Throughout my flat-sharing days, I had a housemate that will comply with me room to room, chattering away for hours—even after I hid within the toilet for some peace, he’d monologue at me by way of the door. ChatGPT jogs my memory of him—good sufficient, spits out some fascinating info, however boy can that AI go on.
And, sadly, the issues don’t finish there—ChatGPT additionally serves up middle-of-the-road content material, and expenses you a good whack for the privilege. Are you able to get the identical (or higher) performance from a special AI device? I feel so.
I’m at the moment a paying buyer of ChatGPT, and have used it for all kinds since its launch in October ’23—so I’m totally conscious of its strengths and shortcomings. I’ve drawn by myself private expertise to collate the instruments you see on this record.
Learn on to seek out the most effective ChatGPT various in your wants.
Switching out ChatGPT? Think about the next standards:
Affordable price ticket: Is the device you’re contemplating reasonably priced, and what do you get in your cash? Most like-for-like ChatGPT options price ~$20 monthly for a paid plan, however some include stricter question limits. For instance,
Occupied with options by way of price per immediate could make your selection simpler if affordability is vital to you.
High quality responses: Options ought to present correct responses which might be related to your immediate.
Outperformance: Search for choices that surpass at the least certainly one of ChatGPT’s hottest use circumstances.
Person expertise: ChatGPT may be very easy and user-friendly. Options ought to have an equally intuitive interface.
Person satisfaction: Search for proof that an AI various is well-known and/or popular with customers.
Helps a number of languages: In case you’re utilizing AI for translation, you want an AI device with a reliable underlying LLM that has been skilled on a various, multilingual dataset.
Safe and personal: ChatGPT options ought to all adhere to GDPR and moral knowledge assortment, storage, and utilization.
ChatGPT is undeniably the go-to AI device. However, regardless of the hype, it has constraints that may make for some irritating interactions.
- Generic responses: ChatGPT’s responses are what I are inclined to name “PH7”. It has a hard and fast, baseline “Temperature” (set to 0.7), which generally makes it unsuitable for extra artistic workflows.
- Struggles to understand context: Until you spend time coaching ChatGPT through in-chat prompts, or customized directions, it isn’t nice at instantly understanding the context of the content material or paperwork that you simply current to it.
- Accuracy, hallucinations, and bias: When it comes up in opposition to matters it’s had inadequate coaching on, ChatGPT tends to manufacture info in its responses.
I exploit AI for tons of issues in my each day life, together with:
- Creating and enhancing brief type content material
- Enhancing search engine marketing
- Doing deep analysis
- Translating key phrases
I’ve examined out ChatGPT options in these particular areas, plus some like-for-like substitutions (with a bit of assist from my companion—who’s a Frontend Dev—with regards to coding options). Right here they’re, at a fast look.
| ChatGPT Various | Greatest for | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | Conversational responses and multimodal asset creation | Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Free Claude Professional:$20/month Claude Staff: $30 per particular person /month |
| Google Gemini | Entry to Google integrations and business analysis | Gemini 1.5 flash mannequin: free Gemini Superior: A part of the Google One AI Premium plan—$19.99/month. |
| Ahrefs’ AI translator | Language translation | Customary plan: Beginning at €229/mo |
| Ahrefs AI Key phrase Options | Key phrase ideation | Customary plan: Beginning at €229/mo |
| Microsoft Copilot | Built-in coding help | Visible Studio (VS) builders: Free
Copilot professional: £19/month per person |
| Windsurf AI | Actual-time coding help | Windsurf professional: $15/month per person |
| Google Deep Analysis | Analysis help | Gemini Superior: A part of the Google One AI Premium plan—$19.99 /month.
Plan features a two-month free trial. |
| Ahrefs AI Content material Helper | search engine marketing knowledgeable content material creation | Subscription add-on: Beginning at $99/m |
| Jasper | Convincingly replicating model voice | Creator: $39/month per person |
1. Claude
Claude is a ChatGPT various developed by Anthropic—an organization constructed from the bottom up by ex-Open-AI workers.
Certainly one of my favourite issues about Claude is that it’s acquired pawsonality.
Removed from simply constructing a big language mannequin, Anthropic have created a private assistant with distinctly “good” traits—because of the experience of their “alignment fine-tuning group”—which is fabricated from philosophers, no much less.
With all its fine-tuning, Claude’s responses are typically much more fascinating and useful than ChatGPT’s. Its conversational prowess might also have one thing to do with its a lot bigger “context window”.
Claude’s free plan—Claude Sonnet 3.5— can course of 200K tokens which is the equal of roughly 150,000 phrases, or over 500 pages of fabric. Because of this it could possibly recall 150,000 phrases in its “reminiscence” earlier than it begins forgetting bits of the dialog.
ChatGPT’s free plan, the GPT-4o mini, falls wanting this with solely 128K tokens—or 96,000 key phrases. That ~50,000 shortfall means ChatGPTs responses may be prosaic by comparability, as a result of it doesn’t have entry to the identical quantity of context as Claude.
Certainly one of my different main gripes with ChatGPT, as I’ve already talked about, is that it actually likes the sound of its personal voice.
Right here’s an instance of what I imply. The opposite week I used to be looking for the causes of shoulder subluxation (certainly one of my many, many illnesses). I turned to ChatGPT, and this was the response I acquired again…
I needed to zoom out of my browser 5 occasions to seize that screenshot.
Whereas it’s good to have a wholesome quantity of data to work with, it will also be fairly overwhelming—particularly in the event you’re simply searching for a fast reply.
Right here’s Claude by comparability…
At 159 phrases, Claude’s response is slightly below half the size of ChatGPTs. A lot better.
With each question you direct at Claude, there may be an ‘invisible’ immediate tagged on by the Anthropic group to additional improve the AI’s output. One a part of that immediate focuses particularly on matching the size of the response to the size of the question, making it nice for a fast back-and-forth whenever you want quick solutions.
Other than its pithy responses and all-around higher chat, Claude additionally proves itself a viable ChatGPT various with regards to multimodal responses.
By “multimodal”, I imply dealing with a number of varieties of knowledge and inputs, past simply written content material—for example, knowledge visualization, real-time knowledge era, and code.
I’ve used Claude Artifacts to create content material templates…
Whip up HTML code for PDF embeds in blogs…
Take a look at out fast mock-up touchdown pages, and even construct an interactive report of Ahrefs’ LLM site visitors from only a screenshot of our knowledge.
If I needed to criticize Claude for something, it’s you can burn by way of your free plan quota fairly rapidly vs. ChatGPT.
It’s additionally not so good at offering latest info, provided that it’s solely skilled up till April 2024 (on the time of writing).
However regardless of all of this, Claude continues to be certainly one of my favourite direct ChatGPT options.
2. Google Gemini
Gemini’s skill to allow you to work together with Google merchandise is its undisputed USP vs. ChatGPT.
For instance, you’ll be able to strike up a dialog with Gemini everytime you wish to question paperwork and proprietary data in your Google Drive…
…rapidly get up-to-speed on particular paperwork (e.g. earlier than a gathering or pitch), whilst you’re truly in Google Drive…
…and even plan your subsequent journey by way of Google Flights.
In case you wished to question your individual information in the identical method in ChatGPT you’d need to arrange a Venture, add (a restricted variety of) information for ChatGPT to research, and refine ChatGPT’s responses with “Customized directions”. It’s a clunky course of.
And in the event you wished to plan a visit, you wouldn’t be capable to see flight occasions or a breakdown of prices in fairly the identical method—although you’d get a bit extra selection by way of flight suppliers…
However there are some Gemini workflows you merely can’t recreate in ChatGPT. Simply typing the “@” image, for instance, will allow you to work together with 11 Google merchandise, together with Calendar, Gmail, and Maps—making it an amazing ChatGPT various for sensible AI help.
And that’s not all Gemini is beneficial for. I’ve discovered it to be one of many few ChatGPT options that gives thorough product suggestions.
ChatGPT is likely one of the finest AI instruments for business queries. It lists out a number of product choices with pictures and particulars, and does a reasonably stand-up job as a purchasing assistant.
Different RAG (Retrieval Augmented Era) chatbots like Perplexity and CoPilot could make one or two product recommendations, however neglect to point out pictures and have a tendency to quote restricted sources.
Gemini, alternatively, will record out merchandise with photographs and structured, scannable particulars related to your unique question. I typically discover the outcomes higher and extra apt than ChatGPT’s suggestions.
3. Ahrefs AI Translator
Simply as ChatGPT can battle to compute tone and context in native language queries, it could possibly additionally short-circuit when translating content material into totally different languages.
For that cause, it’s higher for short-form translations—entrepreneurs, for example, have a tendency to make use of it for key phrase translations.
Right here’s a desk of food-based key phrases I generated with ChatGPT in ~5 minutes. It contains American and British English key phrases, enriched with UK and US search quantity knowledge from Google Developments.
ChatGPT is nice for fast, data-enriched translations like this, however in the event you’re seeking to scale and prioritize your multilingual search engine marketing technique, Ahrefs’ AI translator is the higher choice.
This device expands your key phrase record to present your extra key phrase synonyms, together with localized queries—not simply direct key phrase translations.
Right here’s an instance of what I imply. While you translate the US key phrase “Cookies” to UK English in ChatGPT, you get the phrase “Biscuit”.
However with Ahrefs’ AI Translator, you get the direct translation AND different related native queries to assist your content material transcreation.
On this case, for instance, Ahrefs exhibits widespread varieties of cookie within the UK (e.g. shortbread), and even some well-known UK manufacturers (e.g. hobnobs).
Plus, the entire key phrases in Ahrefs are enriched with contextual search knowledge that can assist you pinpoint probably the most related, widespread, and aggressive key phrases to go after in your goal market.
4. Ahrefs AI Key phrase Options
Loads of SEOs and entrepreneurs use ChatGPT for key phrase analysis. Right here’s SEOTesting’s Advertising and marketing Supervisor, Ryan Jones, displaying us a easy ChatGPT question for locating long-tail key phrases and month-to-month search volumes…
And right here’s Co-Founding father of Smarty Advertising and marketing, Ann Smarty, offering some extra instance prompts for locating key phrases from present content material.
There’s no denying that ChatGPT is a strong key phrase spitballer. It’s actually constructed to foretell possible key phrase combos after all.
The factor is, whereas it’s nice for brainstorming content material concepts, ChatGPTs key phrase knowledge may be missing.
That’s as a result of it ingests key phrase volumes from exterior datasets, which aren’t all the time correct or up-to-date.
Right here’s Mark Williams-Cook dinner, in his Core Updates e-newsletter, reiterating this level:
“At finest, some LLMs can scrape the net for some solutions, however this isn’t precise search knowledge, and also you’ll primarily be counting on what’s baked into the mannequin, which is normally out of date.”
Ahrefs’ AI Key phrase Suggestion device takes ChatGPT’s distinctive skill to hash out long-tail, untapped key phrase concepts, and provides within the lacking piece—dependable search knowledge—making it a extra complete various to ChatGPT with regards to key phrase analysis.
Right here’s the way it works. Head to Key phrases Explorer homepage, drop in a seed key phrase on the backside of the search field, then choose a key phrase preset or sort your individual immediate.
On the click on of a button, the AI Key phrase Suggestion device will auto-populate a listing of lengthy and brief tail key phrases.
A pleasant bonus: you’ll be able to ideate in different languages too.
- Simply append the language on the finish of your question
- Set the situation
- Click on the ↑ arrow to generate your key phrase record
- Hit “Search”
And also you’ll be met with a listing of AI generated key phrases that may be validated and graded utilizing Ahrefs’ dependable search knowledge.
5. Microsoft Copilot
Copilot’s general-use AI could not fairly match ChatGPT with regards to coding help, however it has an ace up its sleeve within the type of Github Copilot, its AI pair-programmer which it not too long ago made free for Visible Studio (VS) code builders.
GitHub Copilot Free for VS Code has arrived. pic.twitter.com/DVChR5Shub
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) December 18, 2024
Whereas ChatGPT can assist small-fry coding initiatives, Github Copilot was made to hyperlink up with Built-in Growth Environments (IDE), serving to programmers to jot down, debug, and take a look at code at scale.
Github Copilot is in actual fact powered by ChatGPT and Claude fashions—that means it makes use of their underlying LLMs to supply discursive coding help, whereas additionally offering:
- AI-driven auto-completions that match the context of your codebase
- Hashtag prompts which assist you rapidly find information
- Tons of real-world code examples
6. Windsurf AI from Codeium
Windsurf AI is one other ChatGPT various for coding help. It makes use of the Claude 3.5 Sonnet mannequin by default, which has been broadly praised within the programming neighborhood, and confirmed as being the most effective LLM for coding in AI code checks.
Windsurf AI is constructed that can assist you enter a “movement state” in coding. That basically implies that the AI agent is synced along with your code, so you’ll be able to chat and pair-program in real-time.
When in comparison with Copilot and different AI coding instruments, Windsurf excels in three methods:
- It generates and runs instructions for you utilizing the Cascade agent
- It exhibits previews of your code in real-time, earlier than you settle for modifications and push them dwell
- It helps multi-file enhancing—one thing which Copilot, particularly, struggles with
7. Google Deep Analysis through Gemini
LLMs are probabilistic phrase mills that can, at occasions, spit out inaccurate or fabricated info.
That mentioned, in the event you’re pleased to fact-check sources and follow-the-thread, then there’s no denying they will prevent a ton of time researching.
ChatGPT was already a formidable content material curator, however as soon as it plugged into the net through ChatGPT Search, it grew to become a analysis powerhouse; gathering info from unexplored pockets of the web and organizing it in your evaluation.
However in the event you like utilizing ChatGPT for analysis, it is advisable to get on to Gemini’s newest Deep Analysis mannequin–it makes GPT-4o appear to be an AI-wired Magic 8 Ball by comparability.
Google Deep Analysis generates thorough stories in response to your most advanced fact-finding queries.
Right here’s an instance of what I imply.
I used to be poking round in Ahrefs the opposite day, and located a bunch of web sites that had seen some unimaginable natural site visitors uplift.
I’d normally analyze that development inside Ahrefs, identical to I did in my weblog on the quickest rising corporations of 2025, however I used to be to seek out out which components could have contributed, past simply natural search.
So I fed Google Deep Analysis this question…
“Please check out these domains. They’ve all seen sharp natural site visitors uplift within the final yr. Please analysis them and provides examples as to why they could have grown (e.g. wins from competitor drops, social media success, profitable partnerships, distinguished PR and information tales, hyperlink constructing, promoting) and many others.”
…then I supplied a listing of ~50 websites. Gemini’s Deep Analysis mannequin began off by laying out a analysis plan for my approval.
After I hit “Begin analysis” it started working. The output took some time to generate, however as soon as I learn it, I understood why.
It generated an extremely complete report—for this response alone, Google’s Deep Analysis mannequin researched 390 web sites!
Much like Claude Artifacts, the ultimate report pops out in a facet panel…
And you may export all of it to a Google Doc—full with correctly formatted references—in only a click on.
To dive deeper, you can begin a back-and-forth dialogue about particular components of the analysis within the chat.
By mining press releases, newsroom articles, publicly out there knowledge, and firm launch notes, Google Deep Analysis gave me an summary of the methods that will have culminated within the prime six corporations’ natural search success.
As an example, it advised me about Groww’s “Go Inexperienced, Breathe Clear” advertising and marketing marketing campaign, Photoroom’s partnerships with Google Cloud, and Intelligent.com’s modern product releases, together with its LMS integration.
Deep Analysis is nothing if not thorough. That mentioned, I did discover a couple of peculiarities in its output. As an example, it merged firm info for lyrics website Genius.com with one other area of an identical identify. It additionally conflated user-generated content material (UGC), with precise firm info for websites like Reddit and Scribd.
That mentioned, it’s nonetheless probably the most complete ChatGPT various I’ve come throughout for analysis, to date.
8. Ahrefs AI Content material Helper
ChatGPT’s skill to help with content material creation is its bread and butter, however what it could possibly’t achieve this neatly is assist you each create and benchmark that content material in opposition to that of your opponents.
Ahrefs AI Content material Helper will measurement up the highest 10 search outcomes in your chosen matter, and rating your content material in opposition to them.
You’ll get a full matter breakdown so you’ll be able to spot data gaps, and make a plan to complement content material in these areas.
And if you’d like particular recommendation, you may get qualitative AI suggestions. They’ll spell out what it is advisable to do to get your content material rating, when it comes to:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Construction / headings
In case you’re caught on phrasing, the AI-assisted content material era characteristic will assist you mechanically reword, enhance, or simplify your writing.
I personally love utilizing this device for content material updates, and have seen severe natural uplift by filling matter gaps in outdated articles.
Right here’s the influence of a latest replace I pushed to our search engine marketing Audit weblog.
I added two sections on “inner linking” and “AI Overviews”, as per AI Content material Helper’s topic-gap suggestions, and thus far the article has picked up an additional ~2,000 month-to-month natural visits.
9. Jasper
What units Jasper aside is that it’s not your run-of-the-mill ChatGPT wrapper. Whereas it does draw on ChatGPTs underlying LLM, it additionally borrows from different fashions like Google, Anthropic, and Cohere.
As soon as you utilize it, it’s instantly clear the Jasper group have put a number of effort into fine-tuning its responses.
Whereas different AI instruments (together with ChatGPT) flail round attempting to nail your model voice—swinging wildly between “Expensive esteemed valued buyer” and “Yo fam, what’s good?”—Jasper truly does a good job.
You simply feed it a few of your content material as a reference level, and it begins channeling your model voice prefer it’s been working with you for years.
The device itself comes with 80 advertising and marketing apps and 50+ templates, so you’ll be able to knock out all the things from podcast scripts to “we miss you” emails, and you may get your complete group concerned through shared workspaces.
Wrapping up
Whereas ChatGPT stays the family identify in AI, there’s a complete world of direct substitutions and specialised options—from the exact translations of Ahrefs AI Translator, to the deep-dive investigations powered by Google’s Deep Analysis.
I hope you discover one thing on this record that sparks your curiosity.
One thing I’ve missed? Be at liberty to share your favourite ChatGPT subs with me on LinkedIn.
