Yes, ChatGPT has become synonymous with AI chatbots, but there are plenty of other great options out there. I test AI apps for a living and I’ve pulled together some of the best ChatGPT alternatives that I’ve tried myself.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI has added multiple upgrades including custom GPTs built into ChatGPT, image generation and editing with DALL-E and the ability to speak to the AI. You can even use it without an account.
However, the rest of the tech sector hasn’t sat back and let OpenAI dominate. Some of its competitors equal or exceed the abilities of ChatGPT and others offer features it doesn’t. From Claude and Google Gemini to Microsoft Copilot, these are the best ChatGPT alternatives right now.
Best Overall: Anthropic Claud 3
Claude 3 is the most human chatbot I’ve ever interacted with. Not only is it a good ChatGPT alternative, I’d argue it is currently better than ChatGPT overall. It has better reasoning and persuasion and isn’t as lazy. It will create a full app or write an entire story.
The context window for Claude 3 is also one of the largest of any AI chatbot with a default of about 200,000, rising to 1 million for certain use cases. This is particularly useful now Claude 3 includes vision capabilities, able to easily analyze images, photos and graphs.
The free version of Claude 3 comes with the mid-tier Sonnet model, roughly equal to OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 or Google’s Gemini Pro. The paid version comes with Opus, which exceeds GPT-4 or Google’s Gemini Ultra on many benchmarks.
Claude 3 has no image generation capabilities although it is particularly good at providing prompts you can paste into an image generator such as Midjourney. It is also better at coding than some of the other models.
Pricing: Claude 3 costs $20 a month for the Plus version with Opus. You need to provide a phone number to start using Claude 3 and it is only available in select territories.
Best for Live Data: Google Gemini
Google’s chatbot started life as Bard but was given a new name — and a much bigger brain — when the search giant released the Gemini family of large language models. It is a good all-around chatbot with a friendly turn of phrase. It is also one of the most cautious and tightly moderated.
Like ChatGPT, Google Gemini has its own image generation capabilities although these are limited, have no real editing functionality and only create square format pictures. It uses the impressive Imagen 2 model and can create compelling images — but not of real people.
Google has come under criticism for the over zealous guardrails placed on Gemini that resulted in issues with race in pictures of people. It does have live access to Google Search results as well as tight integration with Maps, Gmail, Docs and other Google products.
The free version uses the Gemini Pro 1.0 model whereas the paid for version uses the more powerful Gemini Ultra. There is also a new Gemini 1.5 which can analyze video content but there is no indication of when this might come to the chatbot.
Pricing: Gemini Advanced is the paid for version and is available for $19.99 bundled with the Gemini One subscription service. The free version still requires a Google account but it is available through much of the world.
Most Creative: Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot has had more names and iterations than Apple has current iPhone models — well not exactly but you get the point.
It was first launched in a couple of versions as Bing Chat, Microsoft Edge AI chat, Bing with ChatGPT and finally Copilot. Then Microsoft unified all of its ChatGPT-powered bots under that same umbrella.
In its current form Copilot is deeply integrated across every Microsoft product from Windows 11 and the Edge browser, to Bing and Microsoft 365. Copilot is also in enterprise tools. While it is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4-Turbo, Copilot is still very much a Microsoft product.
Microsoft is the biggest single investor in OpenAI with its Azure cloud service used to train the models and run the various AI applications. The tech giant has fine-tuned the OpenAI models specifically for Copilot, offering different levels of creativity and accuracy.
Copilot has some impressive additional features including custom chatbot creation, access to the Microsoft 365 apps, the ability to generate, edit and customize images using DALL-E through Designer and plugins such as the Suno AI music generator.
Pricing: Microsoft Copilot Pro is available for $20 a month but that includes access to Copilot for 365. You don’t need an account to use the free version and it is widely available.