◈ WHICH AI FOR THE JOB? ◈
Answer three questions and get a straight recommendation.
1
What are you mainly doing?
2
What is your budget?
3
How private is the data?
The major model families at a glance
General capabilities only. Specific models change often, so this is a map, not a scoreboard, and there are no benchmark numbers here on purpose.
| Family | Maker | Best known for | Open weight? | Runs on your machine? | Multimodal? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT | OpenAI | Powering ChatGPT; broad general use | No | No (hosted) | Yes |
| Claude | Anthropic | Writing, reasoning, long documents | No | No (hosted) | Yes |
| Gemini | Multimodal, tie-in with Google tools | No | No (hosted) | Yes | |
| Llama | Meta | Open weights, running locally | Yes | Yes | Some versions |
| Mistral | Mistral AI | Efficient open-weight models | Yes | Yes | Some versions |
New to the terms here? The glossary explains open weights, multimodal, tool use, and more.