How to Choose an AI in 2025?

There are dozens of artificial intelligences available to the general public today: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Mistral… Faced with this choice, one question keeps coming up: which one to use, and on what criteria should you base your decision? This article reviews the concrete elements to consider to make an informed choice, without being guided solely by a brand’s reputation.

Why choosing an AI matters

Not all conversational AIs are equal depending on their use. Some excel at writing, others at logical reasoning or finding up-to-date information. Pricing also varies greatly from one service to another, as does the way your data is handled. Choosing an AI at random risks paying for unnecessary features, or worse, entrusting sensitive information to a service that’s unclear about data handling.

First criterion: how you’ll use it

The first question to ask yourself is simple: for what purpose? An AI chosen for drafting professional emails doesn’t have the same requirements as one used for coding or casual conversation.

Writing, code, research: each model’s strengths

Large language models don’t all have the same strengths:

• ChatGPT (OpenAI) is versatile, comfortable with writing, analysis, and brainstorming.
• Claude (Anthropic) is often recognized for the quality of its long, nuanced responses and its ability to process large documents.
• Gemini (Google) integrates well with Google tools and effectively handles multimodal content (text, image, video).
• DeepSeek stands out for its reasoning capabilities and reduced usage costs.
• Perplexity is designed for information search with cited sources, closer to an augmented search engine than a simple chatbot.

None of these models is “best” in absolute terms: the right choice depends on the task at hand.

Professional use vs personal use

Professional use (report writing, data analysis, customer support) often demands more reliability, traceability, and sometimes contractual guarantees on data. Personal use (organizing ideas, learning, discussing) tolerates more experimentation and leaves more room for price or ease of use considerations.

Second criterion: price and subscription models

Cost is rarely the first criterion mentioned, but it often determines how much you actually use an AI in daily life.

Free, freemium, paid: what really changes

Most AIs offer a free version with limitations: number of messages per day, access to a less powerful model, or missing features (long-term memory, image generation, web search). Paid subscriptions, typically between €15 and €25 per month, remove these limits and grant access to the latest models.

For occasional use, a free version is more than sufficient. For daily, intensive use, a paid subscription quickly pays for itself in time saved. There are also solutions that combine multiple AIs in a single interface with shared daily free access, allowing you to test different models without multiplying subscriptions.

Third criterion: data privacy

This is an often underestimated criterion, yet it should be central, especially for professional use or if you’re sharing personal information.

Where are your conversations stored?

Each service has its own policy: some conversations are used to train future models, unless the user disables this in settings. Other services exclude this use by default. It’s recommended to check the terms of service to see if your exchanges can be used for training purposes and how long they’re retained.

What regulations say (GDPR)

For European users, GDPR imposes obligations on companies handling personal data: right of access, right to erasure, transparency about processing purposes. Services based outside the European Union must comply when processing data from EU residents, but real compliance levels vary. When in doubt, prefer a service that clearly displays its privacy policy and offers data deletion options.

Other criteria not to overlook

Language and localization

Not all AIs perform equally well in all languages. French is generally well covered by major models, but cultural nuances, idioms, or local references may vary in quality depending on the models.

Ease of use

A clear interface, quick onboarding, and multi-platform availability (web, iOS, Android) matter as much as the power of the underlying model. An AI that’s technically excellent but complicated to use daily will quickly be abandoned.

The ability to test multiple AIs

Rather than choosing a single AI definitively, it can be useful to compare several models on the same tasks before deciding. Applications like noov.ai let you access ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Perplexity from a single interface, with daily free access to each. This gives you a concrete sense of the differences before committing to a single subscription.

A summary table to make sense of it all

Criterion	Questions to ask yourself
Use	Writing, code, research, conversation?
Price	Occasional or daily use? Monthly budget?
Privacy	Is data used for training? GDPR compliance?
Language	Is French well handled for your needs?
Simplicity	Is the interface suited to your technical level?

In summary: how to decide

There is no universally better AI than the others: your choice depends on balancing use, budget, and privacy requirements. Starting by clearly identifying what you expect from an AI, testing multiple models for free on your own tasks, then checking data processing terms before committing to a paid subscription remains the most reliable approach.