All the way through my flat-sharing days, I had a housemate that will persist with me room to room, chattering away for hours—even if I concealed in the toilet for some peace, he’d monologue at me during the door. ChatGPT rings a bell in my memory of him—great sufficient, spits out some fascinating info, however boy can that AI pass on.
And, sadly, the issues don’t finish there—ChatGPT additionally serves up middle-of-the-road content material, and costs you an excellent whack for the privilege. Are you able to get the similar (or higher) capability from a unique AI device? I feel so.
I’m recently a paying buyer of ChatGPT, and feature used it for all types since its unlock in October ’23—so I’m absolutely conscious about its strengths and shortcomings. I’ve drawn by myself private revel in to collate the gear you spot in this record.
Learn on to search out the most efficient ChatGPT selection on your wishes.
Switching out ChatGPT? Imagine the next standards:
Affordable price ticket: Is the device you’re making an allowance for reasonably priced, and what do you get on your cash? Maximum like-for-like ChatGPT possible choices price ~$20 per thirty days for a paid plan, however some include stricter question limits. As an example,
Interested by possible choices when it comes to price in step with urged could make your selection more uncomplicated if affordability is essential to you.
High quality responses: Possible choices must supply correct responses which are related on your urged.
Outperformance: Search for choices that surpass no less than one among ChatGPT’s most well liked use circumstances.
Consumer revel in: ChatGPT could be very simple and user-friendly. Possible choices must have an similarly intuitive interface.
Consumer delight: Search for evidence that an AI selection is well known and/or popular with customers.
Helps more than one languages: If you happen to’re the use of 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 possible choices must all adhere to GDPR and moral information assortment, garage, and utilization.
ChatGPT is undeniably the go-to AI device. However, in spite of the hype, it has constraints that may make for some irritating interactions.
- Generic responses: ChatGPT’s responses are what I generally tend to name “PH7”. It has a hard and fast, baseline “Temperature” (set to 0.7), which once in a while makes it improper for extra inventive workflows.
- Struggles to take hold of context: Except you spend time coaching ChatGPT by means of in-chat activates, or customized directions, it isn’t nice at in an instant figuring out the context of the content material or paperwork that you just provide to it.
- Accuracy, hallucinations, and bias: When it comes up towards subjects it’s had insufficient training on, ChatGPT tends to manufacture data in its responses.
I exploit AI for lots of items in my day-to-day lifestyles, together with:
- Developing and enhancing quick kind content material
- Bettering search engine optimization
- Doing deep analysis
- Translating key phrases
I’ve examined out ChatGPT possible choices in the ones particular spaces, plus some like-for-like substitutions (with somewhat lend a hand from my spouse—who’s a Frontend Dev—on the subject of coding possible choices). Right here they’re, at a snappy look.
| ChatGPT Choice | Perfect for | Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | Conversational responses and multimodal asset introduction | Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Unfastened Claude Professional:$20/month Claude Crew: $30 in step with particular person /month |
| Google Gemini | Get entry to to Google integrations and industrial analysis | Gemini 1.5 flash fashion: loose Gemini Complex: A part of the Google One AI Top class plan—$19.99/month. |
| Ahrefs’ AI translator | Language translation | Same old plan: Beginning at €229/mo |
| Ahrefs AI Keyword Suggestions | Key phrase ideation | Same old plan: Beginning at €229/mo |
| Microsoft Copilot | Built-in coding help | Visible Studio (VS) builders: Unfastened
Copilot professional: £19/month in step with consumer |
| Windsurf AI | Actual-time coding help | Windsurf professional: $15/month in step with consumer |
| Google Deep Research | Analysis help | Gemini Complex: A part of the Google One AI Top class plan—$19.99 /month.
Plan features a two-month loose trial. |
| Ahrefs AI Content Helper | search engine optimization knowledgeable content material introduction | Subscription add-on: Beginning at $99/m |
| Jasper | Convincingly replicating logo voice | Author: $39/month in step with consumer |
1. Claude
Claude is a ChatGPT selection advanced by means of Anthropic—an organization constructed from the bottom up by means of ex-Open-AI workers.
One in every of my favourite issues about Claude is that it’s were given pawsonality.
Some distance from simply development a big language fashion, Anthropic have created a private assistant with distinctly “excellent” traits—due to the experience in their “alignment fine-tuning crew”—which is manufactured from philosophers, no much less.
With all its fine-tuning, Claude’s responses have a tendency to be much more fascinating and useful than ChatGPT’s. Its conversational prowess may additionally have one thing to do with its a lot better “context window”.
Claude’s loose plan—Claude Sonnet 3.5— can process 200K tokens which is the an identical of roughly 150,000 words, or over 500 pages of subject material. Because of this it might recall 150,000 phrases in its “reminiscence” ahead of it begins forgetting bits of the dialog.
ChatGPT’s loose plan, the GPT-4o mini, falls in need of this with most effective 128K tokens—or 96,000 key phrases. That ~50,000 shortfall way ChatGPTs responses can also be prosaic by means of comparability, as it doesn’t have get right of entry to to an identical quantity of context as Claude.
One in every of my different main gripes with ChatGPT, as I’ve already discussed, is that it in point of fact likes the sound of its personal voice.
Right here’s an instance of what I imply. The opposite week I used to be in search of the reasons of shoulder subluxation (one among my many, many illnesses). I became to ChatGPT, and this was once the reaction I were given again…
I needed to zoom out of my browser 5 instances to seize that screenshot.
Whilst it’s excellent to have a wholesome quantity of knowledge to paintings with, it can be lovely overwhelming—particularly if you happen to’re simply on the lookout for a snappy resolution.
Right here’s Claude by means of comparability…
At 159 phrases, Claude’s reaction is slightly below part the period of ChatGPTs. Significantly better.
With each and every question you direct at Claude, there may be an ‘invisible’ urged tagged on by means of the Anthropic crew to additional reinforce the AI’s output. One a part of that urged focuses particularly on matching the period of the reaction to the period of the question, making it nice for a fast back-and-forth when you want speedy solutions.
Except for its pithy responses and all-around higher chat, Claude additionally proves itself a viable ChatGPT selection on the subject of multimodal responses.
Through “multimodal”, I imply dealing with more than one varieties of information and inputs, past simply written content material—as an example, information visualization, real-time information technology, 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 landing pages, or even construct an interactive record of Ahrefs’ LLM site visitors from only a screenshot of our information.
If I needed to criticize Claude for the rest, it’s that you’ll be able to burn thru your loose plan quota lovely temporarily vs. ChatGPT.
It’s additionally no longer so excellent at offering contemporary data, for the reason that it’s most effective skilled up till April 2024 (on the time of writing).
However in spite of all of this, Claude remains to be one among my favourite direct ChatGPT possible choices.
2. Google Gemini
Gemini’s skill to assist you to have interaction with Google merchandise is its undisputed USP vs. ChatGPT.
As an example, you’ll be able to strike up a dialog with Gemini each time you need to question paperwork and proprietary wisdom on your Google Pressure…
…temporarily get up-to-speed on particular paperwork (e.g. ahead of a gathering or pitch), when you’re in fact in Google Pressure…
…or even plan your subsequent shuttle thru Google Flights.
If you happen to sought after to question your personal information in the similar means in ChatGPT you’d need to arrange a Venture, add (a restricted selection of) information for ChatGPT to investigate, and refine ChatGPT’s responses with “Customized directions”. It’s a clunky procedure.
And if you happen to sought after to plot a shuttle, you wouldn’t be capable to see flight instances or a breakdown of prices in relatively the similar means—regardless that you may get somewhat extra selection when it comes to flight suppliers…
However there are some Gemini workflows you merely can’t recreate in ChatGPT. Simply typing the “@” image, for instance, will assist you to have interaction with 11 Google merchandise, together with Calendar, Gmail, and Maps—making it a super ChatGPT selection for sensible AI help.
And that’s no longer all Gemini turns out to be useful for. I’ve discovered it to be one of the crucial few ChatGPT possible choices that gives thorough product suggestions.
ChatGPT is without doubt one of the easiest AI gear for industrial queries. It lists out more than one product choices with pictures and main points, and does a somewhat stand-up task as a buying groceries assistant.
Different RAG (Retrieval Augmented Technology) chatbots like Perplexity and CoPilot could make one or two product ideas, however forget to turn pictures and have a tendency to quote restricted resources.
Gemini, then again, will record out merchandise with photographs and structured, scannable main points related on your authentic question. I ceaselessly to find the consequences higher and extra apt than ChatGPT’s suggestions.
3. Ahrefs AI Translator
Simply as ChatGPT can combat to compute tone and context in local language queries, it might additionally short-circuit when translating content material into other languages.
Because of this, it’s higher for short-form translations—entrepreneurs, as an example, generally tend 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 mins. It contains American and British English key phrases, enriched with UK and US seek quantity information from Google Tendencies.
ChatGPT is superb for speedy, data-enriched translations like this, however if you happen to’re having a look to scale and prioritize your multilingual search engine optimization technique, Ahrefs’ AI translator is the easier possibility.
This device expands your key phrase record to present your extra key phrase synonyms, together with localized queries—no longer simply direct key phrase translations.
Right here’s an instance of what I imply. While you translate america 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 toughen your content material transcreation.
On this case, for instance, Ahrefs presentations fashionable varieties of cookie in the United Kingdom (e.g. shortbread), or even some well known UK manufacturers (e.g. hobnobs).
Plus, the entire key phrases in Ahrefs are enriched with contextual seek information that will help you pinpoint essentially the most related, fashionable, and aggressive key phrases to head after on your target audience.
4. Ahrefs AI Key phrase Ideas
Quite a lot of SEOs and entrepreneurs use ChatGPT for key phrase analysis. Right here’s SEOTesting’s Advertising Supervisor, Ryan Jones, appearing us a easy ChatGPT query for finding long-tail keywords and per thirty days seek volumes…
And right here’s Co-Founding father of Smarty Advertising, Ann Smarty, offering some extra example prompts for locating key phrases from current content material.
There’s no denying that ChatGPT is a formidable key phrase spitballer. It’s actually constructed to expect possible key phrase combos after all.
The item is, whilst it’s nice for brainstorming content material concepts, ChatGPTs key phrase information can also be missing.
That’s as it ingests key phrase volumes from exterior datasets, which aren’t at all times correct or up-to-date.
Right here’s Mark Williams-Cook, in his Core Updates newsletter, reiterating this level:
“At easiest, some LLMs can scrape the internet for some solutions, however this isn’t exact seek information, and also you’ll principally be depending on what’s baked into the fashion, which is in most cases out of date.”
Ahrefs’ AI Keyword Suggestion tool takes ChatGPT’s distinctive skill to hash out long-tail, untapped key phrase concepts, and provides within the lacking piece—dependable seek information—making it a extra complete selection to ChatGPT on the subject of 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 hunt field, then make a choice a key phrase preset or sort your personal urged.
On the click on of a button, the AI Key phrase Recommendation device will auto-populate a listing of lengthy and quick tail key phrases.
A pleasing bonus: you’ll be able to ideate in different languages too.
- Simply append the language on the finish of your question
- Set the positioning
- Click on the ↑ arrow to generate your key phrase record
- Hit “Seek”
And also you’ll be met with a listing of AI generated key phrases that may be validated and graded the use of Ahrefs’ dependable seek information.
5. Microsoft Copilot
Copilot’s general-use AI won’t relatively fit ChatGPT on the subject of coding help, however it has an ace up its sleeve within the type of Github Copilot, its AI pair-programmer which it just lately made free for Visual Studio (VS) code developers.
GitHub Copilot Unfastened for VS Code has arrived. pic.twitter.com/DVChR5Shub
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) December 18, 2024
Whilst ChatGPT can toughen small-fry coding tasks, Github Copilot was once made to hyperlink up with Built-in Construction Environments (IDE), serving to programmers to jot down, debug, and check code at scale.
Github Copilot is actually powered by means of ChatGPT and Claude fashions—that means it makes use in their underlying LLMs to supply discursive coding help, whilst additionally offering:
- AI-driven auto-completions that fit the context of your codebase
- Hashtag activates which permit you to temporarily find information
- Heaps of real-world code examples
6. Windsurf AI from Codeium
Windsurf AI is every other ChatGPT selection for coding help. It makes use of the Claude 3.5 Sonnet fashion by means of default, which has been broadly praised in the programming community, and confirmed as being the most efficient LLM for coding in AI code tests.
Windsurf AI is constructed that will help you input a “glide state” in coding. That necessarily implies that the AI agent is synced together with your code, so you’ll be able to chat and pair-program in real-time.
When in comparison to Copilot and different AI coding gear, Windsurf excels in 3 tactics:
- It generates and runs instructions for you the use of the Cascade agent
- It presentations previews of your code in real-time, ahead of you settle for adjustments and push them reside
- It helps multi-file enhancing—one thing which Copilot, especially, struggles with
7. Google Deep Analysis by means of Gemini
LLMs are probabilistic phrase turbines that may, now and then, spit out misguided or fabricated data.
That mentioned, if you happen to’re satisfied to fact-check resources and follow-the-thread, then there’s no denying they may be able to prevent a ton of time researching.
ChatGPT was once already a powerful content curator, however as soon as it plugged into the internet by means of ChatGPT Search, it become a analysis powerhouse; amassing data from unexplored wallet of the web and organizing it on your overview.
However if you happen to like the use of ChatGPT for analysis, you want to get directly to Gemini’s latest Deep Research model–it makes GPT-4o seem like an AI-wired Magic 8 Ball by means of comparability.
Google Deep Analysis generates thorough stories according to your most intricate 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 host of websites that had observed some unbelievable natural site visitors uplift.
I might in most cases analyze that enlargement inside of Ahrefs, similar to I did in my weblog at the fastest growing companies of 2025, however I used to be to determine which components can have contributed, past simply natural seek.
So I fed Google Deep Analysis this question…
“Please check out those domain names. They’ve all observed 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 luck, a success partnerships, outstanding PR and information tales, hyperlink development, promoting) and so on.”
…then I equipped a listing of ~50 websites. Gemini’s Deep Analysis fashion began off by means of laying out a analysis plan for my approval.
When I hit “Get started analysis” it started working. The output took some time to generate, however after I learn it, I understood why.
It generated a shockingly complete record—for this reaction on my own, Google’s Deep Analysis fashion researched 390 web sites!
Very similar to Claude Artifacts, the general record pops out in a facet panel…
And you’ll be able to export all of it to a Google Document—whole with correctly formatted references—in only a click on.
To dive deeper, you’ll be able to get started a back-and-forth dialogue about particular portions of the analysis within the chat.
Through mining press releases, newsroom articles, publicly to be had information, and corporate unlock notes, Google Deep Analysis gave me an outline of the methods that can have culminated within the most sensible six corporations’ natural seek luck.
For example, it instructed me about Groww’s “Cross Inexperienced, Breathe Blank” advertising marketing campaign, Photoroom’s partnerships with Google Cloud, and Artful.com’s cutting edge product releases, together with its LMS integration.
Deep Analysis is not anything if no longer thorough. That mentioned, I did realize a couple of peculiarities in its output. For example, it merged corporate data for lyrics website online Genius.com with every other area of a equivalent identify. It additionally conflated user-generated content material (UGC), with exact corporate data for websites like Reddit and Scribd.
That mentioned, it’s nonetheless essentially the most complete ChatGPT selection I’ve come throughout for analysis, to date.
8. Ahrefs AI Content material Helper
ChatGPT’s skill to lend a hand with content material introduction is its bread and butter, however what it might’t achieve this well is permit you to each create and benchmark that content material towards that of your competition.
Ahrefs AI Content Helper will dimension up the highest 10 seek effects on your selected subject, and ranking your content material towards them.
You’ll get a complete subject breakdown so you’ll be able to spot wisdom gaps, and make a plan to counterpoint content material in the ones spaces.
And if you need particular recommendation, you’ll be able to get qualitative AI suggestions. They’ll spell out what you want to do to get your content material rating, when it comes to:
- Name tags
- Meta descriptions
- Construction / headings
If you happen to’re caught on phraseology, the AI-assisted content material technology function will permit you to robotically reword, enhance, or simplify your writing.
I for my part love the use of this device for content material updates, and feature observed severe natural uplift by means of filling subject gaps in previous articles.
Right here’s the have an effect on of a contemporary replace I driven to our SEO Audit weblog.
I added two sections on “inside linking” and “AI Overviews”, as in step with AI Content material Helper’s topic-gap suggestions, and thus far the item has picked up an additional ~2,000 per thirty days natural visits.
9. Jasper
What units Jasper aside is that it’s no longer your run-of-the-mill ChatGPT wrapper. Whilst it does draw on ChatGPTs underlying LLM, it additionally borrows from different fashions like Google, Anthropic, and Cohere.
If you use it, it’s in an instant transparent the Jasper crew have put a large number of effort into fine-tuning its responses.
Whilst different AI gear (together with ChatGPT) flail round looking to nail your logo voice—swinging wildly between “Expensive esteemed valued buyer” and “Yo fam, what’s excellent?”—Jasper in fact does a tight task.
You simply feed it a few of your content material as a reference level, and it begins channeling your logo voice love it’s been operating with you for years.
The device itself comes with 80 advertising apps and 50+ templates, so you’ll be able to knock out the whole lot from podcast scripts to “we pass over you” emails, and you’ll be able to get all of your crew concerned by means of shared workspaces.
Wrapping up
Whilst ChatGPT stays the family identify in AI, there’s a complete international of direct substitutions and specialised possible choices—from the appropriate translations of Ahrefs AI Translator, to the deep-dive investigations powered by means of Google’s Deep Analysis.
I am hoping you to find one thing in this record that sparks your pastime.
One thing I’ve overlooked? Be happy to proportion your favourite ChatGPT subs with me on LinkedIn.
