12 Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2025 (Free & Paid)

You must have seen how popular ChatGPT has become on the internet. The chatbot is based on OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, allowing users to converse with the 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 2025.

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 latest Gemini 2.0 Flash model. It’s good at creative tasks and outperforms ChatGPT. However, in reasoning and coding tasks, the paid version of Gemini (powered by Gemini-Exp-1206) ranks slightly below ChatGPT Plus (powered by GPT-4o and o1).

To test Gemini’s capability against ChatGPT, we performed a simple reasoning test on both AI chatbots. The free version of ChatGPT gives 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 generation, image analysis, 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 tool called Deep Research is now available to paid Gemini Advanced 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	Commonsense reasoning is slightly weak
Fast response time
Image analysis and generation
File uploads, Deep Research
Extensions support, chat with YouTube videos
Google ecosystem advantage

Pricing: Free, Gemini Advanced starts at $20 per month, Offers a free trial of one month with Google One benefits

2. Grok 3: ChatGPT Alternative with Reasoning Excellence

Elon Musk’s xAI startup recently released the powerful Grok 3 model, and it surpassed ChatGPT in many areas including coding, reasoning, creative writing, and more. On top of that, xAI has made Grok 3 free for everyone. So you can now access the larger Grok 3 model on x.com and grok.com without requiring any X subscription.

We thoroughly 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, be it o3-mini or GPT-4o. In one of the tricky questions, Grok got the answer right, but ChatGPT simply failed.

xAI has also released a Grok 3 reasoning model similar to OpenAI’s o-series models, and it’s pretty impressive. You can turn on the “Think” button to use the reasoning model. Along with 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 3 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 3. 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 $40 per month

3. DeepSeek: A Free and Powerful Alternative to ChatGPT o1

In the past few days, a groundbreaking frontier AI model from China has appeared which matches ChatGPT’s o1 reasoning model. Dubbed “DeepSeek R1,” the small Chinese startup has shocked the AI industry. The DeepSeek app has soared to the top position on the Apple App Store, outranking ChatGPT. The US tech stock market has been thrown into a tizzy after the release of DeepSeek’s cost-efficient model.

DeepSeek brings o1-level reasoning performance for free, while OpenAI charges $20 for ChatGPT o1 access. Just like ChatGPT’s ‘Thinking’ mechanism, DeepSeek uses ‘DeepThink’ to re-evaluate its response before giving the final answer.

Be it AIME 2024, Codeforces or GPQA Diamond benchmark, DeepSeek R1 closely matches OpenAI’s o1 performance. You can check out our Deepseek R1 vs OpenAI o1 comparison right here. And all of this is available for free. Unlike ChatGPT o1, you can view the full chain of thought on DeepSeek. You can even use web search with DeepSeek R1. Not to mention, it lets you upload documents and images.

We compared ChatGPT o1 and DeepSeek R1 on a variety of complex reasoning tests and found that DeepSeek R1 is nearly on par with ChatGPT o1, but it doesn’t 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 R1 in place of ChatGPT o1 and save $20.

Pros	Cons
Powered by DeepSeek R1 model, comparable to ChatGPT o1	No Code Interpreter, Canvas, or Tasks integration
Best suited for challenging problems in science, coding, math, and reasoning	No voice mode
Entirely free to use	No multimodal support
Upload images and documents	Privacy concerns
Web Search	Highly censored on political topics

Pricing: Free

4. Claude: ChatGPT Alternative for Coding and Reasoning

ChatGPT has no shortage of rivals in the AI space. Anthropic improved its most powerful AI model and released Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New) which is better than OpenAI’s GPT-4o model in coding and reasoning tasks. In our 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 3.5 Sonnet has a context length of 200K tokens, much higher than ChatGPT’s 32K context window. It means that Claude can handle large volumes of data with ease. Apart from that, Claude’s 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 3.5 Sonnet 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 3.5 Sonnet model powers the free version of Claude Chat, which has a capped limit. If you want to use Claude without limitations, you must subscribe to Claude Pro, which costs $23.60 per month.

Pros	Cons
200K context length	Cannot access the Internet
Upload images, documents including PDFs	Message capping for free users
Free version powered by the top-tier Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New) model	No voice mode
Based on Constitutional AI to deliver a safer experience

Pricing: Free, Claude Pro starts at $23.60 per month

5. Microsoft Copilot: A More Personal ChatGPT Alternative

Microsoft Copilot is one of the best competitors to ChatGPT because it offers free access to the GPT-4o model. The paid Copilot Pro, which costs $20 per month, brings priority access to GPT-4o and unlocks higher usage limits. It also lets you use Copilot features in Office apps. Bear in mind that free Copilot users only get answers from the GPT-4o model during non-peak hours.

To compare Microsoft Copilot to ChatGPT, I used the same prompt. And, well, Copilot nailed it, whereas the free version of ChatGPT struggled to provide the correct response. As previously stated, the free version of Copilot includes the GPT-4o model, making it far more capable than the free tier of ChatGPT, which quickly defaults to the GPT-4o mini model.

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 while browsing the web and offer you suggestions along the way. That said, it’s available to paid users only. And Think Deeper is meant for solving challenging problems.

Pros	Cons
Offers free access to GPT-4o during non-peak hours	No file uploads
Image generation and analysis	No Live Video mode
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. Meta AI Powered by Llama 3.2

Meta recently released its Llama 3.2 models and introduced vision models for the first time. It has come up with a ChatGPT-like platform for chatting with AI models. You can use Meta AI on the web and generate images. Unlike ChatGPT, Meta AI is completely free to use and it’s powered by the latest Llama 3.2 model.

Apart from that, you can chat with Meta AI on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. It uses the Llama 3.2 model which has shown great promise. We recently compared Meta’s largest Llama 3.1 405B model with ChatGPT’s GPT-4o and it did a pretty good job, except in both coding and reasoning tasks.

Although the model performed poorly on challenging reasoning tests, it did exceptionally well on numerous other problems. Additionally, Meta AI is working to roll out voice conversation, image analysis, AI photo editing, and more. However, at this time, these promised features have not rolled out. According to Meta, support for multimodal features will arrive soon on all platforms.

Pros	Cons
Impressive results despite the smaller size	Can’t process images or PDFs yet
Good for casual use	No voice conversation mode
Supports image generation
Open-source under custom license
Free to use

Pricing: Free

7. Mistral Chat: Multilingual ChatGPT Alternative

In case you are not following news, Microsoft invested close to $16 million investment 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 GPT-4 and 4o models.

Its newly-announced Pixtral Large is one of the best multimodal models out there. According to the company, Pixtral Large can accurately understand documents and it’s very good at advanced reasoning. On top of that, it supports a context length of up to 128K tokens, has function calling support just like GPT-4o, and natively fluent in various popular international languages.

I posed the advanced reasoning question to Mistral Chat and it performed accurately. 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 model that understands French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Pros	Cons
Powered by Pixtral Large model	No code interpreter
Great at document, and image understanding
Fluent in English, French and many European languages
Supports features like Canvas, web search, image generation

Pricing: Free

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

Perplexity AI is a ChatGPT alternative users have always loved because it combines a search engine experience with an AI tool like Copilot. The bot hosts flagship models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. 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 GPT-4o to dive deep into your questions and come up with the best answers. However, you only get five queries for GPT-4o which refreshes every four hours.

Perplexity was unable to provide a valid response to the reasoning question in my test. However, since I was using the free version, complex reasoning is not its strong point. That said, you should absolutely check out Perplexity for web searches and product queries.

Pros	Cons
Holds good conversations without being confused	Might accidentally copy from sources
Offers free GPT-4o access with limited queries	Reasoning is weak
Cites sources with answers
Shop with Perplexity
Co-Pilot mode finds even more detailed answers

Pricing: Free, Perplexity Pro costs $20 per month

9. GroqChat: High-Performance Alternative for AI Enthusiasts

Groq is an AI-first hardware company that has developed a specialized chip for AI inference called an LPU (Language Processing Unit). The company has taken the AI industry by storm by offering 10x better performance than Nvidia GPUs. To showcase its LPU’s prowess, the company has launched GroqChat where you can run your prompts on open-source models and generate results in a jiffy.

It currently houses Mistral AI’s open-source model, Mixtral 8x7B, and Meta’s amazing Llama 3.3 70B. Although both models are excellent, I choose to use the Llama 3.3 70B because it is more powerful even if it is smaller. I used the identical logic problem on Groq, and while Mixtral 8x7B provided the right answer, Llama 3.3 70B was unable to guess it.

In short, GroqChat is a good choice if you’re looking for a quick AI chatbot that works similarly to ChatGPT. Additionally, GroqChat’s lightning-fast performance will astound you.

Pros	Cons
Lightning fast output generation	Requires account sign up
Hosts open-source models like Llama 3.3 70B and Mixtral-8x7B
Clean interface

Pricing: Free

10. HuggingChat: ChatGPT-like App with Web Access

One of the best open-source ChatGPT alternatives, HuggingChat is an AI chatbot created by HuggingFace, one of the premier websites hosting many AI models and datasets. This chatbot was previously based on the Meta AI (LLaMA) LLM but has since evolved where it lets you choose from a variety of language models.

This includes the recently-released Llama 3.3 70B, Qwen 2.5 72B, Command R+, Phi-3.5 mini, and more. You can select one of the models and produce interesting blog posts and jokes, generate HTML code for websites, recipes, and much more. There is also a handy toggle to enable web access.

This will allow the bot to gather information online to supplement its answer. However, the bot has network errors from time to time, which might hinder you. Nonetheless, try this ChatGPT alternative if you want to check out open-source AI models for free.

Pros	Cons
Fast and snappy replies	Prone to network errors
Users can choose from multiple LLMs including Llama 3.3 70B, Qwen 2.5
Can perform a variety of functions
Can search the web

Pricing: Free

11. Pi, your personal AI

Among all the other ChatGPT alternatives, Pi is possibly the only one that will provide you with a different experience altogether. Based on being a supportive and smart AI, Pi is a chatbot that follows a unique design. Instead of full-blown chats, conversations on Pi happen dialogue by dialogue. What makes it more interesting is that Pi is also one of the only assistants who talks back. The website has eight different voices; each is eerily realistic and oddly comforting.

Pi initiates the dialogue and attempts to understand each message you send. Speaking in a manner close to that of a therapist, the ChatGPT alternative is highly curious and makes an effort to comprehend and reciprocate. If it weren’t for the sporadic mistakes, one may almost forget this is an AI.

So, while it can get tedious if you keep talking, Pi is one of the best ChatGPT alternatives if you want some mental relief. However, you need an account to sign up, which can be a downside for some. Nonetheless, check it out.

Pros	Cons
Quite effective at mental health conversations	Needs an account
Realistic and comforting voice
Free to use

Pricing: Free

12. Poe

Introduced in early 2023, Poe by Quora is not an AI itself but more of a platform where you can talk to 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 GPT-4o, OpenAI o1, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Llama 3.1 405B, Gemini 2.0 Flash, and more. All told, the platform allows access to over 100 different LLMs. However, access is limited for GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, so 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 bots	Limited access to GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet for free users
Talk to AI characters
Create your own AI bot
Little to no downtime

Pricing: Free, Paid plan costs $19.99 per month