Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2026

1. DeepSeek

Freemium

Best for: Developers who want a low-cost model API with a long context window, and everyday users who want a reasoning chatbot with web search.

Pricing: API pricing per 1M tokens at peak rates (01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays): deepseek-flash is $0.3 input (cache miss) and $1.2 output; deepseek-v4-pro is $1.32 input (cache miss) and $3.96 output. Off-peak rates are half.

• Chat on the web at chat.deepseek.com or in the DeepSeek app
• DeepThink mode for step-by-step reasoning, plus a smart search option
• Open-sourced DeepSeek-V4 and DeepSeek-R1 models, with repositories on GitHub

2. Claude

Freemium

Best for: Writers, students, developers and teams who want a capable AI assistant for writing, analysis and coding.

Pricing: Claude has a free plan with usage limits. Pro costs $17 per month billed annually ($20 monthly), Max starts from $100 per month, and Team standard seats are $20 per seat per month billed annually ($25 monthly). Enterprise is US$20 per seat per month plus usage at API rates, billed annually with a 20 seat minimum.

• Natural conversation for writing, editing and brainstorming
• Reads and analyses long documents and files you upload
• Helps write, explain and debug code

3. Frodo

Free

Best for: Privacy-minded users and tinkerers who want to try small open-source chat models locally in a browser without an account.

Pricing: Frodo is listed as free to use. Check Frodo's website for any usage limits or paid upgrades.

• Runs open language models directly in your browser using WebGPU
• Choose Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2, Llama-3-8B-Instruct, TinyLlama-1.1B-Chat or phi-2
• Free to use with chats kept private on your own device

4. Droxy AI

Paid

Best for: Small businesses such as online stores, real estate agencies and clinics that want an AI agent answering customers on web, phone and WhatsApp.

Pricing: Basic costs $24 a month, Advanced $120 and Enterprise $320, with 20 percent off for annual billing.

• Builds AI agents for website chat, phone calls, messaging and social comment replies
• Trains agents on websites, online stores, PDFs, YouTube videos and Google Drive
• Hands conversations to a human team member when needed

5. Poe

Freemium

Best for: People who want to chat with several AI models such as GPT-4 and Claude from one app for questions, writing ideas and quick information.

Pricing: Poe has a free option: its help centre says non-paying users receive points daily, which reset every 24 hours and do not roll over. Paid plans: poe plans are billed yearly (save 17 percent) or monthly. Yearly prices are $49.99 per year ($4.17 per month) for 10 thousand points a day, $199.99 per year ($16.67 per month) for 660 thousand points a month, $499.99 per year ($41.67 per month) for 1.65 million points a month, $999.99 per year ($83.33 per month) for 3.3 million points a month and $2,499.99 per year ($208.33 per month) for 8.25 million points a month.

• Gives access to GPT-4, GPT-3.5-turbo and Anthropic's Claude in one app
• Offers a range of other chatbots alongside the major models
• Answers questions instantly in back-and-forth conversations

6. AI-Oracle

Free

Best for: Hobbyists and prompt tinkerers who want to try a multi-model chatbot experiment inside Google Colab.

Pricing: Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Combines answers from Claude 3, GPT-4 and Perplexity in one workflow
• Delivered as a shared Google Colab notebook rather than a standalone app
• Aims to blend the strengths of three models into one response

7. Claude & Kimi AI Copilot

Contact for pricing

Best for: People who research and read in Chrome and want Claude or Kimi in a sidebar to summarise and translate what is on the page.

Pricing: Claude & Kimi AI Copilot is a Chrome extension, and some AI services it connects to may require their own accounts. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Chrome sidebar chat that switches between Claude AI and Kimi AI
• One-click sidebar access and customisable prompt templates
• AI analysis of Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing search results

8. Monica

Freemium

Best for: Students, marketers and developers who want several AI models, web summaries and writing help in one browser sidebar and app.

Pricing: Monica has a free plan with a daily usage limit, and paid plans named Pro, Pro plus and Unlimited. Check Monica's website for current prices.

• Chat with models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in one assistant
• AI sidebar and smart toolbar for explaining, translating or summarising selected text
• YouTube summaries with timestamps and Gmail reply suggestions

9. Whybot

Freemium

Best for: Curious learners and students who want a simple, no-frills chat page for exploring topics through AI-generated explanations.

Pricing: Whybot shows a count of prompts left in its settings. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Chat-style box that asks what you would like to understand
• Persona setting, with Researcher shown as the selected option
• Runs on the GPT-3.5 Turbo model, shown in the settings

10. MacCopilot

Paid

Best for: Mac users who research, study or write and want to ask an AI model about whatever is on their screen without copying text across.

Pricing: A one-time payment of $19.99 for a lifetime licence, with no subscription. There is no bundled model usage quota; model usage is billed directly by the AI provider you connect.

• Select any region of your screen and ask an AI model about it
• Chat about the captured content for explanations or brainstorming
• Works with OpenAI GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 series, Google Gemini 1.5 to 2.5 and Anthropic Claude models