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This article is co-written by my foster monkey- Floop- who refused to get off my lap while I was writing this article.

The question I hear most isn’t “Which AI is best?”—it’s “Which LLM subscription won’t burn my budget?”

You don’t care about benchmarks or marketing hype; you need an AI tab that delivers solid work and doesn’t disrupt your workflow.

I've thrown hundreds of actual tasks at these things: complex research, first-draft generation, visual data requests, the works. I've stress-tested the usual suspects – GPT, Gemini, Claude – plus a few you've thankfully never had to suffer through.

What follows is a straightforward look at where each one excels, where it breaks, and when it’s worth switching. No benchmarks, no affiliate codes—just enough detail to choose the right subscription and move on. After analyzing all of this, we’ll end with a discussion on what this tells us about each of these companies and where they’re headed next.

PS- This is a review of the Web Apps ONLY. Not the APIs. So, factors like Claude’s excellence with Claude Code, Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite’s insane ROI, or 4o’s excellent skill at orchestration will not be considered.

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