Which AI model should you use?
Pick what you're actually doing. You'll get a recommendation and — more usefully — the reason behind it, so you can disagree with it when you know better. Based on running GPT-5, Gemini, Grok 4, Claude, DeepSeek and Kimi side by side every day.
1. What are you doing?
2. What matters most? (optional)
Second opinion:
The short version
- GPT-5 — the senior colleague. Structured writing, code that runs first time, careful reasoning. The right default when you're unsure.
- Gemini — the researcher. Hand it a pile of long documents and ask for sense.
- Grok 4 — the one that's always online. Current events, real two-way voice, image and video generation, and humour that doesn't need coaxing.
- Claude — the careful editor. The best prose of the six, and the most willing to say it isn't sure.
- DeepSeek — the efficient workhorse. Unglamorous, capable, and the value pick when you're running the same prompt hundreds of times.
- Kimi — the long-context bargain. Takes a large pile of input without complaint, and without the long-context price.
What no model is good at
Citations you haven't checked, arithmetic buried in prose, and niche API details. All six will produce something confident and wrong in those situations. Model choice doesn't fix that — verification habits do.
Why per-task beats loyalty
Picking one model and sticking with it costs you more than picking wrong occasionally. The strongest workflows chain them: draft with the lively one, restructure with the strict one, review with a third. That only works if switching is cheap, which is the argument for a multi-model app over four subscriptions.
The full reasoning, task by task, is in the cheat sheet, and the two most-compared models get a longer treatment in Grok 4 vs GPT-5.
Judgements here are qualitative and current as of August 2026 — model capabilities move fast, and we update this when our own experience changes. All free tools