Main web AIs comparison

Five AI tools compared. Honest pros and cons. One pick at the end.

Compare two side by side

Tool A

Tool B

Best at

Reading and reasoning through long dense documents. Upload a 200-page PDF, ask about section 14, get a quoted answer.

Pulling live data from open Office 365 files. It reads your real spreadsheet, not a guess.

Falls short

No image generation. Limited live web search on the standard plan. Free tier hits caps fast at peak hours.

Creative writing and reasoning lag behind Claude. Responses read like listicles.

Pick when

You work with long documents, contracts, papers, or codebases. Or you want the cleanest interface.

Your job runs inside Microsoft 365 and your employer pays for Copilot.

Cost

Claude Pro at £18 or $20 a month. Cowork desktop agent included.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Business at $25.20 per user per month. Promotional $18 per user per month through June 2026.

The full list

Every tool below, in the same shape. Bullets are short on purpose. The picker above does the head-to-head work. This list is here for reference.

Anthropic Claude

Best at: Reading and reasoning through long dense documents. Upload a 200-page PDF, ask about section 14, get a quoted answer.

Falls short: No image generation. Limited live web search on the standard plan. Free tier hits caps fast at peak hours.

Pick this when: You work with long documents, contracts, papers, or codebases. Or you want the cleanest interface.

Cost: Claude Pro at £18 or $20 a month. Cowork desktop agent included.

Models: Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Claude Opus 4.7 (current flagship).

Context: 1 million token context window now standard across all paid tiers since March 2026. That is roughly 1,500 pages of text in a single session.

Data: 30 days for safety review on consumer plans, 7 days on API access. Users who opt in to model improvement training have 5-year retention. Enterprise plans support custom retention agreements.

Microsoft Copilot

Best at: Pulling live data from open Office 365 files. It reads your real spreadsheet, not a guess.

Falls short: Creative writing and reasoning lag behind Claude. Responses read like listicles.

Pick this when: Your job runs inside Microsoft 365 and your employer pays for Copilot.

Cost: Microsoft 365 Copilot Business at $25.20 per user per month. Promotional $18 per user per month through June 2026.

A Personal tier comes with the Microsoft 365 Personal subscription.

Google Gemini

Best at: Real-time factual lookups with cited sources. Today's news, prices, and live web facts.

Falls short: Long-form document analysis. Loses thread on multi-step tasks.

Pick this when: You run on Google Workspace and need AI reading your live Drive files.

Cost: Google AI Plus at $7.99 per month. Higher tiers under the Google AI Pro umbrella.

Models: Gemini 2.0 Flash, 2.0 Flash-Lite, and 2.0 Pro. Gemini 3.1 Pro and 3.1 Flash Live are also available.

Google restructured tiers in early 2026, dropping the entry price.

OpenAI ChatGPT

Best at: Coding assistance across the widest range of languages. GPT-5.5 reasoning handles hard algorithm problems.

Falls short: The product has become cluttered. Memory, Projects, Canvas, custom GPTs, and multiple model selectors confuse new users.

Pick this when: You write code daily and want one tool for code plus general work.

Cost: ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month. Pro at $200 a month for unlimited reasoning.

Models: GPT-5.5 is the current flagship on Plus. GPT-5.5 Pro on the Pro tier. GPT-4o was deprecated in February 2026.

The shift to GPT-5.5 in early 2026 cut inference costs by around 90%, which is why all major AI tools dropped their prices that quarter.

Perplexity AI

Best at: Research with verified citations. Numbered source links you can click and confirm.

Falls short: Depth of reasoning. Output thinner than Claude or ChatGPT for analysis.

Pick this when: You want a Google replacement that cites sources and shows its work.

Cost: Perplexity Pro at $17 per month billed annually ($204 per year). Max tier at $167 per month annually.

My pick

Claude Pro at £18 or $20 a month.

Anthropic's models reason more honestly and handle long documents better than any other consumer tool I have used. Opus 4.7 is the current flagship. The 1 million token context window is now standard on Pro, not locked behind an enterprise plan. The interface is clean. No twelve menus, no feature bloat. Cowork ships included for non-developer file work. Claude Code handles dev work with full terminal access. One subscription covers personal use, work files, and code.

If you live inside Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, the answer changes. Copilot wins for the first. Gemini wins for the second.

How to decide

Long documents and contracts → Claude Pro
Office 365 work with employer-paid Copilot → Microsoft 365 Copilot Business
Google Workspace → Google AI Plus
Sourced research → Perplexity Pro
Code-heavy daily work → ChatGPT Plus (GPT-5.5)

Pick one. Use it for a month. Switch if you outgrow it.

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