ChatGPT holds 80 percent of the market. Claude crushes the benchmarks. Gemini is free and everywhere. You don't need all three — but you need to know what you are actually paying for.
Three AIs, three completely different strengths
All promise to make you smarter. The marketing is identical. But under the hood, these are three fundamentally different tools — and if you choose wrong, you pay for features you don't need while missing the ones you actually wanted.
Here is the verdict, based on recent benchmarks and market data from 2025–2026.
The Market: ChatGPT owns the room — for now
The numbers are brutal. ChatGPT controls 79.8% of global AI chatbot traffic. 813 million monthly users. In Europe, it's even worse for competitors — over 80% market share.
Gemini follows with 650 million users, but only 4.1% market share (many are passive via Android/Google apps). Claude is a clear niche with 18.9 million users and 0.8% — but the user base tends to be developers and analysts who know what they are doing.
Popularity and performance are not the same. Let's look at what actually sets them apart.
Coding: Claude wins clearly
SWE-bench is the most recognized test for coding abilities. The result:
- Claude Opus 4.6: 79.2 %
- Gemini 3-Flash: 76.2 %
- GPT-5: 75.4 %
The differences sound small — but in practice, they are noticeable. Claude is consistently better at complex, agentic coding tasks where the model must use the terminal, write tests, and navigate large codebases. For developers using AI for real production code, Claude is the first choice.
Medicine and Specialist Fields: Gemini surprises
Here, everything flips. In a study on ophthalmology — a demanding medical specialty — Gemini 3-Flash scores 83.3% and remains stable regardless of difficulty level. GPT-o3 follows with 79.2%. GPT-4 and GPT-5 paradoxically land lower (69.9% and 69.1%).
That stability across difficulty levels is what sets it apart. In clinical contexts, you cannot have a model that is brilliant on simple questions and collapses on difficult ones.
Expert Work: Claude again
GDPval-AA Elo measures the models' ability to solve tasks with real economic value. Claude Sonnet 4.6 tops with 1633 points. Gemini 3.1 Pro lags clearly behind.
For consultants, analysts, and knowledge workers who need precise, well-thought-out answers: Claude.
Speed and Context: Gemini in a league of its own
Gemini supports up to one million tokens in the context window — ten times ChatGPT's 128,000. Additionally, Gemini is about 15% faster than both competitors.
Need to feed in an entire code project, a long legal contract, or hundreds of pages of meeting notes? Gemini is the only realistic choice.
Integrations: ChatGPT has the lead
ChatGPT's biggest advantage is not the model — it's the ecosystem. Thousands of plugins, third-party integrations, and a mature API environment. Gemini is tightly linked to Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Meet), which is gold for teams already living there. Claude has the fewest integrations but is the easiest to get started with for pure text and analysis jobs.
Norwegian: All are "good enough," none are great
All three handle Norwegian Bokmål reasonably well. ChatGPT has the most Norwegian training data. Gemini and Claude manage in practice. Nynorsk and dialects are unstable across all three.
For Norwegian companies needing precise legal or public texts: manual proofreading regardless of the model. None of them are optimized for Norwegian.
Quick Overview
| Dimension | ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ |
| Medicine/Academic | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★★ |
| Text and Creativity | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★☆☆ |
| Multimodality | ★★★★☆ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★★ |
| Speed | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★★ |
| Integrations | ★★★★★ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★☆ |
| Context Window | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ |
| Norwegian Language | ★★★★☆ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★☆☆ |
Who should choose what
Developers and Engineers
→ Claude. Best at coding, fewest hallucinated code suggestions, strongest in agentic workflows where the model navigates code, runs tests, and uses tools.
Students and Everyday Use
→ ChatGPT. Largest community means the most help to be found. Best integrations. Solid free tier. Safe and predictable.
Healthcare Personnel and Subject Matter Experts
→ Gemini. Highest medical accuracy and — more importantly — stable performance regardless of complexity. Important caveat: no AI is approved for clinical decision support without human oversight.
Google Workspace Teams
→ Gemini. Obviously. Gmail, Docs, Meet, Drive — everything talks to each other.
Analysts and Consultants
→ Claude. Strongest in value-creating expert work and document analysis. When precision counts more than speed.
Creatives and Content Producers
→ ChatGPT. Broadest creative spectrum, most training data on varied content, mature plugin ecosystem.
The Bottom Line
ChatGPT is and remains dominant in user base — and for most, it is a safe, versatile choice. But "most popular" has never meant "best for you."
Claude has taken technological leadership in coding and expert tasks. Anthropic's focus on safety and precision makes the model particularly strong for professional contexts.
Gemini surprises in medicine, multimodality, and speed — and for Google users, the integration is unbeatable.
The truth is that the market is approaching parity on common tasks. The differences are real but often marginal for everyday use. The smartest thing you can do: test all three on your actual work tasks — all have free tiers — and choose the one that solves your problems, not the one that wins the most benchmarks.
The differences between the models are real — but for most users, the best AI is simply the one they actually use consistently.