ChatGPT
OpenAI's general-purpose AI chat assistant for questions, writing, files, images and voice.
Is it actually free? Free tier with limits
Free plan: unlimited everyday text chats (subject to abuse guardrails), with limited file uploads, image creation, voice chats, deep research, memory and Codex access.
Pricing
Free; Go $8/month; Plus $20/month; Pro from $100/month; Business and Enterprise plans priced per user.
Best for
Everyday questions, drafting, summarizing documents and voice chats on web and phone.
Not great for
Anything where a wrong answer is costly without checking sources yourself.
Real plays that use ChatGPT
- Five Grok Bots: GTM, personal assistant, biz dev, marketing, trainer
- Agentic job-hunt pipeline
- Get calm, step-by-step coaching through a scam accusation call
- Cut a $195,628 hospital bill to about $32,500 by checking it against Medicare rules
- Turn a $25 airline voucher into $4,760.36 in EU261 compensation
- Get a £60 parking charge dropped and win £462.15 in costs
- Appeal a wrongly issued £60 council parking fine with a ChatGPT letter
- Win $1,180 in small claims after ChatGPT spotted an illegal security deposit
Comparisons
Alternatives
Claude
Anthropic's AI assistant for writing, analysis, long documents and coding help.
Gemini
Google's AI assistant, built into the Gemini app and Google's apps.
Grok
xAI's AI assistant, available on grok.com, in the Grok apps and in X.
Perplexity
An AI answer engine that searches the web and cites its sources.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft's AI assistant, free on the web and phone, and built into Microsoft 365 apps on paid plans.