Which tool for what: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini in plain words (autumn 2026)

"They gave us Copilot. Do I still need to pay for ChatGPT?" This is probably the question I get most often, and before answering it I always admit that for six months I paid for two tools and opened one. The second subscription was not a tool, it was insurance against the feeling that I was missing something. It cost about as much as a decent lunch plan and did about as much for my work as skipping lunch.

The honest answer is boring: probably not, but it depends on what you actually do all day. The difference between these four tools today is smaller than the difference between a person who opens one of them daily and a person who opens one once a month. Real differences do exist, just not the ones in the advertising. The one that matters most is not how clever the model is. It is location: whether the tool already sits where you work. In your email. In your files. In your meeting.

Date

15/08/2026

What was checked

Where each tool actually lives (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, the editor, the browser) and what happens to conversations by default on personal versus work accounts. Not checked and therefore not stated: prices, model versions, free-tier limits as numbers.

What is deliberately not in this table

I do not list model versions. They change every few weeks, and if I put them in, this page would be wrong before Christmas. Tools are named by product. I do not list prices either, because they change more often than this page and vary enough between countries and plans that any number would mislead. Check the price on the vendor's own page on the day you decide.

I am not judging by benchmark scores but by where the tool lives in normal work. That moves more slowly and it is more useful.

This is a September 2026 snapshot. It will go out of date and I will update it.

A simple pattern falls out of that table. If your company lives in the Microsoft stack, Copilot wins, not because it is smarter but because it is already inside Outlook and Teams. If you live in the Google stack, Gemini wins for the same reason. ChatGPT and Claude win when the work is not tied to a file or a meeting: writing, thinking, long texts, building your own small tools.

One clarification on research. All four now have a deeper research mode that returns a report with links. And all four still occasionally attach a claim to the wrong source. I got caught twice, so now I open the links even when I am in a hurry.

If you click none of the links, it is not research. It is a nicely formatted guess.

What the free tiers actually give you

More than a year ago, and more than you expect. For ordinary office work, meaning emails, summaries, tidying up text and searching, the free tiers are enough today. All four let you upload a document, search the web and get an answer with links. A couple of years ago you had to pay for that. Now it is the baseline.

It stops in three places. The limit arrives at the worst possible moment, not while you are playing with it but on Friday when something has to go out. Long documents go worse: a hundred-page contract on a free tier often gets handled superficially, or refused outright. And the newest agent features are almost always kept for paid plans.

But the thing that matters most barely gets discussed. On free and personal accounts, conversations are used to improve the models by default, and on work accounts they are not. If you handle real data, that matters more than any feature in the table.

When paying is worth it

It is worth it if you hit the limits more than once a week, if you work with long documents regularly, or if you want to hand over multi-step work rather than get an answer to one question.

It is not worth it if you open an AI tool three times a week for short texts. In that case the free tier plus whatever your company gave you covers everything, and a second subscription is a quiet tax on the feeling that you might be missing out. I paid that tax myself and I am not embarrassed about it, only annoyed about the time.

One more thing, and it tends to disappoint: the best result almost never comes from switching tools. It comes from explaining what you want more precisely and adding an example. When I compared the four, I gave all of them the same real task of mine and the same request.

Rewrite this text for [audience: a client who is in a hurry].
Up to [120] words, businesslike, no decoration.
Here is an example of how my writing sounds: [I paste one of my own paragraphs].
Here is the text to rewrite: [text].
At the end, tell me what you cut and why.

There were differences between the four answers, but they were smaller than the difference between this request and what I used to type: "rewrite this, but nicer".

And if your company gave you nothing

This is still common, especially in smaller organisations. Work with a free tier, but hold one rule: no real client, colleague or contract data. A free account is a personal account, and on a personal account your conversations go into model training by default. For drafts, structure and wording that is entirely enough.

What to do on Monday: for one week, write down how long one specific recurring task takes with the tool and without it. Two numbers on one page, nothing more.

And ask for a tool, just not the way people usually ask. "Everyone else has one" never works. One sentence with a number does: how long a specific job takes each week, and how long it takes when you do it with the tool. A week of notes is enough. To a manager that stops being a trend and becomes a number they can hold against a subscription price. I say that from the side of the table where those requests get approved or refused.

If the answer is still no, ask what the decision is missing: money, a policy, or clarity on who owns it. Usually it is the second or the third. At least then you know what actually needs fixing.

What will go out of date first

The verdicts on agent features will age fastest. That area moves monthly, and what looks slow and unreliable in September may be normal by December. Free-tier limits will age second, because they get changed often and quietly.

The slowest thing to change is where each tool lives. Copilot will still be in the Microsoft stack, Gemini in the Google stack. That is exactly why I built the table this way instead of around benchmark scores.

The fair objection: this table is organised around where a tool lives, not around which model is better. If model quality genuinely matters to your work, my angle will look convenient and shallow. I agree that such work exists: long code, hard analysis, legal text. But in ordinary office work the quality gap is drowned out by whether the tool opens inside the app you are already working in.

The best tool is the one you open every day. Everything else is haggling over a few percent.

p.s. I did cancel the second subscription in the end. The first month without it passed without me noticing anything, which was the clearest answer I could have got.