If you have decided you want to start using AI but you keep stalling because there are three big names — ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — and you do not know which to pick, this guide is for you.

The quick answer: all three are free to try, all three are genuinely useful, and you should probably pick the one whose interface clicks with your brain first. The differences between them matter less than just getting started. But there are real differences, and once you have used AI for a few weeks you will start to feel which one suits you for which jobs.

This post explains what each one is, what it is best at, where it falls short, and which to start with based on what you actually want to do. No jargon, no hype, no "the AI revolution is here" filler.

If you have not used AI before at all, you might want to read Part 1: What Is AI, Actually? first — it will give you the mental model that makes the rest of this post make sense.

Prices and exact model names change every few months, so treat the numbers above as ballparks rather than gospel. The strengths, however, have been pretty stable for a while now.

The rest of this post unpacks each one properly so you can pick with a bit more confidence.

ChatGPT is the one most people mean when they say "AI". It launched the whole modern AI moment in late 2022 and it is still the most popular chatbot by a long way.

What it is great at

• General-purpose questions. Whatever you throw at it, the answer is usually solid. Recipes, explanations, drafting emails, planning trips, summarising things — all reliably good.
• Image generation. ChatGPT has a built-in image generator (DALL·E). Type "draw me a watercolour fox in a teacup" and it will, in seconds. The free tier gives you a few generations per day.
• Voice chat. You can have an actual spoken conversation with ChatGPT through the mobile app. It feels strange at first, then unsettlingly natural.
• Web search. It can look things up in real time, so you are not limited to its training data. Useful for current news, recent product launches, fresh research.
• Ecosystem. Custom GPTs, the GPT Store, plug-ins for tools like Zapier — there is a long tail of extras.

Where it falls short

• The free tier is the most aggressively rate-limited of the three. You will hit daily caps on the better models faster than you might expect, especially if you are using image generation.
• The interface has more buttons than it needs. GPTs, custom instructions, memory, projects, voice mode, image generation — it can feel cluttered if you just want to type and get an answer.
• It is a bit too eager to please. ChatGPT will often agree with you when it should push back. Worth knowing if you are using it to sense-check decisions.

Best for: people who want one tool that does everything

If you are completely new to AI and you want a single chatbot you can use for any task without overthinking it, ChatGPT is the safest pick. The free tier is enough to learn on, and if you decide to pay, the £20/month Plus plan gives you generous usage of the best models.

If you have not set up an account yet, start with Getting Started with ChatGPT. Once you are in, these 20 prompts will give you a feel for what is possible.

Claude is the one people who use AI a lot tend to quietly switch to for serious work. It is made by Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI researchers who wanted to focus harder on AI safety.

What it is great at

• Writing. Claude tends to produce more natural, less repetitive prose than ChatGPT out of the box. If you are drafting blog posts, emails, marketing copy or fiction, it usually feels less "AI-flavoured".
• Long documents. It can handle very large pieces of text in a single go — whole books, hour-long meeting transcripts, legal contracts. You can paste a 100-page PDF and ask focused questions about it.
• Careful analysis. Claude is generally better at being asked to think through a problem, weigh trade-offs, and give a measured answer rather than a confident-sounding one.
• Pushback. Where ChatGPT will often agree, Claude will more readily say "actually, I do not think that is right, here is why". For sense-checking ideas this is genuinely valuable.
• Artifacts. A side-panel feature that turns code, articles, diagrams or simple apps into something you can edit and reuse, rather than just text in a chat window.

Where it falls short

• No native image generation. If you want to make pictures, Claude is not the right tool — use ChatGPT or Gemini for that.
• No voice mode. It is text-first. Fine if that is all you want, slightly limiting if you wanted a verbal back-and-forth on the school run.
• The free tier message limits hit harder once you start asking long questions. The longer your prompts and replies, the faster you burn through your daily allowance.
• Less of an ecosystem. No app store, fewer integrations than ChatGPT.

Best for: people who write, read or research a lot

If your day involves drafting things, editing things, reading long documents, or any kind of text-heavy thinking work, Claude is a really pleasant tool. It is also worth a try if you have used ChatGPT for a while and the prose is starting to feel formulaic — Claude often gets you out of that rut.

Gemini is Google's AI assistant. It started out as Bard, was rebranded, and has been steadily catching up with the other two on raw capability while quietly winning on integration.

What it is great at

• Anything Google-shaped. Gemini lives inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive and Calendar if you have a recent Google account. "Summarise this email thread", "draft a reply", "pull this data into a table" — all one click away rather than a copy-paste job.
• Current information. Because it is a Google product, it has very fresh access to search results. If you want to know what just happened in the news or check current opening hours, it is the strongest of the three by default.
• Generous free tier. The free version of Gemini is, in many cases, the most capable free chatbot of the lot — particularly for everyday questions.
• YouTube and Maps integration. It can summarise YouTube videos and answer questions about places, which the others cannot do natively.

Where it falls short

• It is more cautious. Gemini refuses more requests than ChatGPT or Claude — sometimes for sensible reasons, sometimes for ones that feel overzealous. "I cannot help with that" lands more often than you might like.
• The writing voice can feel flat. For long-form creative writing it tends to produce more generic prose than Claude.
• It is tightly tied to your Google identity. Some people love this, some find it uncomfortable. If you are privacy-cautious about Google having yet more context on you, it is worth thinking about.
• Two products, one name. "Gemini" is the consumer chatbot at gemini.google.com, but Gemini also refers to the underlying model used inside other Google products. The branding is a bit confusing if you are new.

Best for: people who already live inside Google's ecosystem

If your inbox, calendar and documents are all in Google, Gemini removes a lot of friction. Drafting an email reply, summarising a long thread, pulling data into a sheet — it is right there, no copy-pasting between apps. The free tier is also the easiest place to start if you do not want to create another account.

All three have meaningful free tiers. None of them are heavily crippled. Here is roughly what to expect (exact numbers shift every few months, so treat as a directional guide).

• ChatGPT free gives you access to the latest models with daily message limits. Image generation works but is capped. Voice mode is included on mobile. Once you hit your cap, you fall back to a smaller model for the rest of the day.
• Claude free gives you access to Claude's main model with a daily message cap. Limits are roughly proportional to message length — long, complex messages eat through the cap faster than short ones. No image generation, but document analysis and Artifacts are included.
• Gemini free gives you the most generous everyday allowance, integrated into your Google account. The smaller free model handles most casual questions easily, with limited access to the bigger model on specific requests.

For most beginners, the free tier of any of the three is more than enough to learn on for a couple of months before you decide whether to pay. The honest recommendation: do not pay for any of them until you have used the free version enough to know which one you actually like.

To give you a feel for the difference, imagine you ask all three the same question: "Help me plan a budget-friendly weekend in Edinburgh for two people in autumn."

• ChatGPT will give you a confident, well-structured itinerary with clear sections (Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday), a few specific suggestions per day, and a tidy budget total. It might invent a restaurant name or two if you do not ask it to use web search.
• Claude will produce a similar itinerary but with a more conversational tone and slightly more nuance — "if the weather is good, do this, otherwise consider that". It is more likely to acknowledge what it does not know about current opening times or prices.
• Gemini will pull in current information from Google search, link out to specific places, and tend to produce shorter, more list-shaped answers. If you ask for a follow-up like "book me a hotel", it will lean on Google services to make that easier.

None of these answers is wrong. They just have a different shape, and over time you will develop a feel for which shape you prefer for which jobs.

Here is a simple decision framework. Pick the row that best matches you and start there. You can always change your mind later.

• "I just want to try AI and see what the fuss is about." Start with ChatGPT. The most documentation, the most YouTube tutorials, and a sensible default interface. Use the free tier.
• "I write or read a lot for work or hobbies." Start with Claude. The writing quality is noticeably nicer and the long-document handling is excellent.
• "I live inside Gmail and Google Docs." Start with Gemini. The integration alone will save you more time than the raw model differences will cost you.
• "I want to make images and have voice conversations." Start with ChatGPT. It is the only one of the three with both built in for free.
• "I do not want yet another account or password." Start with Gemini if you have a Google account, otherwise ChatGPT (which lets you sign in with Google or Apple).
• "I am sense-checking a big decision and want a second opinion." Use Claude. It is more willing to disagree with you, which is exactly what you want from a second opinion.

If in doubt, pick whichever one is easiest to log into right now. The cost of "choosing wrong" is tiny — you can switch in 30 seconds. The cost of waiting another month to start using AI at all is much bigger.

Most of the disappointment people have with AI comes down to a handful of habits worth breaking early.

• Asking one-line questions. "Write me an email" is going to give you a generic email. "Write me a short, polite email to my landlord asking when the boiler service is booked, mentioning that I am working from home all week" is going to give you something usable. Context is the whole game.
• Treating it like Google. Search engines reward keywords. AI rewards conversation. Phrase things the way you would talk to a knowledgeable friend, not the way you would type into a search bar.
• Believing it without checking. All three of these tools confidently make things up sometimes — historians call this hallucination, normal humans would call it lying with a smile. For anything that matters (medical, legal, financial, or anything you will publish), verify the facts elsewhere before relying on them.
• Giving up after one bad answer. If the first reply is rubbish, tell it what is wrong: "that is too formal", "too long", "you missed the bit about X". The second answer will usually be much better. AI gets better when you treat it as a conversation, not a vending machine.
• Paying too early. All three have free tiers that are enough to learn on. Use them for a month before deciding whether to pay, and you will have a much better idea of which one you actually want.

For more practical examples of how to phrase prompts that actually work, these 20 prompts work just as well in Claude and Gemini as they do in ChatGPT.

If you have not actually used any of these yet, the most useful thing you can do is stop researching and just open one. Pick whichever sounds most like you from the section above and have an actual go.

If you want a guided walkthrough, Getting Started with ChatGPT takes you from sign-up to first prompt in about ten minutes. The same general approach works for Claude and Gemini — the interfaces are different but the basics are identical.

Once you have your first chatbot working, How to Use AI for Meal Planning, Budgeting and Everyday Tasks will give you a few practical jobs to try, none of them more complicated than "what should I have for dinner".

And if you want to back up and understand what is actually going on under the hood — why these things sometimes hallucinate, why they cannot do basic maths reliably, why the same prompt gives different answers — start with What Is AI, Actually?. Five minutes that will save you a lot of confusion later.