Free · Chat & research · 8 of 8 tools · updated Oct 17, 2026
Free AI tools for general chat assistant
Claude is the strongest tool for general chat assistant you can use without paying, at 85/100. What you get for nothing: Pro $20/mo, Max from $100/mo. 8 of the 8 tools tracked for this job have a free tier, an open-source licence, or are free outright. It is also the top-ranked tool for this job overall, free or not.
Same evidence score as the ranking — GitHub stars, Hacker News mentions, release activity, free access — recomputed nightly, never sold. See all 8 tools for general chat assistant.
Top 3
evidence / 100
+ Produces natural, editable prose and follows nuanced instructions over very long documents better than most rivals.
− Pro usage limits can run out mid-session on long conversations, and it has no built-in image generation.
+ The broadest feature set in one place: Deep Research, code-executing data analysis on uploaded spreadsheets, voice mode and a huge library of custom GPTs.
− Free and Plus tiers hit message caps on the best models at busy times, and answers can be confidently wrong without citations unless you ask it to search.
+ Deep Research produces long cited reports from dozens of sources, and it reads your Gmail, Drive and Calendar directly when you allow it.
− Quality swings between Flash and Pro models, and it refuses or hedges on some topics more than competitors.
All 8, side by side
| Tool | Score | Pricing | What you get free | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | 85 | Free tier | Pro $20/mo, Max from $100/mo | web, mac, windows, ios, android, api, cli |
| ChatGPT | 74 | Free tier | Plus $20/mo, Pro $200/mo | web, mac, windows, ios, android, api |
| Gemini | 70 | Free tier | Google AI Pro $19.99/mo | web, ios, android, api |
 Perplexity | 53 | Free tier | Pro $20/mo | web, mac, windows, ios, android, api, chrome-extension |
 Meta AI | 46 | Free | Free | web, ios, android |
 Grok | 34 | Free tier | SuperGrok $30/mo; also bundled with X Premium+ | web, ios, android, api |
 Microsoft Copilot | 23 | Free tier | Copilot Pro $20/mo; Microsoft 365 Copilot $30/user/mo | web, windows, mac, ios, android |
 Le Chat | 11 | Free tier | Pro $14.99/mo | web, ios, android, api |
A free tier counts, and so does an open-source licence you can self-host — both are in the table, so a tool that is only free for a trial is not here.
Head to head: Claude vs ChatGPT Claude vs Gemini ChatGPT vs Gemini