The Best AI Chatbots for 2026 – PCMag UK

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Are all AI chatbots the same? Absolutely not. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses that affect how and whether you should use them. We’ve been testing AI chatbots since their inception, assessing what they can really do and cutting through the hype. On a basic level, they can help you find information, but they can also create images and videos, generate comprehensive research reports, and process files. Furthermore, you can have organic, wide-ranging conversations with them. Gemini is our Editors’ Choice winner thanks to its exceptional underlying tech and value-adding array of features and integrations. However, the field is rapidly evolving, and lots of chatbots stand out for various reasons. Read on for all of our top picks, followed by what you need to know before choosing the best AI chatbot for your needs.
Gemini offers the strongest value of any AI chatbot. It performs well across all types of prompts we test, but its Nano Banana image editing and generation are the best we’ve seen in a chatbot. An impressive suite of useful integrations across pretty much every Workspace app, plus 2TB (or more) of cloud storage for premium users, rounds out the experience.
Google users: If you already rely on Google apps such as Docs, Drive, Gmail, and Sheets, Gemini is the chatbot for you. Its rich integrations make everything from curating playlists to generating emails as simple as a single click.
Media generators: If your favorite thing to do with chatbots is generate (or edit) images and videos, Gemini’s best-in-class technologies make it the top option.
ChatGPT, which has almost become synonymous with AI, runs on OpenAI’s powerful 5-series of LLMs. It produces incredibly comprehensive responses with a friendly attitude. From complex reasoning to creative writing, ChatGPT excels at providing you with a foundation of content to build upon and shape as you see fit. It also stands out for robust customization options that let you make ChatGPT your own, alongside comprehensive memory capabilities.
Chatters: If the main reason you use AI is for conversation, ChatGPT’s approachable tone and in-depth customization options make it, by far, the best partner you can have among mainstream chatbots.
Independent users: If you don’t use much software within Google’s or Microsoft’s ecosystem, the extra features of Copilot or Gemini won’t matter to you. ChatGPT is much more attractive from a value standpoint if you can get by with just the integrations it supports.
Copilot uses powerful LLMs from OpenAI and blends them with Bing web-scraping data for up-to-date responses to your prompts. It’s available on mobile apps, the web, and Windows. For an extra subscription fee, Copilot also works inside Microsoft 365 apps, suggesting edits or formulas and even generating illustrated presentations based on your text prompts.
AI web browser fans: Microsoft’s Copilot-powered Edge is one of the best AI web browsers available because it combines AI features and traditional browser conveniences so well. Importantly, it’s the default browser on Windows, too.
Microsoft users: Choose Copilot to leverage AI across the Microsoft ecosystem. It’s an especially good option if you spend a lot of time using Microsoft 365 apps, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and more.
Although Perplexity brands itself as an “answer engine” rather than an AI chatbot, it has all the features we expect from one, including complex reasoning, deep research, file processing, image recognition, media generation, and more. It’s less conversational than other chatbots on this list, but it excels at web search, thanks to generally accurate responses and an excellent user interface. Meanwhile, Perplexity’s Comet web browser bakes AI right in.
Comparison shoppers: Perplexity supports models from a range of AI companies, including Google and OpenAI, making it a great place to try out models and see which work best for your needs.
Researchers: If using AI to find answers to all the questions you might have on a topic sounds interesting, Perplexity specializes in AI search. Just don’t expect casual conversations at the level of ChatGPT and Gemini.
Claude offers a host of interesting integrations, but its defining attribute is how it handles your data. It might now train its models on user data by default, but you can turn this off, and it automatically deletes your conversation history within a month. Claude also encrypts user data, and Anthropic employees can’t access it outside a narrow set of use cases. In a sense, Claude is the opposite of DeepSeek, which allegedly funnels your data to the CCP.
Coders: Many people love Claude (Claude Code in particular) for its helpfulness as a programming tool. In fact, Claude Code is easy enough to use that it doesn’t require any programming experience.
The privacy-conscious: If you’re especially wary of funneling your data into Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI servers, Anthropic’s policies are straightforward and give you meaningful control over your personal information.
Grok automatically searches X when responding to prompts, providing a deeper integration with social media than competitors. It’s also loose in its moderation, meaning you can chat about a taboo subject or get a relatively neutral evaluation of a hot topic. Grok performs competently in complex reasoning, file processing, and web searching. Grok also has NSFW features, including dateable companions and permissive image and video generation.
NSFW content fans: Grok’s dateable AI companions, along with its generally lax guardrails, separate it from other chatbots.
Social media searchers: If you want responses that consider what the general populace thinks, Grok automatically includes X posts as sources. That makes it the premier AI chatbot for community feedback.
‘AI chatbot’ is somewhat of an umbrella term. An AI chatbot can describe ChatGPT just as it can a customer service bot you talk to before reaching a human. We use the term here to refer to services built on top of large language models (LLMs). LLMs enable you to do everything from efficiently searching the web to having chats with what feels like an actual person.
LLMs are, at their most basic level, artificial neural networks that companies train on massive quantities of data. Think of a large language model like a very complicated, very long equation that you can plug just about any request into and get a response from, whether that’s the answer to a question or a generated image. For example, GPT-5.5 is the LLM that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
AI chatbots go far beyond simple question-and-answer text chats. In 2026, AI chatbots can complete tasks for you, such as adding ingredients to a virtual grocery cart, and serve as personal assistants that help organize your life. They can also build apps from scratch, write dozens of pages of research reports, and generate lifelike images and videos. If you prefer, you can interact with most chatbots by voice rather than text.
Some chatbots integrate with apps you already use to provide unique functionality, such as Copilot in Microsoft 365 and Gemini in Google Workspace. As an example, Gemini can answer questions based on your Gmail history.
A new crop of AI web browsers goes all in on AI chatbot features, including AI agents, meaning you can take advantage of AI capabilities on every web page you visit.
All the chatbots we test have free versions. Paid plans usually range from $10 to $20 per month, depending on the chatbot, and almost every chatbot offers them. Many chatbot features are available for free, albeit with usage limits; however, you need to pay extra for certain features, such as integrating Copilot or Gemini across their respective app ecosystems.
Generally, Google Gemini is the best free chatbot. Gemini provides access to its latest models, including 3 Pro and Veo 3.1, along with deep research and voice chat features, all for free. You also get 15GB of cloud storage via Google Drive. Many other services put their most advanced models behind paywalls, while luxuries like cloud storage are a rarity, even with paid plans.
You can chat with an AI chatbot like you would a person, so some think chatbots are conscious, but they absolutely are not. An AI chatbot is akin to a video game character with different dialogue options. Our point is that chatbots are merely complicated prompt-response machines and not sentient in any way. So, you can’t have real relationships with them, nor can they truly be your friend or therapist.
You can query any of the chatbots on this list to find information about how AI (or AI chatbots) works, but a number of more formal resources are available online for you to check out. Ironically, AI chatbots themselves aren’t great at explaining how they work, so make sure you verify what they tell you with other sources.
Alexa is not a chatbot, but the web version of Alexa+ is similar to one. That version currently lacks many features found in other chatbots, such as deep research, model selection, video generation, and more. Nonetheless, an LLM powers Alexa+, just like LLMs power chatbots, so there is significant overlap.
Siri isn’t a chatbot, but Apple has promised a conversational and chatbot-like Siri for a while now. This seems closer than ever to happening, given Apple’s partnership with Google to bring Gemini technology under the Apple Intelligence umbrella.
The unfortunate answer is that you often simply cannot. Many online services attempt to analyze text to determine if it was generated by AI, but they are imperfect. Some quirks, such as a heavy reliance on em dashes, are hallmarks of AI generation, but just seeing an em dash isn’t enough to tell if something is AI-generated. In general, we recommend sticking with sources you trust to avoid AI-generated content. If you want to know whether an image or video is AI-generated, we have tips and tricks for spotting both fake images and videos.
Yes, every AI chatbot has some amount of censorship. This ranges significantly, though. For example, DeepSeek has some absolutely egregious censorship where it won’t talk about certain historical events, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, to keep its responses in line with Chinese propaganda. Meanwhile, Grok is extremely permissive, allowing you to generate images and videos of real people.
Of all the chatbots on this list, Grok is the only one that truly allows explicit content. You can use Grok to generate NSFW images and videos, as well as have explicit relationships with its virtual companions, such as the anime character Ani. That said, Grok isn’t the best place on the internet for either AI companionship or porn, even though it’s the only full-service chatbot on this list to allow that. You’re better off looking for a dedicated AI service if you primarily want to generate explicit content.
Yes, courts can and will use your conversations with chatbots against you, so don’t act as if you’re anonymous. If you talk to a chatbot about committing a crime or mention crimes you committed, the law might compel AI companies to hand over your conversations. Even if you haven’t committed a crime but end up in a lawsuit, your conversations might come up.
We focus on full-service web-based chatbots, rather than those that you can run locally on your computer. The latter requires a fairly significant time investment and relatively powerful hardware. We also exclude single-use chatbots that specialize in a particular use case at the expense of most others, such as AI companion chatbots.
To test AI chatbots, we provide each with a series of prompts and compare their responses, evaluating accuracy, consistency, complexity, and depth. Each chatbot is different, though, so we tailor our testing to the specific features it offers. That said, we generally evaluate AI chatbots based on their ability to perform complex reasoning, creative writing, deep research, file processing, image editing, image generation, video generation, voice chat, and web search.
Of course, it’s impossible to fully vet the scope of an AI chatbot. One person might have a niche use case related to their work, while another might have zero use for that same functionality. It would require an army of experts in every field to fully evaluate these tools, and even then, what works well one day might not the next after an update. That said, we notice some clear differences in testing, and we routinely update our reviews as chatbots evolve. Keep in mind that our reviews are accurate as of their publication date.
While coding-related features are often a focus of AI chatbots, you can test out a chatbot’s coding ability for yourself.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
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I’ve been writing about consumer technology and video games for over a decade at a variety of publications, including Destructoid, GamesRadar+, Lifewire, PCGamesN, Trusted Reviews, and What Hi-Fi?, among many others. At PCMag, I review AI and productivity software—everything from chatbots to to-do list apps. In my free time, I’m likely cooking something, playing a game, or tinkering with my computer.
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