10 Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2026 (Free & Paid)

You must have seen how popular ChatGPT has become on the internet. The chatbot is based on OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models, allowing users to converse with AI. However, that also brought a big downside with ChatGPT’s servers being overloaded with users. This has locked users out of using the handy bot when needed. So, if you’re one of the folks who find ChatGPT frequently down, you can follow our list of the best ChatGPT alternatives in 2026.

ChatGPT Alternatives Compared

ChatGPT Alternatives	Best Suited For	Limitations	Pricing
Google Gemini	General chat, image and video generation, real-time web access, Google ecosystem advantage	Projects is still not available	Free, Paid plan starts at $20 per month
Claude	Excels at coding problems, hallucinates less, document analysis	Free tier has strict capping	Free, Paid plan starts at $20 per month
Grok	Powerful AI model for free, real-time access to X, politically uncensored	Problematic image and video generation, almost no guardrails	Free, Paid plan starts at $30 per month
DeepSeek	Free ChatGPT alternative from China, DeepSeek V3.2 nearly on par with GPT-5.2	Politically censored, no multimodal support	Free
Microsoft Copilot	Access premium OpenAI models for free, feature-packed, Copilot Vision and Actions	Defaults to weaker models	Free, Paid plan starts at $20 per month
Perplexity AI	Generating answers with citations, access top AI models from various labs, staying current with news	Creative writing is poor	Free, Paid plan starts at $20 per month
Mistral Le Chat	Best for European users, supports Agents and various tools, multilingual and multimodal	Not as powerful as ChatGPT reasoning models	Free, Paid plan starts at $14.99 per month
Qwen	Free ChatGPT alternative with powerful image editing features, Web access, file uploads	Smaller global user base	Free
Kimi	Powered by Kimi K2 Thinking, integrated AI agent, web access, file uploads	Primarily optimized for Chinese market	Free, Paid plan starts at $19 per month
Poe	All-in-one platform to access various AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and more	Requires subscription for full access	Free, Paid plan starts at $19.99 per month

1. Google Gemini: A Powerful ChatGPT Alternative for AI Tasks

Google Gemini is considered one of the closest competitors to ChatGPT. Similar to ChatGPT, Gemini is also free to use, and the free version is powered by the powerful Gemini 3 Pro model with some rate limits. For extended usage, you can use the Gemini 3 Flash AI model. Gemini is excellent at creative tasks and outperforms ChatGPT. And now with the Gemini 3 Pro reasoning model, it matches and even outperform ChatGPT 5.2 model.

To test Gemini’s capability against ChatGPT, we performed a simple reasoning test on both AI chatbots. The free version of ChatGPT gave a wrong answer, whereas the free version of Gemini responds with a correct answer. It goes on to show that Google has done a great job at offering a capable model even for free users.

Apart from that, Gemini brings image and video generation using the excellent Nano Banana Pro model and Veo 3.1, file uploads, extension support, and more. You can also use Gemini to chat with YouTube videos, which is not available on ChatGPT. Moreover, a new AI agent called Deep Research is now available to both free and paid users. It lets you generate detailed reports on any topic. And you can naturally converse with Gemini Live on any topic.

Pros	Cons
Great at creative writing; a solid tool for researching any subject	No support for projects yet
Fast response time
Veo 3.1 video generation and Nano Banana Pro image generation
File uploads, Deep Research AI agent
Extensions support, chat with YouTube videos
Google ecosystem advantage

Pricing: Free, Gemini AI Pro starts at $20 per month

2. Claude: Best ChatGPT Alternative for Coding and Reasoning

ChatGPT has no shortage of rivals in the AI space. Anthropic improved its most powerful AI models and released Claude Opus 4.5 and Sonnet 4.5 which are better than OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 model in coding and reasoning tasks. In our earlier comparison between Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT 4o, Claude performed impressively well. In case you didn’t know, Anthropic is backed by Google and Amazon, making it a solid OpenAI competitor.

Moreover, Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a context length of 200K tokens, the same as ChatGPT’s 200K context window. It means that Claude can handle large volumes of data with ease. Apart from that, Claude models are fluent in non-English languages including Japanese, Spanish, and French. It also brings vision capability and can process complex graphs, diagrams, and charts.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is very good at code generation, and you can upload documents and PDFs and have Claude summarize them for your convenience. In addition, with Claude Artifacts, you can generate code and create interactive web apps in your browser instantly. Finally, like ChatGPT, you can run JavaScript code with Claude’s Code Interpreter.

The new Claude Sonnet 4.5 model powers the free version of Claude Chat, which has a capped limit. If you want to access Claude Opus 4.5 with reasoning capability, you must subscribe to Claude Pro, which costs $20 per month.

Pros	Cons
Best coding AI model	Message capping for free users
Upload images, documents including PDFs	No image generation or voice mode
Free version powered by Claude Sonnet 4.5 model
Based on Constitutional AI to deliver a safer experience

Pricing: Free, Claude Pro starts at $20 per month

3. Grok: ChatGPT Alternative with Reasoning Excellence

Elon Musk’s xAI startup recently released the powerful Grok 4.1 model, and it surpassed ChatGPT in many areas, including coding, reasoning, creative writing, and more. On top of that, xAI has made Grok 4.1 free for everyone. So you can now access the larger Grok 4.1 model on x.com and grok.com without requiring any X subscription.

We previously tested the Grok 3 model and compared it with ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and other AI models. We discovered that Grok 3 is a frontier-class model, and surpasses the free offering of ChatGPT. In one of the tricky questions, Grok got the answer right, but ChatGPT simply failed.

Apart from that, you can use the DeepSearch AI agent on Grok, which is basically xAI’s answer to ChatGPT’s Deep Research AI agent. It can autonomously browse the web and research for you on any topic you throw at it.

By the way, Grok also supports image generation, but it’s largely uncensored. It continues to generate provocative images of celebrities and public figures. If you are not concerned about image generation, you can very well try Grok. It’s a capable alternative to ChatGPT.

Pros	Cons
Delivers strong performance in coding, reasoning, math, and science	Image generation ignores safety guardrails
Available for free
Offers DeepSearch AI agent

Pricing: Free, Paid plan starts at $30 per month

4. DeepSeek: A Free and Powerful Alternative to ChatGPT

In the past year, a groundbreaking frontier AI model from China has appeared, which matches ChatGPT’s reasoning models. The small Chinese startup called DeepSeek AI shocked the AI industry. The DeepSeek app soared to the top position on the Apple App Store in 2025, outranking ChatGPT. The US tech stock market was thrown into a tizzy after the release of DeepSeek’s cost-efficient model.

DeepSeek brings GPT-5 level reasoning performance for free, while OpenAI charges $20 for ChatGPT-5.2 Thinking access. Just like ChatGPT’s ‘Thinking’ mechanism, DeepSeek uses ‘DeepThink’ to re-evaluate its response before giving the final answer.

Be it AIME 2025, Codeforces, or GPQA Diamond benchmark, the upgraded DeepSeek-V3.2 closely matches OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 performance. And all of this is available for free. Unlike ChatGPT, you can view the full chain of thought on DeepSeek. You can even use a web search with DeepSeek. Not to mention, it lets you upload documents and images.

We previously compared ChatGPT and DeepSeek on a variety of complex reasoning tests and found that DeepSeek R1 is nearly on par with ChatGPT, but it doesn’t always outperform OpenAI’s model. While R1 is undeniably powerful, it stores chat data in China, and some users have privacy concerns. In that case, you can run DeepSeek R1 locally on your computer.

All in all, if you want an AI chatbot for challenging problems related to science, coding, math, reasoning, etc., you can use DeepSeek in place of ChatGPT and save $20.

Pros	Cons
Powered by the new DeepSeek-V3.2 model, comparable to ChatGPT 5.2	No voice mode
Best suited for challenging problems in science, coding, math, and reasoning	Privacy concerns
Entirely free to use	Highly censored on political topics
Upload images and documents
Web Search

Pricing: Free

5. Microsoft Copilot: A More Personal ChatGPT Alternative

Microsoft Copilot is one of the best competitors to ChatGPT because it offers free access to OpenAI’s GPT-5 models. To compare Microsoft Copilot with ChatGPT, I used the same prompt. And well, Copilot nailed it, whereas the free version of ChatGPT struggled to provide the correct response.

Besides that, Copilot has access to the internet via Bing, can analyze and generate images as well. Furthermore, Microsoft completely revamped the Copilot experience with a warm and inviting UI. It’s now modeled on AI companions, and has a friendly vibe, as opposed to ChatGPT’s robotic demeanor.

With Copilot’s refreshing look, users get new features like Copilot Voice that lets you converse naturally with the AI chatbot, similar to ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode. Another Copilot Vision feature can see your screen and offer you suggestions along the way. Not to mention, Copilot now offers Think Deeper reasoning mode for challenging problems and can generate detailed reports as well.

Pros	Cons
Offers free access to OpenAI’s premium models	Can be slow at times
Image generation and analysis
Impressive Copilot Voice mode
Packed with features like Copilot Daily, Copilot Vision, and Think Deeper

Pricing: Free, Copilot Pro starts at $20 per month

6. Perplexity AI: App Like ChatGPT for Real-Time Search

Perplexity AI is a ChatGPT alternative that users have always loved because it combines a search engine experience with an AI chatbot. The bot hosts flagship models such as Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.5, Gemini 3 Pro, GPT-5.2, Grok 4.1, Kimi K2, and more. While the tool can converse with you, it even cites a variety of sources for its answer.

The best thing about Perplexity is that it can find the latest information on any subject and it does a great job at finding suitable products. Recently, the company launched a Shopping Assistant feature to find the best product for you.

Besides searching the Internet, Perplexity can comb through various sources like Reddit, academic sources, YouTube, and more. Perplexity AI even has a handy co-pilot mode that uses the power of AI models to dive deep into your questions and come up with the best answers. However, you only get three queries for premium AI models, which refresh every four hours.

Pros	Cons
Access top AI models in one place	Might accidentally copy from sources
Real-time web search and AI summarization
Cites sources with answers
Shop with Perplexity
Co-Pilot mode finds even more detailed answers

Pricing: Free, Perplexity Pro costs $20 per month

7. Mistral’s Le Chat: Multilingual ChatGPT Alternative

In case you are not following the news, Microsoft invested close to $16 million in a young French AI startup called Mistral AI, overshadowing its close partner, OpenAI. Mistral AI has been gaining recognition in the open-source community for developing powerful AI models, closely competing against OpenAI’s latest models. It’s Europe’s answer to ChatGPT.

Its newly-announced Mistral Large 3 is one of the best multimodal models out there. And its Mistral Medium 3.1 is a reasoning model that can solve challenging problems. On top of that, it supports a context length of up to 256K tokens, has function calling support just like GPT models, and is natively fluent in various European languages.

I posed an advanced reasoning question to Mistral’s Le Chat, and it performed really well. I have personally used Mistral Chat on many occasions in the past and have found it on par with ChatGPT. You should definitely try it as it performs better than the free version of ChatGPT. Mistral Chat is a great tool for users who want an AI chatbot that understands French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Pros	Cons
Powered by Mistral Large 3 and Mistral Medium 3.1	Doesn’t match ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking model
Great at document, and image understanding
Fluent in English, French and many European languages
Supports features like Canvas, web search, image generation

Pricing: Free, Paid plan starts at $14.99 per month

8. Qwen — China’s Open-Source Alternative to ChatGPT

Qwen is another free ChatGPT alternative from China and it has been developed by Alibaba. In the open-source space, Qwen family of AI models have surpassed many Western AI chatbots. The latest Qwen 3 series is highly capable and beats ChatGPT on a number of benchmarks. I think Qwen’s free version is better than ChatGPT’s free offering. After all, you get access to the premium Qwen3 Max AI model.

In AIME 2025, Qwen3 Max matched ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking which is available to paid users only. And here, you are getting the same reasoning model for free. Not to mention, its recent AI image editing feature through layers (Qwen-Image-Layered) is the first in the industry. It’s even better than ChatGPT’s image editing which changes the image after a few iterations. All in all, Qwen is an impressive AI chatbot and you should definitely give it a try in place of ChatGPT.

Pros	Cons
Powered by Qwen3 Max	Censored on China’s political topics
Upload documents, files, and images
Great at image editing, better than ChatGPT
Access Deep Research, Learning tool, web search, and more

Pricing: Free

9. Kimi — Powerful Reasoning Similar to ChatGPT

Moonshot AI from China has released an AI chatbot called Kimi, which is similar to ChatGPT in various tasks. Its reasoning prowess matches ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking and you get the Kimi K2 Thinking model for free. There is even an AI agent integrated with Kimi which can perform tasks for you. And you can delegate up to 3 tasks for free.

OpenAI, on the other hand, charges $20 to allow users to access its ChatGPT Agent. Basically, you get an action-driven AI agent for free with Kimi which is awesome. Apart from that, you can upload files, create web and mobile apps, visualize data, and do so much on Kimi. While it may not be as popular as ChatGPT, but it’s highly capable and offers many advanced features which are behind the paywall.

Pros	Cons
Access to Kimi K2 Thinking model for free	Small global userbase
Integrated AI agent for free
Upload files and documents
Web access, create apps, data visualization

Pricing: Free, Paid plan starts at $19 per month

10. Poe

Introduced in early 2023, Poe by Quora is not an AI itself but more of a platform where you can talk to different AI chatbots. Poe stands for ‘Platform for Open Exploration.’ True to its name, Quora Poe is a place where users can talk to and experiment with various AI chatbots. Quora mentions that Poe lets people ask questions, get instant answers, and have back-and-forth conversations with several AI-powered bots.

Poe’s website is neatly packaged and currently allows users to talk with AIs like ChatGPT, even Gemini 3 Pro, Claude Sonnet/Opus 4.5, GPT-5.2, Grok 4.1, and more. All told, the platform allows access to over 100 different LLMs. However, to access premium AI models, you must get a subscription for the same.

Quora Poe is incredibly effective and has very little downtime while you interact with the different AI bots. But in order to access it, you must first make an account. Fortunately, the good news is that you don’t have to make individual accounts for each service. Poe may be the ideal platform for you if you like to communicate with various AI personalities.

Pros	Cons
All-in-one platform to access almost all AI chatbots	Limited access to premium AI models for free users
Talk to AI characters
Create your own AI bot, generate images and videos
Little to no downtime

Pricing: Free, Paid plan costs $19.99 per month