People ask me this one a lot. And my honest answer is: for most everyday things, they're more similar than different. But there are a few things worth knowing.
ChatGPT is made by OpenAI. It's the one that went viral in late 2022 and introduced most people to what AI assistants could actually do. It's the one your dad has probably heard of.
Claude is made by Anthropic. Anthropic was founded by some former OpenAI researchers who wanted to build AI differently — with more focus on safety and predictability. Whether that fully works is a whole other conversation. But that's the intent.
ChatGPT
Made by OpenAI
First to go mainstream (2022)
Has built-in image generation (GPT Image, formerly DALL-E 3)
Large plugin/GPT ecosystem
Free tier available
Claude
Made by Anthropic
Generally better at long documents
No built-in image generation
Tends to be more careful and cautious
Free tier available
In practice, both can write, explain, summarise, code, analyse, and generally be useful. Both have free versions that are genuinely good. Both make mistakes. Both are getting better fast enough that anything I write here will be slightly outdated by next month.
I use Claude. Not because I think it's definitively better — but because it's what I started with, and because Anthropic's approach to building AI carefully resonates with me. That's honestly it. Personal preference, not objective truth.
If you're just starting out, try both. Spend a week with each on the same kinds of tasks. See which one's responses feel more useful to you. The answer will probably be different for different people.
The thing I'd really rather you focus on: how you talk to these tools matters enormously. A vague question gets a vague answer. A specific, well-framed question gets a genuinely useful one. That skill — sometimes called "prompting" — is worth more than any particular tool choice.