Choose your first AI assistant without overthinking it
The differences that matter in practice, and the ones that only matter in benchmarks.
Before you start
- A browser
- A task you would like help with
What you will be able to do
- Choose an assistant on the three criteria that actually differ
- Know which limits you will hit on a free tier
- Avoid paying for a tier you have not outgrown
The assistants are closer to each other than the marketing suggests, and the one you will actually get value from is the one you remember to open.
So this is a short comparison built around the handful of differences that survive daily use.
Decide what you will use it for most
Writing, coding and research reward different tools. Everything else is a tie.
Be specific about the dominant task, because that is the only place the assistants meaningfully separate. Long-document work and careful writing, code, and research with live sources are three different jobs.
If your honest answer is "a bit of everything", the differences will not reach you and you should choose on price and interface.
Check the limits that will actually bite
Context length, message caps, and whether it can see the web.
Three practical limits. How much you can paste in one go — this is what stops you working with a long document, and free tiers vary a lot. How many messages before it throttles you, which matters if you work in bursts. Whether it can search, which decides if it is useful for anything current.
Everything else on the comparison page — parameter counts, benchmark scores, model names — will not change your week.
- Choosing on benchmark tables. They measure exam performance, not whether the tool fits your work.
Run the same real task through two of them
Twenty minutes of your own work beats any review, including this one.
Take something you actually have to do this week and give it to two assistants, identically worded. Not a test question — a real task, with its real messiness.
You are looking for which one needed less correction to be useful. That is the whole evaluation, and it is more informative than a month of reading comparisons, because it is measured on your work rather than someone else's.
Tip Stay on free until something specific breaks
The upgrade is worth it for a named limit, not for a general feeling.
Free tiers are good now. Upgrade when you can finish this sentence: "I am paying because it keeps ___". Hitting the message cap daily, or needing to paste documents that will not fit, are good reasons. "The paid one is supposed to be smarter" is not one you can verify.
Pick one, use it for a month, and switch only if you hit a wall you can name. Trialling four in parallel teaches you less than using one properly.
Common questions
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