Best AI chatbots

An AI chatbot answers questions, drafts and edits text, reads files and, in most cases now, searches the web and makes images. The eight below all have a free plan. They differ in what they connect to, how much a free account can do, and what the paid plan costs. Facts are from the vendors' own pages in October 2026.

How this page fits with the rest

This page is for choosing a chatbot by what you need. If you already use ChatGPT and want to leave it, the ChatGPT alternatives page is written for that. For a side-by-side test of two assistants, the comparison pages go deeper: ChatGPT vs Claude, ChatGPT vs Gemini, Claude vs Gemini and all three together.

How these picks were chosen

We looked at public facts: the free plan and its stated limit, plan prices, platforms, the features each vendor lists and stated limits such as data location. We did not run our own benchmark and do not rank answer quality. Where a vendor publishes no number for its free limit, we say that.

1. ChatGPT

Best for: the widest range of everyday and work tasks · Price: Plus $20/month; Pro $100, $200 or $500/month (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

ChatGPT's free plan runs on GPT-5.6 Luna with unlimited everyday text chats, plus web search, file uploads, data analysis and image creation. A cheaper Go plan raises those limits and may carry ads. Plus adds OpenAI's GPT-6 reasoning models, projects, scheduled tasks and more deep research. The Pro tiers give the highest limits and Pro-level reasoning. ChatGPT runs on the web, iOS and Android.

Limits: uploads, images, voice and data analysis have separate caps on Free. Plus has no annual billing. OpenAI may use conversations to improve its models unless you opt out in data controls. Prompts that work well are in our ChatGPT prompt library.

2. Claude

Best for: writing, editing and long documents · Price: Pro $20/month, or $17/month billed yearly; Max from $100/month (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

Anthropic's Claude is available on the web, desktop and mobile. The free plan includes web search, file creation, code execution, memory, artifacts and up to 5 projects. Pro adds more usage, Claude Code for programming, scheduled tasks, Claude Design, Slides and Docs, and extensions for the browser and Microsoft 365. Max gives 5x or 20x the usage of Pro.

Limits: Anthropic does not publish a free message count, and the free plan has fewer models than Pro. For programming, see how it compares in AI coding tools.

3. Google Gemini

Best for: people who use Gmail, Docs and Android · Price: Google AI Plus $4.99/month, AI Pro $19.99/month (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

Gemini's free plan lists the 3.6 Flash model, varying access to 3.1 Pro, image generation and editing, Deep Research and Gemini Live for spoken conversation. It is on the web, on Android as the phone assistant, and on iPhone and iPad. AI Pro gives 4x the free usage, a 1 million-token context window for very long files, 1,000 Flow video credits a month and 5 TB of storage.

Limits: the free context window is 32,000 tokens. Google publishes no message count; usage refreshes every 5 hours up to a weekly limit. Video generation needs a paid plan.

4. Microsoft Copilot

Best for: people who work in Windows, Word and Outlook · Price: free app; Microsoft 365 Personal $9.99/month or $99.99/year (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

The Copilot app chats by text or voice and creates images, built on OpenAI and Microsoft models. It comes with Windows 11 and runs on Mac, iOS, Android and the web, and you can sign in with a Microsoft, Apple or Google account. Microsoft 365 Personal adds "advanced Copilot chat with higher usage than free". Paid plans add the Researcher and Analyst agents, and Premium, at $19.99 a month, adds "extensive usage" and agentic features.

Limits: Microsoft publishes no free usage number. On the Family plan, AI features belong to the subscription owner only.

5. Perplexity

Best for: answering questions from current web search · Price: Pro $20, Max $200 as US App Store purchases (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

Perplexity presents itself as AI search: you ask a question and it answers from the web. The iPhone app is free (iOS 18 or later), with Pro and Max as in-app purchases.

Limits: the free plan caps Pro Searches each day; a 2026 Finout pricing review puts it at about five, without advanced models. Finout also notes that unlimited use on paid plans covers the chat interface, not the API.

6. Grok

Best for: one app for chat, voice, images and video · Price: SuperGrok $30 as a US App Store purchase (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

xAI's Grok runs on grok.com and in iOS and Android apps. xAI's documentation lists chat, image and video generation with Grok Imagine, hands-free voice, file uploads (PDFs, images, spreadsheets, code, audio) and connectors for email, files and calendar. "Grok is free to start"; paid SuperGrok plans draw from one weekly usage pool across all Grok products. The US App Store lists four tiers: SuperGrok Lite $10, SuperGrok $30, SuperGrok Plus $100 and SuperGrok Heavy $300.

Limits: xAI does not publish the free limit. Paid plans can top up with extra credits from $5. For a head-to-head, see ChatGPT vs Grok.

7. DeepSeek

Best for: a capable chatbot with no subscription · Price: free; no consumer paid plan (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

DeepSeek's chat is free on the web and in iOS and Android apps, and the company also lists a desktop app. Its homepage highlights DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, with improved text and agent performance and native image understanding. The app combines Instant, Expert and Vision modes and accepts photos and files. More detail, including API pricing, is on our DeepSeek page.

Limits: DeepSeek's privacy policy says it collects, processes and stores personal data in the People's Republic of China. The policy gives users the right to opt out of their data being used for training. No free message limit is published.

8. Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)

Best for: a low-cost paid plan with coding tools · Price: Pro $14.99/month; students $5.99/month (as of Oct 2026) · Free plan: yes

Mistral renamed Le Chat to Vibe; accounts, plans and conversations carried over, and it still lives at chat.mistral.ai. It runs on the web, iOS and Android, with a command-line tool and editor integrations for coding, and it connects to 100+ tools. Compared with Free, Pro gives up to 6x the messages, 5x the web searches and 40x the image generation.

Limits: the free plan offers "limited messages and web searches", with no number published.

Also free: Meta AI

Meta AI is free in its own app and inside WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. Meta says that the core experience "has always been free, and that's not changing"; paid Meta One plans from $7.99 a month raise the allowance for compute-heavy features such as image and video generation.

Which one to pick

• One assistant for everything: ChatGPT.
• Writing, editing, long reports: Claude.
• Your work lives in Google: Gemini. In Microsoft 365: Copilot.
• Research with live web results: Perplexity.
• No budget: any of the eight; the free AI tools list gives each free limit.

Test prompt for comparing chatbots. Paste the same text into two of them:
I am [your role]. Here is [a real task from your week: an email to answer, a report to summarize, a plan to draft].
[paste the material]
Give me [the output you need] in [format], under [number] words, and list anything you had to assume.

FAQ

What is the best AI chatbot right now?

It depends on the task. ChatGPT covers the widest range, and its free plan is the only one here that states unlimited everyday text chats. Claude suits long writing, Gemini suits Google users, and Perplexity suits questions that need current web results.

Which AI chatbot is free?

All eight on this page have a free plan. ChatGPT's allows unlimited everyday text chats with separate limits on tools. DeepSeek has no consumer paid plan at all.

Is ChatGPT or Claude better?

They overlap on most tasks. The ChatGPT vs Claude comparison linked at the top of this page sets them side by side on price, features and limits.

Which chatbot is safest for private data?

Check each vendor's data controls. OpenAI lets you opt out of training in ChatGPT. DeepSeek's policy says personal data is stored in China, with a right to opt out of training.