I asked ChatGPT which AI was best and it recommended Claude

There's been an online trend of people ditching their ChatGPT subscriptions in the wake of OpenAI's deal with the Department of War. I've used ChatGPT for years and have always been reluctant to change, but it felt like the right time, so I asked ChatGPT which AI was the best for my needs. The answer surprised me.

I'd been thinking about ditching ChatGPT for a while

Inertia was my biggest holdup

FOMO is a terrible thing. I've been using ChatGPT for several years, with a Plus subscription. I have a lot of projects and custom GPTs set up that have been finely honed over the years. ChatGPT also knows a hell of a lot about me.

I couldn't help but look on at people using other AI products with a little jealousy, however. When I saw people raving about Google's Antigravity IDE , I was tempted to make the switch. When I saw posts about using Claude Cowork and Claude Code , I was itching to try them out, too.

My biggest worry was having to start from scratch. I'd spent so long setting up everything in ChatGPT, and it had so much information in its memory and saved chats, that moving to another provider felt like too much hard work. Last week, I decided to make the leap.

I asked ChatGPT to do deep research

The chatbot knows a lot about me

If I were going to switch, I wanted to choose the platform that was best suited to how I use AI. Each model has its own strengths and weaknesses, and I wanted to be sure I made the best choice for my personal needs. I figured I might as well ask ChatGPT for some help.

I asked it to compare the main AI options that offered a subscription that was comparable in price to the ChatGPT Plus subscription I was currently paying for. Since ChatGPT knows so much about me, I asked it to compare the different options and find the one that was best suited to the way I currently use AI, my work, interests, and hobbies, and anything else it knew about me.

I used the ChatGPT deep research feature , and it got to work. Deep Research usually takes some time, but eventually, it had an answer for me.

The results were surprising

I was sure it would recommend itself

I'll be honest; I was convinced that every AI must have something built into its system prompt that ensures that it always recommends itself ahead of any other product. There's a lot of competition, so companies probably don't want their models recommending other products.

That's why I was very surprised by the results. To be fair, its initial response was to recommend ChatGPT, citing features such as scheduled tasks and large file uploads, as well as the large amount of context that ChatGPT already had about me.

I reframed the prompt to play down these features because I don't use scheduled tasks and never need to upload enormous files. I asked it what its recommendation would be if I were starting completely from scratch on any of the major AI platforms. Based on its previous research, the recommendation was that the best fit for my needs would be Claude.

It had a number of reasons for selecting Claude, such as the ability to start a Claude Code session on my Mac and keep steering it from my iPhone, and being a better fit for refactoring Home Assistant configurations and scripts. Interestingly, it recommended Claude's projects as a good way to build a reference-style library for different tasks, despite ChatGPT offering a similar feature.

Obviously, this is one prompt and is based on how I use AI and my personal work and interests, so the answer is unlikely to be the same for everyone. Its reasoning was solid, however, and who am I to argue with ChatGPT? I signed up for Claude Pro.

A new chatbot is like starting a new relationship

It's going to take time to get to know each other

There's a lot to like about Claude, but it's certainly not been a seamless transition. While there are plenty of similar features, everything feels a little different, and that will take some getting used to. The same custom instructions that work well in a ChatGPT project , for example, don't work quite the same in a Claude project, so they needed to be reworked.

Another thing that has taken some getting used to is the usage limits in Claude. This wasn't something I ever really thought about using ChatGPT, so I was quite shocked when I had to stop in the middle of a fairly lengthy session with Claude Code and wait a few hours to continue.

Claude has a useful feature that gives you a prompt to enter into your current AI chatbot to export any saved memories , which you can then paste into Claude. It worked well, although the output from ChatGPT was much more minimal than I was expecting, so I used my own prompt to generate a more general overview, which I also added to Claude's memory.

So far, I'm happy that I followed ChatGPT's recommendation. With the pace of AI development, however, I'm sure there will soon be a new feature from one of the other platforms that will trigger FOMO all over again.

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If you're thinking of switching, ask for help

I put off switching AI providers for a long time, due to the thought of having to get everything set up all over again, but I'm glad I finally made the move. If you're thinking about switching and aren't sure which AI to go for, why not ask a chatbot for help?