Picked from the 11 tools on this site by what they're actually used for — not by benchmark scores.
| Tool | What it is | Free tier | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | Anthropic's assistant built for long documents and code edits | Yes | Up to 1M tokens, varying with the selected model (checked 2026-10-29) |
| DeepSeek | Open-weight reasoning model with very low API prices | Yes | 1M tokens of context; up to 384K tokens of output (checked 2026-10-29) |
| GitHub Copilot | AI coding assistant that runs inside your editor | Yes | — |
Writing breaks down into two different jobs and most people conflate them: getting words on the page, and making existing words shorter and clearer. Assistants that are strong at the first are often too eager at the second — they rewrite your sentences into their voice, and you spend more time restoring your own phrasing than writing. Pick one that keeps your structure when you tell it to keep your structure.
The practical test is a paragraph you're proud of. Paste it in, ask for a tightening pass, and see whether the result still sounds like you. If it doesn't, that tool can still be useful for outlines and for the parts you dread writing, but it shouldn't be the last set of hands on anything published under your name.
Start with the one that already has a free tier covering your volume, then check the context column: writing work usually breaks on input size before it breaks on model quality. If two of them look equal, pick the one whose paid tier you'd actually renew, because that's the one you'll keep using after the novelty wears off.
Everything else — ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Doubao — is on the main comparison table; they show up here only if their own documentation frames them that way.