AI Assistants & Research

This category is for the freelancer or small team choosing one general-purpose assistant: drafting, summarising documents, analysing a spreadsheet, researching a question with sources. The six tools here overlap heavily on what they can do, so the useful differences are elsewhere: who the paid plan covers, which ecosystem it lives in, and how the price is billed.

Five of the six entry plans are sold per account, meaning one person. ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Plus, Mistral Pro and Perplexity Pro do not become a team plan by buying several: each vendor has a separate team or business tier. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the exception, sold per seat and meant to sit inside a Microsoft 365 subscription your organisation already pays for.

Every tool here except Microsoft 365 Copilot keeps a permanent free plan, which makes this the easiest category to test before paying. Perplexity's headline figure is the monthly equivalent of a yearly plan, so read its card before comparing it with the month-to-month prices beside it.

How to choose in this category

One person or a team

An account plan covers you alone. If two people need access, price the vendor's team tier, not two personal plans.

Where your work already lives

Copilot works inside Word, Excel and Outlook; Gemini inside Google Workspace. If your documents live there, that integration is worth more than a benchmark.

Research with sources

Perplexity is built around cited answers. The general assistants can search too, but check whether search is included in the free plan you are testing.

Currency and billing

Some of these tools price in euros and others in dollars on the pages we read. Compare within one currency, and check whether the figure is month to month.