You’ve decided it’s time to start seriously using artificial intelligence, but the moment you tried to look into it you were faced with an endless list of names — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Midjourney, Perplexity — without really understanding what sets them apart or which one actually fits your needs. That’s normal: this space moves so fast that even people who follow it closely struggle to keep up.
In this guide I’ll explain how to navigate the most widely used generative AI tools today, grouped by what they do best: conversing and writing, generating images, coding, and researching up-to-date information. For each one you’ll find a direct link to the official site, what sets it apart from the others, and who it’s actually a good fit for.
One important note upfront: you won’t find precise prices in this guide. Subscription plans for these services change often enough that a figure written today would be outdated within a few months — I’ll only give you the general tiers (free, basic subscription, advanced subscription) and point you to each tool’s official site for the current plan.
Before you choose: what’s the right question?
The most common mistake is asking “what’s the best AI tool”, as if there were a single ranking. The useful question is different: what exactly do you need it for? Writing a thesis, generating a podcast cover, fixing a bug in some code, and fact-checking a news story are different jobs, and tools built to do one thing well are often just mediocre at the others.
Keep two cross-cutting criteria in mind too, whichever tool you choose: how much accuracy matters for what you need (if you’re working with data, figures or references you’ll need to cite, a reliable model matters more than a “creative” one) and the ecosystem you already work in — Gmail and Google Docs users will find Gemini integrated everywhere, Word and Excel users will get the same from Copilot.
The best general-purpose chatbots
These are the tools most people start with: they understand natural language, answer questions, write text, summarize documents, and reason through complex problems. The differences between the four main ones are subtler than the marketing suggests.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the tool that brought generative AI to the mainstream, developed by OpenAI. It’s probably the most versatile of all: it writes all kinds of text, generates code, creates images (more on that below), and with the mobile app you can even talk to it out loud.
You can start using it for free by going to the homepage and creating an account with email, Google, Microsoft or Apple — the app is also available for Android and iOS. The free plan includes limited access to the most recent models; paid plans (available in several tiers, from the cheapest to the professional one) unlock higher limits, advanced reasoning models, and priority access during peak hours. Check the current details on the ChatGPT pricing page.
The single most useful piece of practical advice I can give you: the quality of the answers depends enormously on the quality of what you ask. If you’re not yet comfortable with prompts, I’d suggest reading our guide on how to write effective prompts before judging the tool from a disappointing answer.
Google Gemini
Google Gemini is the chatbot developed by Google (formerly known as Bard), built on the company’s own data and infrastructure. Its most concrete strength is native integration with the Google ecosystem: you can call it directly from Gmail to summarize an email, from Docs to rewrite a paragraph, from Sheets to generate formulas, without leaving the app you’re already using.
Here too the free tier is enough for occasional use, with access to the lighter model and variable availability of the more advanced one; paid plans (several tiers, including ones built for people working with very long documents) raise usage limits, unlock image and video generation, and expand the “context window” — how much information the model can hold in memory within a single conversation. Up-to-date details are on the Google AI subscriptions page.
Claude
Claude is the chatbot developed by Anthropic, a company founded by former members of the team that created ChatGPT. It’s the tool I recommend most often for writing, editing, and accurate reasoning over long texts: it tends to be more careful about not “making up” information and more transparent about explaining its own reasoning compared to other chatbots.
The free plan has a limited number of messages within a few hours, enough to try it out properly; paid plans (again across several tiers) significantly raise that limit and add dedicated tools for coding and research. Always up-to-date details on the Claude plans page.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s answer, built on the same language models used by ChatGPT but deeply integrated into the Windows and Microsoft 365 ecosystem. You can use it for free from the website, the app, or the Edge sidebar without even signing in with a Microsoft account, though doing so unlocks longer conversations.
Where Copilot really makes a difference is in the subscription built for people who already use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook: from there it can summarize emails, draft documents and presentations, and analyze spreadsheets without leaving the programs you use every day. If your workplace already runs on Microsoft 365, it’s probably the tool with the lowest adoption curve. Current plans and pricing are on the Copilot for individuals page.
The best AI tools for generating images
If your goal isn’t writing but creating visual content — illustrations, concept art, images for a blog or a design project — these are the go-to tools.
GPT Image (inside ChatGPT)
The easiest way to generate images with AI today is probably to stay inside ChatGPT: just describe in words what you want, optionally attaching a reference image, and the built-in image generation model (an evolution of the old DALL·E, now considered a “legacy” model) produces the result directly in the chat, letting you request targeted edits as you go in the same conversation.
It’s the most convenient choice if you don’t want to learn a new tool: the free plan includes a limited number of generations per day, paid plans significantly raise that cap.
Midjourney
Midjourney remains the reference point for anyone after the highest aesthetic quality, especially for stylized, artistic images or ones that mimic specific painting styles. It historically only worked through Discord, but today the official web interface has become the most convenient way to use it: sign in with a Google or Discord account, type the /imagine command followed by a description of what you want, and in under a minute you get four variants to upscale or edit with the built-in editor tools.
Unlike ChatGPT and Gemini, Midjourney has no indefinitely usable free tier: a subscription is required from day one. In exchange, for anyone working seriously with generated images — covers, illustrations, moodboards — it remains one of the most polished tools on the market. All the current instructions are in the official documentation.
The best AI tool for coding
GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant developed by GitHub (owned by Microsoft) in collaboration with OpenAI. It integrates directly into the most popular code editors (Visual Studio Code above all) and suggests autocompletion for functions, explains existing code, and can even autonomously handle longer tasks delegated through chat.
It has a free plan with limited features, meant for people who want to try it out, and multi-tier paid plans for anyone who codes regularly or works in a team: the higher the tier, the more advanced models and usage headroom you get. If you write code even occasionally, it’s worth trying at least the free tier: you’ll find it on the official plans page.
The best AI tool for research and fact-checking
Perplexity
Perplexity stands out from the other tools in this list for one specific reason: instead of answering only based on what it “learned” during training, it actively searches the web in real time and cites the source of every claim, with clickable links to the original articles. It’s the best tool when you need an answer that’s both current and verifiable, not just plausible.
The free tier covers occasional research well; paid plans increase the number of available in-depth searches and unlock more powerful reasoning models for complex analysis across multiple sources at once. It’s a particularly sensible choice if you often use general-purpose chatbots to “look things up” rather than to converse or write: Perplexity does that job better, by design.
Free or paid? What actually changes
Beyond the exact figures — which, again, change too often to be worth writing here — the difference between free and paid plans follows almost the same pattern across all these tools:
- Usage limits: the free plan gives you a set number of messages, searches or generations within an hour or a day; paid plans raise these caps, sometimes to the point of being practically unlimited for normal use.
- Access to the latest models: free tiers often use less recent models, or automatically “route” simpler requests to lighter models, reserving the flagship ones for subscribers.
- Extra features: image or video generation, longer memory of past conversations, integration with other tools (documents, spreadsheets, code editors) are almost always reserved for paid plans or heavily limited in the free one.
The sensible approach is to always start with the free plan of one or two tools, use them for your actual tasks for a few weeks, and only upgrade to a subscription when you genuinely hit the limit — not before. Check each tool’s official site for the current plans and pricing at the time you’re reading this.
A warning that applies to all of these tools
Whichever generative AI tool you choose, keep one structural limitation in mind: it can be confidently wrong, generating plausible but false information — a phenomenon known as a “hallucination”. It’s not an occasional bug that will get fixed in the next update, but an intrinsic feature of how these models work.
Always verify data, citations, regulatory references or figures before using them in a context where a mistake has a real cost — whether that’s work, study, or an important decision. Use these tools as a starting point to speed up your work, not as a definitive source to rely on blindly.