Who Wrote it Better? A Definitive Guide to Claude vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini

GPT-5: Prose Over Poetry

Being the first out of the gate gives ChatGPT more name recognition than its competitors. In the same way that people use the brand name "Kleenex" to refer to a tissue, ChatGPT has become the catch-all reference to AI for a lot of people. Because it's got the longest history, it also has more variations, options, and the confusion that comes with more variations and options.

ChatGPT is the customer-facing product that OpenAI offers to interface with its own LLM. Within ChatGPT, you can choose from among OpenAI's family of different models—we're going to focus on the latest, GPT-5, which launched in August 2025 and also happens to be the one you can access with Type.

Pro-tip: If you have GPT selected in Type as your preferred model, you're using GPT-4o.

TL;DR:

ChatGPT's Strengths

Complex Requests and Reasoning

ChatGPT became the first hot AI product because it was the first one to sufficiently blow our collective minds.

We'd all dealt with automated chatbots by the time of ChatGPT's release, so we were used to its limitations: you had to select from a variety of existing inputs to get a pre-scripted answer. Failing that, you could type something, and the bot would latch onto the first keyword it recognized, ignore context, and give you a pre-scripted answer tied to that keyword.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, is great at complex reasoning and multi-step instructions. "Who wrote the first book about AI taking over the world, and is there any prediction in that book that came true?” It’s a question that requires a couple of layers of abstract and relational thought, which ChatGPT had no problem with:

You might say that this technically isn't the answer because it's not about an AI dystopia—GPT even admits as much in its response—but that's what’s so impressive about it. ChatGPT gets to the real intent of the question, which is when did we start thinking and worrying about this stuff? The question really isn't about AI; in other words, it's about the relationship humans have with it. This is what we mean by "complex reasoning."

Look at the response to the same question from Claude:

Claude goes for the literal answer, a book that specifically mentions AI taking over. The answer is right but maybe not as illustrative or helpful. Notice how the description just tells what the book is about, compared to ChatGPT talking about the book’s themes.

Reliably Accurate

Beyond these complex reasoning abilities, ChatGPT is also generally more reliable with factual information. When AI makes something up, it's called "hallucinating," and ChatGPT is less likely to just make stuff up. Perhaps that's because it's also fluent in more than 100 languages: science does say learning many languages sharpens the brain; maybe it benefits an AI one, too.

In any case, ChatGPT-4 Turbo has one of the lowest hallucination rates at around 1.7% (Note: this statistic is at the time of writing. The page the link takes you to updates itself frequently throughout the day, and the number may be a bit more or less than what we've quoted here).

GPT's Weaknesses

Robotic Writing

Have you ever curled up on a rainy Sunday morning with a cup of hot coffee and gotten lost in the lyrical prose of the owner's manual for your blender? Neither have we.

If you're looking for anything beyond dry, academic language, you'll need to go elsewhere—GPT is a fount of information but not really great at making it interesting. If you've ever asked a 10-year-old about dinosaurs, it's the same vibe. Of course, writers using AI as a tool aren't actually handing off the copy they get without fact-checking and significantly editing it first (you aren't doing that, right?), so this might not be a huge concern. But an LLM that has a more engaging way with words would be more helpful when you're needing inspiration.

ChatGPT is your assistant for research and first drafts, not the muse for your soul-baring memoir.

Large Context Window

One of GPT-5's major improvements is its significantly expanded context window. The context window is the amount of text an AI model can handle and remember at one time. It determines how much information the model can keep track of before it starts forgetting earlier parts of a conversation or text. Developers refer to the context window size in terms of "tokens" – but we're going to express them in more practical terms for laypeople: the number of words in that text the AI can "remember" at any time.

GPT-5's latest model supports up to 400,000 tokens (roughly 300,000 words) – a massive increase over previous versions. This means you can now feed it entire novels, comprehensive research papers, or large codebases without losing context. For research or summarization purposes, GPT-5 can handle documents up to about 800 pages. Sorry, David Foster Wallace fans: at 575,000 words, you'll only be able to attach your favorite half of Infinite Jest to a chat conversation.

ChatGPT Pricing

OpenAI’s ChatGPT offers several pricing tiers: a Free plan with basic access to GPT-4, a Plus plan ($20/month) with faster responses and more features, a Pro plan ($200/month) for advanced users needing high-capacity AI access, a Team plan ($25–$30 per user/month) for businesses needing collaboration tools, and an Enterprise plan with custom pricing for large-scale AI integration and admin controls. Each tier provides increasing levels of performance, usage limits, and additional features tailored to different needs.

Claude 4: A More Expressive ChatGPT Alternative

Claude is a chat product that was designed almost as a response to ChatGPT's drawbacks. It was created by a company called Anthropic and runs on their own proprietary LLM, which is also called Claude.

The latest generation includes Claude Opus 4.1 and Claude Sonnet 4 (released in May 2025), which are hybrid reasoning models that can switch between fast responses and extended thinking. Just as we did in the previous section, we'll use the term "Claude" to refer to the entire family of models and the interface.

Anthropic's mission in developing Claude was to create an AI model that prioritized humanity and ethics above all. They wanted to make AI more predictable, creating a system with better safety measures so it acts more in line with what users want. Anthropic focused on the ethical side of AI to build a tool that is not only as good as others but also better at being trustworthy, safe, and more aligned with the human experience of conversation.

Where ChatGPT has high IQ, Claude has high EQ.

TL;DR:

Claude's Strengths

Massive Context Window

Claude 4 now offers industry-leading context windows. Claude Opus 4.1 features a 200K token context window, while Claude Sonnet 4 supports up to 1 million tokens—that's equivalent to processing 750,000 words or 75,000 lines of code in a single prompt. This means you could feed Claude an entire novel along with comprehensive analysis and additional research materials, all in one conversation.

Good news for David Foster Wallace fans: Infinite Jest can now finally be analyzed in its entirety, as can multiple novels, entire codebases, or dozens of research papers in a single request.

Expressive, Natural Language

What makes Claude stand out, and why it's become a favorite for writers, is how much more expressive it is than ChatGPT. It's probably "read" those two books mentioned above, in addition to mountains of other literature. The answers it gives read a lot more like a human, giving concise responses that ask the question without droning on, adding unnecessary context, or incessantly repeating jargon-y or corny words and phrases.

To show you what we mean, we fed all the text of this post—minus the conclusion—to Claude and ChatGPT and asked them to write the final word. It’s a stark contrast.

This facility with language also means Claude can, with direction, write in a variety of styles—conversational, casual, professional, and even humorous styles are largely successful.

You can see that in the example above, where both AI assistants tried to close on a joke. Claude’s is pretty good and includes a callback to an earlier joke in the post. ChatGPT tried, so A for effort, but really all it did was reuse a comical phrase without adding to it, and so it just comes off as that Steve Buscemi meme.

Claude also includes many more ethical guardrails than ChatGPT or Gemini, as part of Anthropic’s mission to ensure Claude’s output aligns with user values and isn’t providing harmful answers. This is why Claude is better suited to tasks that are more focused on the craft of writing: it’s great at helping you polish up your own dry prose and makes a good colleague to bounce ideas off of and get feedback. It even has a knack for creative exercises, like dialogue and writing fiction. As you'll see, though, writing fiction is something Claude does even when you might not want it to.

Claude's Weaknesses

Enhanced Reasoning with Hybrid Models

Claude 4 has significantly improved its reasoning capabilities with hybrid models that can switch between fast responses and extended thinking mode. Claude Opus 4.1 and Sonnet 4 excel at complex problem-solving, advanced coding, and multi-step reasoning tasks. While GPT-5 may still have an edge in pure logical deduction, Claude 4's reasoning abilities now rival the competition, especially for tasks requiring sustained focus across long contexts.

Improved Reliability

While Claude 4's exact hallucination rates haven't been published yet, the hybrid reasoning models show significant improvements in accuracy and factual reliability compared to previous versions. Claude Opus 4.1 and Sonnet 4 are designed with better safety guardrails and more rigorous fact-checking, making them more suitable for professional and research applications than their predecessors.

And, while it can understand and speak around 50 languages, most of its training was in English, meaning you'll get your best results with that.

Claude Pricing

Anthropic's pricing plans for Claude are very similar to ChatGPT's. The Free plan allows individuals to interact with Claude via web, iOS, and Android platforms. For enhanced features, the Pro plan is available at $20 per month ($18/mo with annual billing), offering additional capabilities for power users. Teams can opt for the Team plan, priced at $30 per user per month ($25/mo with annual billing), facilitating collaborative use. For large-scale deployments, the Enterprise plan offers advanced features and support, with pricing details available upon inquiry. Additionally, developers can access Claude's API with a pay-as-you-go model, featuring usage-based tiers and automatic rate limit increases.

Gemini 2.5: You Just Never Know What to Expect

Gemini has come a long way since it was first introduced in December 2023. The latest Gemini 2.5, released in March 2025, tops the LMArena leaderboard by a significant margin, indicating a highly capable model with high-quality responses. It ranks #1 in areas like hard prompts, coding, math, and creative writing, making it particularly strong for content creators who need versatile AI assistance. Gemini 2.5 Pro now ranks #1 on the WebDev Arena leaderboard, which measures human preference for a model's ability to build aesthetically pleasing and functional web apps, demonstrating its visual design capabilities that extend to content presentation and formatting.

TL;DR:

Gemini's Strengths

Multimodal Input for Audiovisual Prompts

Gemini's biggest strength is its ability to process and understand more than just text. Feed it an image, audio recording, or a video clip; it can "see" and "hear" the contents before summarizing or taking questions on them. In a world where video content is increasingly prevalent online, this is a major reason to keep an eye out for Gemini-powered apps/assistants. We can see how this would be especially helpful for businesses wanting to record and summarize meetings or make educational videos more accessible by transcribing them.

Massive Context Window with Multimodal Capabilities

Here's where Gemini really shines: it comes with a 1 million token context window right out of the gate, with 2 million tokens on the horizon. To put that in perspective, you could feed it 1,500 pages of text or 30,000 lines of code in a single conversation. Yes, Infinite Jest can finally be analyzed in its entirety without breaking a sweat!

But Gemini goes beyond text and supports other modalities. It can process up to 2 hours of video, 19 hours of audio, massive codebases, or thousands of pages of documents all at once. Previous versions could already handle up to 19 hours of audio using that 2-million-token window, which is actually mind-boggling. This combination of enormous context and true multimodal processing makes Gemini 2.5 a powerhouse for research, content analysis, and any work where you need to connect dots across different types of media.

Gemini's Weaknesses

Improved but Still Developing Reliability

Gemini 2.5 represents a significant improvement, with enhanced post-training and strong reasoning capabilities leading on common coding, math, and science benchmarks. However, the model is still relatively new, and Google hasn't published specific hallucination rates for Gemini 2.5 yet.

Earlier versions faced challenges with factual accuracy—Gemini 1.5 had a hallucination rate of 9.1%, and the internet had a good laugh at Google's expense when they pushed Gemini out to the search engine with problematic AI Overviews. Google's search initially struggled to distinguish between reputable sources and unreliable information, leading to absurd recommendations like eating rocks or cooking with gasoline.

While Gemini 2.5 Pro now tops the LMArena leaderboard, indicating significant improvements in quality and user preference, it's still the newest of the three major models. For critical applications requiring high accuracy, it's worth waiting for more comprehensive reliability data as the model matures.

None of this is said to denigrate Gemini: it's the newest product of the bunch, and bugs are to be expected. Plus, it's Google, and that name alone will keep people interested. For right now, though, your best use of Gemini is to quickly get summaries of audio and video files typed, which is a huge help for researchers.

Gemini 2.5 Pricing

Free, limited access to Gemini gets you "help with writing, planning, learning, and more" and requires a Google account. Using Gemini's more advanced models, including Gemini 2.5 Pro, is available as a feature of Google One's AI Premium plan. Beyond access to Gemini Advanced, you also get 2 TB of storage and "deeper Gemini integration" with various Google apps. New subscribers can try the plan free for one month, after which it costs $19.99 per month.

Pricing Comparison

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the pricing and features for Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. We've also added our own AI writing assistant, which allows you to switch between the latest models of ChatGPT and Claude—for comparison's sake, of course.

The Last Word

So, in a situation where it's Claude vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini, which do you choose? When you're writing in Type.ai, your options are Claude or ChatGPT, and the answer is: it all depends on what you're doing. But because you can switch back and forth, you can get sentence-by-sentence granularity using the models.

For longer passages that require superior abstract reasoning, ChatGPT is the go-to. If it comes back sounding like a marketing brochure full of jargon, you can switch over to Claude and ask it to rewrite it for laypeople. And while you can't write on Type using Gemini, it's a great resource if you're using audio or video as your source.

And no matter which one you choose for whatever task, remember the three most important rules of writing with AI:

1. Fact Check
2. Fact Check
3. Fact Check

And don't try to pass off any drafts or revisions that have been purely generated by AI. Your voice needs to be front and center.

You are the writer; AI is your assistant.

Can't decide between them? You can try Type for free, and write with both ChatGPT and Claude in the same product.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Claude better than ChatGPT?

The answer depends on your needs. Claude, developed by Anthropic, excels in delivering clear, safe, and helpful responses. It's particularly effective for style tweaks and other changes to the tone of voice. On the other hand, ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI, excels at logical reasoning, technical writing, and real-time research. Test both to see which aligns better with your goals.

Which AI tool is best for professional content creation?

While ChatGPT and Claude are both well-known large language models for generating text, neither should be considered a go-to solution for content creation. Instead, look for tools purpose-built for content, like Type.ai. Tools like this are built on top of ChatGPT and Claude, leveraging their capabilities but in a way more focused on a writer's needs.

How does Google Gemini compare to Claude and ChatGPT?

Google Gemini brings powerful AI integration with a focus on search and data analysis. It’s particularly suited for tasks involving research and summarization. While it’s newer, its features are geared toward professional use cases where data interpretation and precision are key. Its larger context window makes it better suited for multimedia inputs as well.