stage · Pick your AI
10How to choose
By the task, not by the hype
There is no universally best AI. There is one that suits what you're doing.
A quick fork so you don't have to read all of it:
Going to write code and build projects - Claude or Codex. These are the two leaders and they run neck and neck: on 22 September 2026 they even shipped new models on the same day (Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol). I'm on Claude, but if you pick Codex you haven't lost anything: the difference is in comfort and price, not quality.
Want an all-rounder - ChatGPT. The most even across every task and the most familiar.
Lots of images and video - Gemini. Google's image and video generation is very strong, and it's all in the normal subscription.
You live on X and need what's happening right now - Grok. It sees the feed in real time; the others don't.
No money at all - Qwen, Kimi, DeepSeek. Free, and genuinely strong by now: enough for learning and first projects.
And don't agonise for a week. Take any of the suitable ones, try it for a couple of days. Switching is always possible; losing a week to comparisons is easy.