ChatGPT was the first prominent AI chatbot, but today it is just one of plenty of strong options. This is fantastic but can make it difficult to know what to try. I spent some time talking to a few of the best AI chatbots I could find to see how they functioned. For you, I included a little bit of everything from ChatGPT alternatives that help build interfaces, perform research, create images, etc., and speed up your workflow.
If you don’t find something perfect, I will even show you how you could build your own AI chatbot. The overall pace of new AI chatbots has slowed down, but existing apps are changing and developing their offering. It is likely that between when I am typing this and when you are reading this, at least some of these chatbot apps will have new tools or models attached to them.
The best AI chatbots at a glance
| App name | Best for | AI model |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | The original AI chatbot | OpenAI GPT models, o1 and o3 models, and DALL·E 3 |
| DeepSeek | Open source reasoning model | DeepSeek V3 and R1 |
| Claude | Creating interfaces with Artifacts | Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus series |
| Meta AI | Social media | Llama series |
| Google Gemini | Integration with Google Workspace | Gemini and Imagen series |
| Microsoft Copilot | Integration with Microsoft 365 | OpenAI’s models |
| Zapier Agents | Working with AI agents | OpenAI’s models |
| Poe | Trying lots of AI models | Includes OpenAI’s models, StableDiffusionXL, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, and more |
| Perplexity | Internet deep dives | OpenAI, Claude, and DeepSeek models |
| Le Chat Mistral | A simple experience | Mistral model series |
| Zapier Chatbots | Building your own shareable chatbot | OpenAI’s models |
| HuggingChat | Leveraging open models | Lots of open models |
| Grok | Integration with X | Grok series |
| Pi | Personal use | Inflection-2.5 |
| you.com | Alternative to GPTs with lots of models | OpenAI models, Claude, Llama, DBRX, and others |
| Personal AI | Training AI personas for business use | Proprietary GGT-P, OpenAI’s models, Claude |
| Merlin AI | Using an AI chatbot through a browser extension | OpenAI models, Claude, Gemini, Mistral |
| ZenoChat | Personal productivity | Sophos 2, OpenAI’s models, Claude, Llama |
| Khan Academy’s Khanmigo | Learning | Proprietary |
How do AI chatbots work?
AI chatbots take the prompts you type and send them to their AI model. The model processes the prompt through its systems and sends the results back to the app, so you can view them in a conversational chatbot format.
While the app takes care of the features—for example, saving your conversation history the AI model takes care of the actual interpretation of your input and the calculations to provide an answer. Take a look at our breakdown of ChatGPT vs. GPT for more details.
Several of the apps on this list run on multiple models. And way, app developers can send extra commands to control how the models respond, so you might get different results when you test out each chatbot even if they’re using the same engine.
How I selected the best AI chatbots
I have done many updates to this list—in this fast-developing category, I am attempting to name only tools that have been developing as rapidly as the technology itself. On top of that here are the things I was searching for as I tried each of the AI chat tools online:
Quality of AI model. The app engine must provide a regularly decent output, including fluency and rough accuracy.
Quality of dialogue experience. The app and the AI model will together create something that is nice to interact with, in terms of the output you see and the capability of getting done what you show.
Chat app functions. Does it accomplish more than exchanging a message back and forth? Do you get to browse the web, make pictures, create graphs, or compose mini-dashboards? back and forth