Claude
Anthropic's assistant, strong at long documents and careful writing
Claude is the assistant many writers and developers reach for when tone and nuance matter. It works well with long documents, keeps a steady voice…
ChatGPT
OpenAI's flagship assistant for chat, images, code and research
The default AI assistant for most people. It handles writing, coding, image generation, file analysis and web-grounded answers in one chat. The Free plan is genuinely usable; Go and Plus mainly buy more messages, better models and memory.
Best for: everyday questions and drafting
What works
- Widest feature set in one place
- Strong free tier
- Huge plugin, app and integration ecosystem
What to know
- Usage caps on the best models, even on Plus
- Answers can sound confident when wrong
Alternatives
Gemini
Google's assistant, tied into Workspace, Search and Veo video
Gemini lives inside Gmail, Docs, Drive and Android, which is its real advantage: it can read your own files and mail. The Google AI Pro plan adds the…
Perplexity
AI answer engine that cites its sources
Perplexity is a search engine that answers in prose and shows where each claim came from. It is the quickest way to get a sourced overview of a…
Used in The Journey
Step 1 · Find the thing worth makingStep 2 · Name it and own itStep 4 · Write with AI without sounding like AIStep 6 · SEO in the AI-search era
