AI assistants and chatbots tested

For most people, AI chatbots are the way into generative AI. They answer questions, summarise documents, draft emails and help structure your thinking. The differences between them are no longer only about raw text quality: what matters is context length, research ability, file handling and what happens to your data.

Our pick: Claude

First choice for demanding text and analysis work, and the second opinion when ChatGPT does not convince.

Read the Claude review

What to look for when choosing

• Context window: how much text can the model take at once? Decisive if you analyse long PDFs or contracts.
• Sources: does the assistant cite evidence, or do you have to verify every claim yourself?
• Data handling: are your inputs used for training? Can that be switched off? Where are the servers?
• Integrations: a connection to your office files, calendar or internal knowledge saves more time day to day than any benchmark point.

How we weight these points is set out in our test methodology. The tool overview gives you every category at a glance.