Tools Comparison (1 page)
For the full tool comparison tables across all categories, see the Tools Guide.
Quick Picker Guide
What do you want to do?
| Need | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Chat & Q&A | Claude or ChatGPT (both great; Claude for long docs) |
| Writing | Claude (best at nuance and length) |
| Web research | Perplexity (real-time, cited sources) |
| Coding | Cursor (best IDE) or Claude Code (best CLI) |
| Math/reasoning | Claude Opus or DeepSeek (both strong) |
| Image generation | Midjourney (quality) or Runway (video) |
| Music generation | Suno (free tier solid) |
| Cheap alternative | DeepSeek V4 (10–50x cheaper, high quality) |
| Building an app | Anthropic API or OpenAI API (both mature) |
Speed vs Quality vs Price Tradeoffs
🚀 Fastest
GPT-5.5 Instant - Replies in <1s, great for real-time apps. Good quality for the speed.
🏆 Best Quality
Claude Opus 4.8 - Longest context, most thoughtful. Slower, more expensive.
💰 Cheapest
DeepSeek V4 - 10–50x less than others. Quality is surprisingly good for reasoning.
🎯 Best Balance
Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GPT-5.5 - Fast, smart, reasonable cost. Pick based on your use case.
Pricing Breakdown (May 2026)
Per 1 Million Input Tokens
- Claude Opus: $15
- Claude Sonnet: $3
- GPT-5.5: $2
- Gemini Pro: $2
- DeepSeek: $0.14 (10–50x cheaper)
Per 1 Million Output Tokens
- Claude Opus: $75
- Claude Sonnet: $15
- GPT-5.5: $8
- Gemini Pro: $12
- DeepSeek: $0.28
Example: 100K input + 20K output with Claude Sonnet = 0.014.
Next Steps
- Start free: Try Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini
- Pick a tool: Based on your use case above
- Learn prompting: Prompt Engineering
- Build an app: Builder Path or API docs (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google)