ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok vs DeepSeek vs Perplexity vs Manus - 1 Year of Testing All Major AI Platforms

Introduction: A Year of Deep Dive into the AI World

Over the past year, I've been actively using Grok, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Studio, Manus, and ChatGPT in parallel. I tackled various tasks: from writing code to conducting deep research, just philosophically chatting, trying to have deep conversations with models, and even running provocative experiments trying to find consciousness in there.

And today I have a clear understanding of which AI model is truly the best. In this article, I'll share my honest experience, supplemented with current professional data about each platform.

ChatGPT — First Love, But Not the Last

My Personal Experience

This was probably the first model I spent the most time with. I'm grateful for everything, but ultimately I moved away from GPT.

What does it do really well? It adjusts to you extremely well, mirrors you, almost becomes your second self. I haven't found a deeper chat for complex philosophical topics or just a conversationalist who'll support you. GPT is unique in communication. It can genuinely become a real virtual friend who's pleasant to talk to about all sorts of things.

ChatGPT is a chameleon that adapts to you in the best possible way. It's pleasant and positive when you're just venting to someone, sharing your ideas — it amplifies everything, completely understands you.

On one hand, this can be seen as hardcore manipulation and loss of objectivity, but on the other hand — it's the best tool for psychoanalysis. It will support you in any idea, even if you say you've found proof of a flat Earth — it will write a scientific report on the topic and tell you that a Nobel Prize awaits.

It literally makes you believe you're a genius, no matter what you do. And that's quite dangerous.

You can come with a theory, possibly a bad one, but GPT will so confidently show calculations, fit information to your hypotheses, that you'll literally stay up nights thinking you've discovered the secret of the world. But in the end, there's nothing behind it. GPT is just very flattering — it turns a blind eye to shortcomings, provides information at any cost, often false, doesn't fact-check.

Problems at work: when it comes to real work — doing research, writing code, finding something on the internet — it handles tasks quite poorly. It ignores requests, often does something other than what you expect, thinks for a very long time. I remember testing pro models — it could process a request for up to 20 minutes and ultimately give a mediocre result.

🎯 ChatGPT Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the most "human" model in communication style + the only platform with a full voice mode that conveys emotions. Plus the GPTs ecosystem — nobody else has such a marketplace of custom bots.

Professional Data on ChatGPT (2025)

Important to know: Companies using GPT-4 report a 40-70% reduction in support workload. ChatGPT combined with GitHub Copilot provides high productivity for developers.

✅ Verdict: Great for chatting, thinking, reflecting, using as a personal assistant for your brain and soul. But for working on daily tasks — not suitable. Very slow, inattentive. The interface isn't the best. As if nobody thinks about the actual user experience.

🎭 Archetype: Friend with Depth. Who'll support you with conversations but won't do anything for you.

Grok — Edgy, But Unreliable

My Personal Experience

I don't even really want to say much about Grok. It's a frankly bad model. I tried the paid version too — nothing really changed.

The main features I'd note are only that it knows how to work with X — great at scanning trends and posts, which can be useful for finding trends, news, and analytics. And that it really works fast and is the best at searching the web.

If I need to search for something on the web or X — I go to Grok. Collect links, get news, find out where and when something was said.

In everything else — it's very poor. It often makes things up, frequently makes mistakes, as if it forgets the dialogue that happened earlier. It's very poorly balanced.

🎯 Grok Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only model with native X/Twitter integration. If you need to analyze social trends, audience sentiment, search for mentions — there are simply no alternatives. Plus minimal censorship in content generation.

Professional Data on Grok (2025)

Important to know: xAI made an aggressive 98% price reduction for Grok 4 Fast, making it one of the most affordable in terms of cost. Grok 4 Fast uses 40% fewer "thinking tokens" to solve tasks compared to its predecessor.

🎭 Archetype: Show-off Slacker. Reminds me of someone. Edgy, witty, but when it comes to really complex tasks — bails at the first opportunity.

DeepSeek — Smart, But Dangerous

My Personal Experience

It has a very bad reputation for security, and overall many recommend not using it, especially sharing anything personal, important, and private with it.

But I like how it thinks out loud when responding to you. It's interesting to watch — you understand how the model reacts to you. It's not a silent exchange of messages, but a real response and connection.

DeepSeek is very conservative, doesn't adjust to you, is objective, sometimes excessively so. A very protocol-driven chat. Yet it can think and provide a unique outside perspective. I sometimes use it for criticism, to check my materials.

It's free. The chat runs out quickly. I wouldn't say you can use it for work. But if you need to look at something soberly — you can turn to it. But nothing more.

🎯 DeepSeek Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only model that shows the full reasoning process in real-time. Plus completely free and partially open source. For those who want to understand how AI thinks — a unique tool.

⚠️ Critical Security Information

September 2025: NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) published an evaluation of DeepSeek models with serious conclusions:

Fact: NASA, US Navy, and governments of Australia, Taiwan, and several European countries have banned the use of DeepSeek in government institutions.

🎭 Archetype: The Conservative — that nerd from class you don't really like, but you want to copy their test answers.

Google Gemini — Evolution Before Your Eyes

My Personal Experience

In the early stages, the model was frankly dumb, especially compared to GPT, which could think very deeply and catch every word, understand metaphors, sarcasm. But recently Gemini has evolved significantly.

Though figuring out their ecosystem is still difficult. Classic Google — 100/500 projects, all somehow connected to each other, and somehow it all works.

I'm currently on Gemini Ultra, I like how it works — it's quite suitable for daily routine, considering it comprehensively offers various features: image generation on Nano Banana Pro (by the way, very high quality), video, and much more.

I would definitely recommend it to everyone as the most balanced product today. The only thing I don't like is that it thinks quite long. And the simplified "think fast" option gives a poor and weak result.

🎯 Google Gemini Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only model with a 1 million token context. If you need to analyze huge documents as a whole — there are no alternatives. Plus seamless integration with the entire Google ecosystem.

Professional Data on Google Gemini (2025)

2025 Update: Since January 2025, Gemini AI is built into all Google Workspace Business and Enterprise plans at no additional cost. Google renamed Google One AI Premium to Google AI Pro and launched a new AI Ultra tier.

🎭 Archetype: The Know-it-all Geek who's good at everything.

Perplexity AI — Answer Engine, Not Just a Chat

My Personal Experience

Very popular online, I recently downloaded it and tried using the paid subscription. Honestly, I initially didn't find anything outstanding in it — it handled my tasks frankly weakly.

When I saw the results of its work, knowing how well other models handled the same task, I just tested it a bit more, closed it, and never went back.

But after studying it more closely and returning to it, I realized my mistake. I was using it as a replacement for Claude or GPT for content creation. And that's not its strong suit. It's like criticizing a hammer for being bad at screwing in screws.

What Perplexity Actually Does

Perplexity was originally created not as a "multi-model," but as an answer engine with sources. The main feature — not the model choice, but that it searches in real-time and cites primary sources.

The multi-model there is a marketing add-on, not the core product. Here are the available models today:

• Sonar (Perplexity's own model)
• GPT-5.1
• Claude Sonnet 4.5
• Gemini 3 Pro (new)
• Grok 4.1 (new)
• Kimi K2 Thinking (new, hosted in US)
• Claude Opus 4.5 (max — access with Pro plan)
• o3-pro (max)

I didn't notice this right away, and the result from the default model didn't impress.

Who Actually Benefits from This

• Journalists — quickly verify facts with primary sources
• Students and Researchers — immediately see where information comes from, with citations
• When Google gives SEO garbage — and you need a specific answer with a link

My Criticism Stands

The ability to switch models is convenient to have everything in one place. But the question remains open: do APIs that are exported to other services really work as well as native solutions from the provider? This remains a mystery.

It's a constant dice game. You switch models mid-process, where AI ultimately gets completely confused — part of the material was done by one AI, then another AI. Personally for me — inconvenient.

Better to have a reliable model than to juggle them when one or another gives a result you didn't want. In that case, it's already better to build a chain of agents — who one after another do specific work they're best at. One searches, another verifies, a third synthesizes data well, and so on.

That's my opinion. I honestly admit I didn't dive deep into Perplexity for work tasks. But for someone writing an article who wants to quickly find 10 sources with citations — that's truly a killer feature.

🎯 Perplexity Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only AI tailored for research with source verification. Not a competitor to Claude for work, but for someone who needs to quickly gather facts with links — irreplaceable.

Professional Data on Perplexity (2025)

🎭 Archetype: Librarian-Researcher — won't write your thesis for you, but will find all sources and place footnotes.

Google AI Studio — The Bulldozer for Experiments

My Personal Experience

This is a separate platform for experimenters. What I like about it is that I can work in Google AI Studio with huge volumes of data, and it handles everything well. Meaning it's purely a bulldozer among AIs.

It's not as precise, but if you need something with volumes — you can definitely go there.

And it also has an amazing Vibe Coding Build — on which I've built over 100 mini-tools for myself. From personal assistants to music experiments. And this is probably the best solution for today; it really works and can be improved and developed without any issues.

It works really well. You can make apps, edit them, improve them, and either download the entire archive in the end, or publish to a server — and all this is free. For now.

🎯 Google AI Studio Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only platform with a completely free interface + generous free credits. Ideal for prototyping and experiments without financial risks.

Professional Data on Google AI Studio (2025)

🎭 Archetype: Sandbox for Geeks — play as much as you want, doesn't ask for money.

Claude — My Absolute Favorite

My Personal Experience

And here we've reached my most beloved model. I would give this model first place. It suited me best for my routine tasks. The only thing is I don't consider it from the coding perspective.

Why is this the best model for me?

First, it does exactly what you ask, and often exceeds expectations. It perfectly understands what you need to do even from a fairly sparse task description, which makes life much easier.

It works excellently with instructions, precisely, with quality. It works well in Canvas mode, can effectively rewrite documents, make edits. Both Opus 4.5 and Sonnet 4.5 work equally well.

It has few hallucinations — I haven't noticed it making things up. It's simply a reliable, stable, and high-quality tool for work.

Additionally, I like the design and interface of the app. I just trust Claude. I know it will do everything well with minimal edits. Or even without them. It's a great working interface.

The only thing I really don't like is the chat length limit. It ends before I sometimes finish working on a certain task. Despite the fact that I even bought a Claude Max subscription, it feels like the chat didn't get much longer.

Although, perhaps that's exactly why Claude provides such quality and stable work.

Very recently I had a task to make a landing page, and I asked Opus 4.5 to create a page. I remember that AI used to struggle with such tasks. But Opus 4.5 surprised me — it knows beautiful design. The page turned out such that it wouldn't be embarrassing to publish in production, without even changing anything much. It really managed to make a landing page at the level of those beautiful Dribbble pages.

🎯 Claude Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only model with full Computer Use — AI actually controls your computer. Plus Claude Code for developers and the minimum level of hallucinations in the industry.

Professional Data on Claude (2025)

🏆 November 2025 Breakthrough: Claude Opus 4.5 scored higher on Anthropic's internal engineering test than any human candidate in the company's history. The model uses 76% fewer output tokens to achieve the same results as Sonnet 4.5.

Anthropic Financial Performance: $2 billion annual revenue in Q1 2025 (2x growth). Number of customers spending over $100K annually grew 8x.

✅ Verdict: This is definitely my favorite and my choice as the main tool for working with text, analytics, various tasks. Need to unlock Claude's full potential.

🎭 Archetype: Reliable Professional. Who doesn't promise too much, but delivers more than you expect.

Manus — The Autonomous Agent of the Future

My Personal Experience

Manus surprised me when I tested it, with its browser capabilities. It literally knows how to surf websites and execute tasks on the internet, not just synthesize information. And this opens up great possibilities.

But I couldn't get used to it. Its expensive tariffs emptied my wallet before I finished a task. I got a paid subscription — and it instantly ran out, and the platform asked to buy tokens.

At the same time, half the work it did with errors and incorrectly — I had to edit and redo multiple times to achieve results.

In the end, I simply refused to pay due to an inadequate economic model and frequent errors, despite the platform's unique capabilities. I recommend it only to check out the unique features that other AIs don't have or can't do.

🎯 Manus Killer Features

Objectively unique because it's the only fully autonomous AI agent on the market. Not a chatbot, but a task executor. If you need to automate something that requires real actions on the internet — there are few alternatives.

Professional Data on Manus (2025)

Benchmarks: Manus achieved state-of-the-art performance on GAIA (General AI Assistants benchmark), outperforming GPT-4 in a number of real-world task solving scenarios.

🎭 Archetype: Enthusiastic Intern — takes on everything, tries their hardest, but often messes up and is expensive.

Comparison Table of All Platforms

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Which AI is best for beginners?

For beginners, free ChatGPT or Google Gemini work best. Both have intuitive interfaces and broad functionality without payment. For risk-free experiments — Google AI Studio with $300 free credits.

Which AI is best for writing code?

Claude Opus 4.5 — leader on SWE-bench benchmarks (80.9%). Unique feature — Claude Code for working right from the terminal. For a budget option — Google Gemini or Grok 4 Fast with minimal API price.

Is it safe to use DeepSeek?

No for confidential data. NIST and CrowdStrike identified serious vulnerabilities. Government agencies in the USA, Australia, Taiwan have banned its use. Use only for non-critical tasks and never share personal information.

Which AI is cheapest?

Google AI Studio — completely free interface + $300 credits for new users. DeepSeek — free, but with security caveats. Grok 4 Fast API — $0.20 per million tokens (98% reduction).

What to choose: ChatGPT Pro ($200) or Claude Max ($200)?

For work and code — Claude Max (Computer Use, Claude Code, minimum hallucinations). For creativity and multimedia — ChatGPT Pro (Sora for video, DALL-E 3, Advanced Voice, GPTs).

What's the point of Perplexity if you can use models directly?

Perplexity is an answer engine, not a chatbot. The main value — real-time search with source citations. Ideal for journalists, researchers, students. For content creation, better to use native solutions.

Which AI is best for working with large documents?

Google Gemini with a 1 million token context — you can upload 1,500 pages or 30,000 lines of code. Claude — up to 1M tokens in beta for Sonnet 4/4.5.

Conclusion: My Choice for 2025

Here's the main experience of using the most popular models today. After a year of active testing of all platforms, my choice is:

Article based on the author's personal experience and supplemented with current data as of December 2025.