talk to their sales team for unlimited interactions and more advanced setups.

2. OpenAI

Description: You already know OpenAI. They’re the ones behind ChatGPT and the powerful GPT models. OpenAI is the go-to choice for businesses that have developers ready to build custom AI features or entire products from the ground up using their APIs.

Why it’s on the list: It represents the opposite end of the spectrum from a tool like eesel AI. Instead of a ready-made solution, it gives your business the raw AI power to build almost anything you can imagine.

Use Cases: Powering custom chatbots, building content creation tools, analyzing data, and adding intelligence into your own software.

Pros & Cons:

• Pros: You get access to some of the most advanced AI models out there, with tons of documentation and a massive brand behind them.

• Cons: This is not a plug-and-play solution. You need serious technical skill and development time to make anything useful. The usage-based pricing can also get unpredictable and expensive as you grow.

Pricing:

OpenAI’s pricing is split between its public ChatGPT plans and its developer API. For business use, you’re probably looking at:

• Business: $30 per user/month ($25 if billed annually) for a secure workspace, admin controls, and access to their top models.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for large-scale security, controls, and support.

• API: A pay-as-you-go model where you’re charged per "token" (which is roughly a word). It’s flexible, but it can make budgeting tricky.

3. Mistral AI

Description: Mistral AI is a big European player that’s making a name for itself with high-quality, open-source AI models. This makes it a great option for companies that want more control, customization, and data privacy, since you can host their models on your own servers.

Why it’s on the list: Mistral AI gives companies a way to get advanced AI power without being locked into a single company’s system, like OpenAI’s. It’s an alternative that’s all about flexibility.

Use Cases: Fine-tuning models on your specific company jargon, deploying AI in a private cloud, or building applications where you need to know exactly how the model works.

Pros & Cons:

• Pros: You get powerful open-source models, which means more control over your data and how it’s deployed. It can also be cheaper if you have the infrastructure to host it yourself.

• Cons: You need deep technical knowledge to set up, fine-tune, and maintain it. You’re not getting a polished, ready-to-go platform, and support is mostly from the community unless you pay for an enterprise plan.

Pricing:

Mistral offers a consumer chat product and a developer platform.

• Le Chat (their version of ChatGPT): Has a free tier, a Pro plan for $14.99/month, and a Team plan for $24.99/user/month.

• API (La Plateforme): Like OpenAI, this is usage-based and priced per token. The open-source models are free to download, but you’ll have to cover the hosting and maintenance costs yourself.

4. Anthropic

Description: Anthropic is a major competitor to OpenAI, known for its Claude family of AI models and a big emphasis on AI safety through something they call "Constitutional AI." This makes it a strong choice for larger companies worried about brand safety, reliability, and making sure their AI behaves itself.

Why it’s on the list: It’s another powerful foundational model to build on, but with a unique focus on being enterprise-ready and safe. That’s a huge deal for any business dealing with sensitive customer data.

Use Cases: Building enterprise-level chatbots, secure internal knowledge systems, contract analysis, and other apps where accuracy and responsible AI are top priorities.

Pros & Cons:

• Pros: A heavy focus on safety and reducing AI "hallucinations." Their models are built for complex reasoning and have the backing of some major enterprise players.

• Cons: Just like OpenAI, it’s an API-first product that requires a development team. It’s also positioned as a premium product and can be more expensive than some other choices.

Pricing:

Anthropic’s pricing for its Claude platform has a few layers:

• Individual Plans: There’s a free plan. Pro is $20/month ($17/month annually). Max starts at $100/month for heavy users.

• Team Plans: Start at $30 per user/month ($25 annually) with a 5-person minimum.

• API: Pay-as-you-go per million tokens, with different prices for their Opus (most powerful), Sonnet (balanced), and Haiku (fastest) models.

5. Upheal

Description: Upheal is a great example of a hyper-focused, practical AI tool. It’s built for one specific group: mental health providers. It automates the incredibly tedious task of writing clinical progress notes after therapy sessions.

Why it’s on the list: Upheal perfectly shows the power of using AI to solve a very specific, niche business problem. It’s the complete opposite of a general research lab like Sakana AI and is part of a growing trend of specialized AI tools. In the same way Upheal is all about mental health notes, eesel AI specializes in customer and internal support.

Use Cases: Generating compliant clinical notes (SOAP, DAP, etc.) directly from therapy sessions, which saves therapists hours of admin work every week.

Pros & Cons:

• Pros: It’s perfectly designed for its target audience’s workflow, is HIPAA compliant, solves a huge pain point, and is super easy for non-technical professionals to use.

• Cons: It’s extremely niche. If you’re not a mental health provider, it’s not for you.

Pricing:

Upheal offers a simple SaaS model:

• Free: Unlimited notes generated from text or dictated summaries.

• Starter: $29/month ($19/month annually) to capture live sessions and customize templates.

• Premium: $99/month ($69/month annually) to unlock treatment plans and other advanced features.

This video from Sakana AI explains their unique approach to creating foundation models using evolutionary algorithms, giving context to why businesses seek more practical Sakana AI alternatives.

How to choose the right Sakana AI alternatives for your business

Feeling a bit stuck? Here’s a simple way to think through your decision.

• Focus on speed to value. Think about the difference between a platform you can set up this afternoon (like eesel AI) and an API that requires a six-month development project. The cost of waiting is real.

• Make sure it integrates. A powerful AI is useless if it’s off in its own little world. Pick a tool that works with the software you already have. It’s the only way to make sure your team actually uses it.

• Watch out for unpredictable costs. Be careful with purely usage-based pricing for core functions like customer support. A busy month could lead to a shockingly high bill. The stability of a fixed monthly plan is often a much safer bet.

From AI research to real-world results

While research labs like Sakana AI are mapping out an exciting future for artificial intelligence, the real opportunity for businesses in 2025 is in practical, ready-to-use platforms. The best Sakana AI alternatives aren’t more research projects; they are tools that solve real problems, are easy to get started with, and deliver a clear return.

They take the incredible power of these huge AI models and channel it into something you can use to make your business better, today.

Ready to stop researching and start doing? eesel AI plugs into your existing tools to automate frontline support in minutes. Start your free trial today or book a demo to see how you can lower your ticket volume and free up your team.