AI Use Cases

Chat & research · 7 tools · updated Oct 15, 2026

I need a researched, cited answer, not a quick chat reply

ChatGPT leads with an evidence score of 83/100, ahead of Gemini (77) and Perplexity (58). 7 of 7 can be used free. Best for an all-round first assistant to try: ChatGPT.

Ranked by evidence — GitHub stars, Hacker News mentions, release activity and how much you can use for free. Recomputed nightly. How the score works.

1
ChatGPT Free tier
OpenAI's general-purpose chat assistant with web browsing, file analysis, image generation and voice.

+ 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.

Plus $20/mo, Pro $200/mowebmacwindowsiosandroidapi
83▲ 27
evidence / 100
2
Gemini Free tier
Google's assistant with Deep Research reports, Gmail/Docs/Drive integration and YouTube video understanding.

+ 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.

Google AI Pro $19.99/mowebiosandroidapi
77▲ 33
evidence / 100
3
Perplexity Free tier
An answer engine that searches the web and returns a synthesized reply with inline citations.

+ Every answer comes with clickable sources, and Pro lets you switch between frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
− Citations sometimes do not actually support the sentence they are attached to, so you still have to click through for anything important.

Pro $20/mowebmacwindowsiosandroidapi
58▲ 37
evidence / 100
4
Consensus Free tier
A search engine over peer-reviewed papers that summarizes what the research says and shows a yes/no/possibly meter.

+ The Consensus Meter gives an at-a-glance split of studies supporting or opposing a claim, with each paper linked.
− Only indexes academic literature, so it is useless for questions the scientific record does not cover, and paper summaries can oversimplify findings.

Premium from $8.99/moweb
49▲ 38
evidence / 100
5
Grok Free tier
xAI's assistant with live access to X posts, DeepSearch research mode and a looser content policy.

+ Pulls real-time posts from X into answers, which makes it the fastest way to research breaking news and public sentiment.
− Fewer guardrails and a reliance on X content mean more unverified claims and off-color outputs than other assistants.

SuperGrok $30/mo; also bundled with X Premium+webiosandroidapi
36▲ 60
evidence / 100
6
SciSpace Free tier
A research workspace that searches papers, explains PDFs line by line and drafts literature reviews.

+ The Copilot sidebar explains equations, tables and jargon in a paper you are reading without leaving the PDF.
− The free tier is limited and the interface pushes upgrades aggressively.

webchrome-extension
9—
evidence / 100
7
Elicit Free tier
A research assistant that finds papers and extracts their methods, sample sizes and findings into a comparison table.

+ Turns dozens of papers into a structured table of extracted data columns, which is exactly what a literature review needs.
− Free credits run out quickly, and extracted fields need spot-checking against the source PDF.

Plus from $12/moweb
8▼ 1
evidence / 100

Missing a tool? It gets added when it shows up in the release feed with real traction, not by request.

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