By someone on the team who has spent an alarming amount of time talking to AI so you don’t have to.
If you’ve ever used ChatGPT and wondered, “…okay, but what else is out there now?” welcome to 2025. We are officially living in the AI multiverse: bustling, chaotic, brilliant, and expanding faster than your inbox after a long weekend.
There are now so many AI tools that picking one feels like choosing a streaming service. (And yes, most of them will eventually ask for $20/month.)
To spare you from the overwhelm, we tested the major players the OG giants, the open-source rebels, the new disruptors, the specialized weirdos and wrapped them into a guide that’s actually enjoyable to read.
Let’s dive in.
These are the foundational models powering half the apps you use, the “basic AI vocabulary” of 2025. If AI had a Mount Rushmore, these faces would be on it.
ChatGPT remains the most widely recognized name in AI, mostly because it kicked off the whole wave. With GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, and the new o1 reasoning models, OpenAI remains the default choice for anyone wanting a polished, powerful, general-purpose assistant.
Even in a crowded field, ChatGPT stays relevant by constantly leveling up: deeper reasoning, stronger multimodal abilities, smoother integration everywhere. If you want a safe, strong starting point, this is still the iPhone of AI models.
Meta’s Llama models are the reason every startup claims to have “built an AI model.” Llama is open-source, efficient, free to run locally, and endlessly customizable.
Developers love it. Researchers love it. Your hacker friend who runs everything on their own server really loves it.
It’s not flashy, but it is everywhere.
Mistral AI specializes in smaller, faster, highly capable models that punch well above their size. If Llama is Linux, Mistral is a high-performance European hatchback: compact, efficient, and surprisingly powerful.
Startups pick Mistral because:
It’s the model you choose when budget matters but quality still counts.
Cohere is built specifically for businesses that care deeply about privacy, security, and handling structured text. It’s known for:
If your company uses words like “compliance,” “internal data,” or “risk exposure,” Cohere is your model.
Reka AI hasn’t gone fully mainstream yet, but insiders know it delivers some of the best multimodal capabilities in the game. Text, images, audio, video, Reka handles all of it with surprising polish.
Think of it as the indie band everyone claims they discovered before it was cool.
The General-Purpose ChatGPT Alternatives You’ll Actually Enjoy Using
Now let’s get into the alternatives people switch to when they want something more specialized, more thoughtful, or simply… less ChatGPT-y.
Claude is the model that feels like it proofreads its own thoughts before speaking. It writes beautifully, explains clearly, and rarely spirals into nonsense.
If you value:
Claude is the friend who gives good advice and never raises their voice.
Google Gemini is what happens when you give an AI access to Search, Docs, Sheets, Gmail, YouTube, and basically your entire digital existence.
It’s shockingly good with:
If your life runs on Google, Gemini feels like a natural extension of your brain.
DeepSeek arrived like a plot twist: extremely strong reasoning, excellent coding and math, and completely free with no usage caps.
It’s open-source, powerful, and absolutely shaking up the industry.
If you’re a student, developer, or logic nerd, DeepSeek will probably become your favorite.
Perplexity doesn’t just answer questions it shows you where the answers came from, with citations, links, and real-time research.
It’s what you get when Google Search and ChatGPT have a child who actually listens in class.
If your work requires accuracy (or your trust issues need soothing), Perplexity is your tool.
Conversation is cute, but these tools actually do things for you.
Lindy is not here for chit-chat. It checks inboxes, triages tasks, runs workflows, coordinates across tools, and executes business operations like a digital chief-of-staff.
Give it work → it does the work.
Simple. Addictive.
Zapier Agents are what happen when automations grow a brain. Instead of rigid workflows, they make decisions, adapt to messiness, and navigate your apps with surprising independence.
It’s like giving your Zapier setup a personality upgrade.
If you spend your day in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, Microsoft Copilot slips into your workflow like it was born there. It drafts, summarizes, analyzes, organizes all within the apps you’re already using.
It’s AI for office dwellers. And honestly, it’s great.
Built for brand-driven content at scale. Once it learns your voice, everything it produces, blogs, ads, emails, campaigns, feels consistent and on-message.
Marketing teams adore it because it cuts editing time in half.
This model doesn’t just autocomplete. It plans features, edits files, checks security risks, and even generates pull requests.
It’s basically an AI junior engineer with superpowers.
Gorgeous, artistic, high-drama visuals.
Perfect for images with readable text (finally).
Video editing with prompts instead of pain. Your imagination, but with Photoshop-level skills.
Emotional, warm, empathetic conversations.
Reads academic papers so you don’t have to.
Web search + AI hybrid that’s surprisingly powerful.
Talk to fictional or historical personalities.
Short answer:
Probably 2–4 of them.
Long answer:
Each AI has a different vibe and specialty. ChatGPT is versatile. Claude is thoughtful. Gemini is real-time. Perplexity is factual. DeepSeek is brilliant and free. Lindy automates your work. Jasper does brand copy. Q Developer writes code. And the creative tools are unreal.
All these Ai models... they’re only as smart as the data they can actually see. And most of your company’s real knowledge is scattered across CRMs, docs, tickets, emails, Slack threads, analytics dashboards, and that one spreadsheet no one admits to owning. So even the best models… kind of guess.
That’s where JIGSO changes the entire game. Instead of another model, it becomes your company’s universal interface, understanding context across every tool you use and giving you real answers, real prep, and real outcomes based on your data. Ask something, analyze something, create something, prepare something… JIGSO pulls from the full picture so you’re never flying blind again.
2025 is the first year where “AI choice” really matters. Every model has a personality. A specialty. A vibe. And the beauty is: almost all of them have free tiers, so exploring doesn’t cost a thing.
Play around. Mix and match. Build your stack.
The best AI setup is the one that works like you do.
