18 ChatGPT alternatives in 2024 – our best free and paid options

The world of AI language models is so much wider than ChatGPT

Image shows the ChatGPT, Jasper, and Copilot logos on a green background below the PC guide logo

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OpenAI’s AI chatbot ChatGPT offers capabilities beyond any search engine. In fact, the GPT-4 language model can search the internet, summarize any article or blog post, and write new content you won’t find anywhere else! As a result, this technology has seen millions of users access the service daily – but not without issue. Such high demand comes with bandwidth issues, so when your first choice is offline, you need the best ChatGPT alternative.

Jasper AI is fantastic alternative for those wanting to venture away from ChatGPT

Finding the right ChatGPT alternative depends on what sort of AI tools you’re looking for. There are plenty of good ChatGPT alternatives out there, for example Google’s Gemini or Microsoft Copilot, but choosing the right one for you should be based on what you want from an AI assisstant. For those new to AI, we’d recommend checking out Jasper – which we have extensive hands-on with and think it’s fantastic.

To be frank, even when ChatGPT isn’t down, many of the options below can do things that ChatGPT can’t. Here are some other AI platforms to keep you going when ChatGPT can’t. We’ll discuss ChatGPT’s main competitors and provide free and paid AI options that are dedicated to specific tasks, like writing essays, content creation, coding, and more.

Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2024

Below we have compiled a list of the best ChatGPT alternatives in 2024 – but of course, this list is ever-expanding! Check back soon to see what’s changed. We always try to have hands-on with as many AI software as possible, so will keep this list updated.

ChatGPT main rivals

These deserve their own section, as they operate on a comparable level of quality, functionality, and usability as ChatGPT. Each of these options comes from well-funded big tech firms. They use proprietary LLMs, provide apps and feature multimodality.

Meta and Amazon don’t feature on this list, despite owning AI chatbots, because they don’t have the same use case as ChatGPT. These alternatives don’t provide standalone interfaces or are inaccessible to the public. There are many other ‘competitors’ but without big tech funding in the billions of dollars, these other options have no chance of dethroning ChatGPT.

More ChatGPT alternatives:

We go into more detail on all of the chatbots listed above and their specific functions in the sections below.

ChatGPT alternatives for writing essays

Using different AI chatbots for essays is a serious thing to consider. If you’re looking for content that is without issue if created or aided by AI, then these tools may help. Bear in mind, though that AI-created text can be detected, even if it is high-quality content, so use it with caution.

Jasper

Jasper, quite well known as Jasper AI, is a writing model previously known as Jarvis. It has also acquired other writing tools, such as Shortly AI and Headline, which will be integrated into it in the coming years.

You can select a topic and fill out the relevant form in the interface, and Jasper will create the article for you according to the instructions you have entered. The service has a 5-day free trial, with its ‘starter’ plan starting at $24 per month.

We’ve had a lot of experience with this AI tool here at PC Guide, so if you’d like to learn more about it, check out our Jasper review.

Overall, Jasper is one of the best AI software out there today, boasting a super simple UI, speedy results, and over fifty templates to choose from.

Jasper review – PC guide

From our hands-on review of this product, we’ve managed to understand some of the benefits and drawbacks of this product. Some benefits of Jasper include being easy to use, great for short-form content, quick results, and offering over 50 templates to choose from with the paid option. The limitations of this product include that it sometimes has difficulty staying on topic, can use slightly robotic language, and some of the information may need to be fact-checked.

Writesonic

Writesonic is an AI specifically designed for long-form content creation. It can be used for a multitude of writing tasks, such as blogs, webpages, ads, emails, and essays. Additionally, if you’re looking for AI designed specifically for marketing, writesonic specializes in SEO content.

Writesonic runs on the GPT-4 model, so incorporates all of the natural language features that are seen in ChatGPT. There’s also a chatbot version of writesonic, called Chatsonic, which aims to address some of the limitations of ChatGPT.

Writesonic prices:

  • Free trial
  • Freelancer: $20 per month
  • Small team: $19 per month
  • Enterprise: Starts at $500+ per month

Like any AI tool, there are some apparent pros & cons to using this product. Some of the benefits of Writesonic include time efficiency, versatility in content, a user-friendly interface, and low-cost options. Additionally, some of the drawbacks of using this product include Writesonic producing content that’s potentially more likely be identified by AI detection tools, and it has limited industry-specific knowledge.

Quillbot – free option

Quillbot is an AI-powered tool to help improve users’ writing. Its primary function is to paraphrase text pasted into the application to suggest improvements fitting seven different modes:

  1. Standard
  2. Fluency
  3. Formal
  4. Simple
  5. Creative
  6. Expand
  7. Shorten

As well as offering the above improvements to pasted text, Quillbot has tools for grammar and plagiarism checking, co-writing, summarizing, and citation generation. Many of Quillbots tools are free to use, but there is also a Premium subscription to remove some limitations and add features too. It even has extensions for Chrome and Word. If you’d like to read up on some of the other AI writing tools out there, check out our best AI writing assistant tools guide.

Screenshot of an article comparison between OpenAI's ChatGPT and another Chat GPT alternative, highlighting features and potential bandwidth issues.
The image shows an example of Quillbot’s paraphrasing features.

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ChatGPT alternatives for content creators

Whether you have a blog or you’re looking to take your social media posts to the next level, there are some great ChatGPT alternatives that can help.

Word.Ai

If you’re a content professional looking to upscale your output – and need to multiply productivity, then you could check out Word.Ai. It markets itself as a way to boost productivity with content that can pass AI detection. It can also ‘humanize’, and improve existing content – meaning you can plug in content from the likes of ChatGPT, Jasper, Copy.AI, and Writesonic.

Not only that, it reports being to improve such copy to the point where it cannot be detected by services like: Originality.Ai, Hugging Face Detector, and GPTZero. You can try it for free, or there are Monthly, Yearly, or Enterprise pricing levels, but it isn’t cheap.

ChatGPT alternatives for students

For students, there are a number of options you can use, but one does stand out to us.

Socratic

Socratic by Google is probably the best all-around ChatGPT alternative for students. A Google service, Socratic can help you with many types of queries for all kinds of subjects, as well as providing explainers and utilizing text and speech recognition.

It can offer study guides, videos, and step-by-step to help develop methods for learning. Plus it can make use of Google ‘Knowledge Graph’ to provide information from the Internet, to ensure that it isn’t out of date. The app provides high-quality learning resources at no price, it’s completely free!

ChatGPT alternatives for AI-powered search

If you want to make the most out of your search engine, you’ll want AI-powered search. There are a number of alternate options worth looking into.

Microsoft copilot – free to use

Microsoft Copilot’s (formally Bing) AI search is one of the best options available to you right now. With 3 modes to choose from, customize your LLM chatbot experience from conversational to utilitarian – or somewhere in between.

Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, it has an edge over OpenAI’s own chatbot which uses GPT-3.5 by default, unless you’re on the ChatGPT Plus paid plan. Find out more in our piece on AI-powered Copilot.

Microsoft Copilots respose when asked a question that requires an AI-powered web search

Copilot is a handy tool that is completely free to use. However, there are always pros and cons when using a product like this. Copilot’s benefits include being time efficient, it can explain a variety of topics, and generate a range of topics like images. One of the drawbacks of Copilot is the concern of quality of AI generated code, although the product is based on a range of data it may still produce incorrect code.

Google Gemini

Although designed as a fully-fledged replacement for ChatGPT, Google Gemini is now one of the leading competitors in the space. Offering not only a substantial total parameter size from excellent training data, but this ‘Google Assistant’ AI chatbot also offers audio and visual capabilities beyond that of its LLM peers.

Google Gemini’s respose when asked a question that requires an AI-powered web search

YouChat

Another good option for AI-powered search is YouChat. This can provide you with real-time data and actually cites sources too. That’s great for both relevance and accuracy. Tools like this basically allow you to have natural, human-like conversations in the actual search results, so they’re great for a number of usages – particularly problem-solving.

ChatGPT alternatives for coding

For those who want a ChatGPT alternative for coding, we’d say there are a few that should be on your radar.

Google Gemini

Google’s Gemini is undoubtedly a top-3 AI chatbot alongside OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Search. At launch, Google’s offering was powered by Google LaMDA but has since been upgraded to their in-house model PaLM 2. The tech giant states in its article on Gemini that its aim is to “combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity”.

Since its release, Bard has gone from strength to strength competing for the top spot of public favorite AI chatbot. With abilities such as coding, summarization, research, reformatting, voice prompting, responding to images, and even audio/image output. Bard is extremely advanced, with a high parameter count and unique functionality that gives it an edge even over ChatGPT.

Github Copilot

GitHub copilot is another great tool for developers that uses machine learning to ‘auto complete’ your code based on context. It works with various programming languages such as Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, and more.

Recently, a new version of GitHub Copilot has been released, named Copilot X, which is powered by the new and improved GPT-4 model. This version features AI chat assistance, test generation, and built-in CLI functionality. You can currently get a 30-day free trial, after which you’ll have to pay a subscription fee.

Like any AI tool there are always pros & cons to consider when using Github Copilot. Some of the benefits of using Github Copilot include that it’s multilingual, uses contextual understanding, it offers real-time code suggestions, and there’s a potential reduction in errors. Additionally, there are a few drawbacks including, potential privacy concerns, there’s not 100% accuracy, and there’s a lodd of coding nuance.

Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is another AI chatbot that functions very similarly to ChatGPT. You don’t even need to create an account to access the platform. This AI model can code in Python, JavaScript, Java, HTML, C++, C#, SQL, PHP, Ruby, and TypeScript. It is completely free to use and operates very quickly. We think it’s definitely worth a try if you are looking for a ChatGPT alternative.

ChatGPT substitutes for chat

When it comes to substituting Chatbots for conversation, there are a few alternatives available today that look to be worthy of consideration.

TruthGPT

TruthGPT is the perfect ChatGPT alternative for anyone looking for an unbiased, objective AI chatbot. This chatbot stands out from the crowd for its ‘truth-seeking’ answers. The service is completely free to use and has a similar format to ChatGPT. Simply, ask the chatbot a question and it will respond to your request in natural language.

Replika

Replika is pretty close to ChatGPT in conversational uses, and you can have similar conversations here, too. It can talk and give text replies at any time without delay. It is primarily an AI chatbot you can use to discuss general topics like love and life, just like you do with friends.

ELSA

ELSA stands for English Language Speech Assistant, a language learning app. It is available on Android and iOS platforms to download. The app analyzes users’ speech and helps them learn and understand the language. ELSA has free or Pro options, with Pro costing $11.99 for one month, $8.66p/m for three months, and $6.25p/m for one-year access.

Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat)

Copilot (formerly Bing Chat), from Microsoft, is another great alternative to ChatGPT and the new version boasts even more speed and accuracy than before. It’s integrated into the Bing Search engine, so if you’re a loyalist, this a solid option that works very similarly to ChatGPT.

AI Chatbots for fun

There are some other ChatGPT alternatives that are built for just conversing with an AI chatbot, which can be quite a novelty!

Character AI

Character AI focuses on AI personalities, anything from Anime characters to Tony Stark in fact. It’s based on neural language models and allows you to essentially have a chat with your selected character. It’s free to use, but you’ll need to create an account.

ChatGPT alternatives for maths

For maths, there are alternatives to ChatGPT, with one in particular standing out.

Wolfram Alpha

If you are looking for an artificial intelligence application to help you solve a maths problem, Wolfram Alpha is the app for you. Unfortunately, it does not work like a chatbot but it does have the ability to solve a handful of maths questions. And, it is arguably better than ChatGPT. The application is free to use and you can input any problem from integration, differentiation, algebra, and more.

Is there a better AI than ChatGPT?

In a general sense, ChatGPT remains the best AI chatbot in the world – though not without strong competition. Finding a better AI than ChatGPT depends on your use case. Google’s Gemini and Microsoft Copilot have each been considered better AI chatbots at some point. With each new update, they tend to overtake one another in one or more respects.

For example, Google’s Gemini Ultra AI model reportedly has 1.56T parameters. With the introduction of Gemini Ultra to the Bard chatbot, Google surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT in ‘raw power’. More recently, Copilot has integrated with Microsoft 365. The productivity benefits of LLM functionality across Microsoft Calendar, email, chat, document, and meetings apps make it better than ChatGPT for some.

Conclusion

That concludes our list of the best ChatGPT alternatives — a specialized tool for each use case of the OpenAI chatbot. We’ve seen significant technological advances in natural language processing (NLP), in the past year. As a result, it’s possible for one chatbot to perform all text-based tasks equally well.

It might be tempting to believe that specialization is always a good thing, but that tends to only be true in a zero-sum equation. That is, if you have a limited amount of resources to devote to something, then specialization is definitely valuable. However, AI runs on the resource of funding — with at least $13 billion USD injected by Microsoft over the past few years, OpenAI can afford to make ChatGPT better than every other chatbot at everything.

Still, there’s something to be said for specialist AI chatbots that integrate with niche software or have a UI (User Interface) and functionality crafted for a niche audience. Some services merely use OpenAI’s API to integrate GPT-4 or GPT-4V, in which case they can only ever be as good as ChatGPT. So, when ChatGPT is not working, you’re not sure about the price or if you require another specific application that is more easily served by an alternative, you can use one of these instead.

Kevin is the Editor of PC Guide. He has a broad interest and enthusiasm for consumer electronics, PCs and all things consumer tech - and more than 15 years experience in tech journalism.