ChatGPT Alternatives (Free & Paid) A Look at the 8 Best AI Writing Tools for 2023

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Ever since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, growing much faster than any other tech platform before.

The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot isn’t the first of its kind, but it has blown minds with its ability to answer questions, solve simple math equations, create websites, and even write extremely convincing biblical verses that explain how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR.

ChatGPT’s ability to generate paragraphs of text in response to queries has also sparked interest in using it as an AI writing tool. For example, here’s an excerpt of its response when I asked it “how can a person become famous on TikTok?”:

To become famous on TikTok, you can follow these steps:

1. Find your niche: Identify your unique talents, interests, or sense of humor and create content around it.

2. Create engaging content: Create short, fun, and entertaining videos that resonate with your audience.

3. Use trending music and hashtags: Utilize popular songs and hashtags to reach a wider audience.

Pretty good starting material for an article on the same topic, huh?

ChatGPT may have become a victim of its own success, though. The AI chatbot is so popular that it is often down (it stopped working a few times while I was writing this article).

And while OpenAI — the start-up behind ChatGPT — has made ChatGPT free for now, users of a new $20/month ChatGPT Plus plan will get priority use over free users during peak usage periods. From my own experience, I can say that it works pretty well, with the occasional hick up – so maybe the Plus plan could even be your ChatGPT alternative 🙂

But if you’re looking for an even more stable (or different) AI writing tool, check out the eight best ChatGPT alternatives we’ve tested and shortlisted below.

Many of these AI writing tools use the same GPT-3 language model that powers ChatGPT. Some of them even have features that help them generate articles better than ChatGPT!

Sounds exciting? Then let’s dive in.

ChatGPT Alternatives: Summary

But these are not all of ChatGPT’s competitors. Let’s look at our full lineup of AI writing tools:

8 Best ChatGPT Alternatives

1. Copy.ai (free plan)

Copy.ai can produce a wide variety of content, from blog posts to emails, product descriptions, and even Instagram captions. And unlike some of the other AI writing tools we’ve tested, Copy.ai is also able to generate entire blog posts from scratch, complete with an introduction and conclusion.

Provide the tool with your blog title and relevant keywords, and Copy.ai will generate an outline, talking points, and finally the full content. You can refine its generated content at any of these stages.

Copy.ai also lets you set a writing tone for the generated content, such as Friendly, Professional, or Empathetic. Based on our tests, the tool’s generated content tends to stick to your required tone quite well.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

Create a unique username for yourself.

Your username is the most important part of your TikTok account. It’s what people will see when they search for you and it’s how other users will find you in the app. Try to create a unique username that’s easy for others to remember, but don’t use anything too complicated or hard-to-spell. You can also include numbers or symbols if it makes sense for your brand–for example, if your channel is about gaming then using “gamer girl” might be a good choice!

This is an excerpt from the fully generated 879-word article, with the writing tone set to “Friendly.”

How good was the writing? The friendly tone of the copy really comes through, and I like how Copy.ai provides a more relevant example of “gamer girl” for a gaming channel username. Compare this to how Content at Scale offered a more generic example of “#meme” as a possible hashtag for a meme above.

Pros of Copy.ai

Cons of Copy.ai

Copy.ai pricing

• Free: $0 for 2,000 words / month. Includes unlimited projects and access to the Blog Wizard tool.
• Pro: $49 / month for unlimited words. Has everything in the Free plan plus up to five user seats.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Get API access, a prebuilt workflows library, and more.

For which target user is Copy.ai best suited?

Small businesses with a limited content creation budget will love how they can generate blog posts, email marketing copy, social media captions, and more with just Copy.ai alone.

> Try Copy.ai for free

2. ChatSonic (free plan)

Developed by Writesonic, ChatSonic is a ChatGPT-style chatbot with a focus on writing content (as opposed to just providing human-like responses to user queries). Ask it to write a blog post, Facebook ad copy, and so on, and watch as it churns out the requested text before your very eyes. You can then edit the text in the platform’s built-in word processor.

Interestingly, you can specify the quality of writing you want when signing up. Four options are available: premium, good, average, and economy, and your chosen quality level will determine your pricing plan’s existing word balance.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

Focus on Quality

The most important thing to remember when creating content on TikTok is to focus on quality. You don’t have to have the most high-tech equipment or the most intricate editing skills to create great videos, but you should make sure that the videos you post are clear and look professional. Make sure to take your time when filming, and consider getting some basic editing software to help you produce better-looking content.

This is an excerpt from the full 401-word response.

How good was the writing? The copy could be more persuasive—exactly why is focusing on quality the most important thing to remember when creating TikTok content? Also, I’m not sure if taking my time when filming necessarily leads to higher-quality content. The link between the two ideas needs to be clearer.

Pros of ChatSonic

Cons of ChatSonic

ChatSonic pricing

• Free Trial: $0 / month for 6,250 “good”-quality words and up to 25 text generations per day. Experiment with features such as 100+ AI templates and a one-click WordPress import for free.
• Long-Form: $12.67 / month for 47,500 “good”-quality words. Includes everything in the Free Trial plan, plus a complete article rewriter, Surfer SEO integration, and other features.
• Custom: Custom-quoted. Includes everything in the Long-Form plan, plus other benefits such as custom AI development and a dedicated account manager.

For which target user is ChatSonic best suited?

It’s a great choice if you are on a budget. Also, if you run a WordPress website, you may like the convenience of sending your ChatSonic-generated text to your website via Writesonic’s WordPress plugin. From our research, not many other AI writing tools offer such a direct WordPress integration yet.

> Try ChatSonic (free trial for 6,250 words of “good”-quality words)

3. Content At Scale (paid only)

While many other tools rely on just an integration to GPT-3, Content At Scale prides itself on using a “complex mix of 3 AI engines, natural language processing, and semantic analysis algorithms” to produce completely unique long-form blog post content (it doesn’t do any other type of copy). It also connects to the Internet in real-time to get additional context from the top results on Google.

Content At Scale works best for articles that talk about information that doesn’t change frequently. An article about “what is email marketing” would work much better than writing an article about a specific newsletter tool, for example “mailchimp review”. That’s also the way we use it at Tooltester.

In fact, Content At Scale claims the content it generates is incapable of being detected as AI content (which is usually true) — and the free Copyscape plagiarism checker enables users to confirm this for themselves before they publish its output.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

Create Quality Content

Creating quality content is essential for success on TikTok. It’s important to make sure your videos are creative, entertaining, and engaging. To ensure that your content reaches a wider audience, use popular trends and hashtags. For example, if you want to create a funny video about the latest meme trend or challenge, include relevant hashtags like #meme or #challenge in the caption of your post so more people can find it. Additionally, consider using audio from other creators or adding special effects to make your videos stand out from the crowd.

This is just an excerpt from the fully generated 1,718-word article.

How good was the writing? The content largely makes sense, but it reads as rather bland. The sentence structure also quickly starts to feel repetitive as you read on. And you can’t see it here, but Content at Scale seems to like using the word “Additionally” in its copy a lot. Our overall experience is that it can be wordy, so when we use it for blog articles, we usually remove a large chunk of its output.

Pros of Content At Scale

Cons of Content At Scale

Content At Scale pricing

• 4-Post plan: $150 / month for 4 posts per month. This post is not available via their website at the time of writing. We received the offer via email.
• Solo: $250 / month for 8 posts. Get one-off or bulk post creation and Copyscape access, among other features.
• Starter: $500 / month for 20 posts / month. This is basically the Solo plan but with a bulk discount applied.
• Scaling: $1,000 / month for 50 posts / month. The Scaling plan includes everything in the Starter plan and features for managing a team.
• Agency: $1,500 / month for 100 posts / month. You’ll get everything in the Scaling plan, plus reporting and other features.

For which target user is Content At Scale best suited?

Creators of long-form blog content primarily, since Content At Scale is a specialized blog post generator tool. If you need other types of copy, check out Copy.ai or Jasper.

> Try Content At Scale (get a bonus 20% more articles through this link)

4. Jasper (paid only)

I had some initial trouble signing up to use Jasper because I didn’t receive the login codes emailed to us. But an email to support — who replied within 5–8 hours, as they’ve promised! — sorted that out, and I got a fully written blog post for the topic of getting famous on TikTok a mere 10 minutes later.

All I had to do was fire up the One-Shot Blog Post AI template (there are over 50 AI templates to choose from), then fill out details such as our blog post topic and intended audience. I also had the option of setting our writing tone to “Friendly,” which could be why Jasper’s output had a more human-like quality compared to ChatGPT’s bland-sounding response.

Apart from text generation, Jasper can also generate AI art (which costs an extra $20 / month). However, when one of my coworkers gave it a try, it produced the typical AI-images with distorted faces and weird hands that are going around as memes on social media. The image generator feels like it’s simply not ready yet, especially for the high price.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

Find your niche.

The first step to becoming TikTok famous is finding your niche. What kind of content do you want to produce? What topics are you passionate about? Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start creating content that speaks to your unique interests and passions. Not only will this help you stand out from the crowd, but it will also make it easier to build a loyal following of fans who are interested in the same things as you are.

This is an excerpt from the fully generated 530-word article, with the writing tone set to “Friendly” and the intended audience set to “TikTok creators.”

How good was the writing? Unlike ChatSonic’s copy, Jasper’s copy explains the importance of heeding the advice it’s stating—namely that finding a niche helps you build a loyal following. Also, I like how there is some variation in the first sentence of each point. They don’t all start with “One way of achieving X is to do Y” or some similar version of the same. For example, the first sentence of the “Collaborate with other creators” point is “One of TikTok’s best features is its ability to connect creators from all over the world.”

Pros of Jasper

Cons of Jasper

Jasper pricing

• Boss Mode: Starts at $59 / month for 50,000 words. It includes 50+ AI templates, up to five user logins, and access to Grammarly Basic, Surfer SEO, and Copyscape.
• Business: Starts at $499 / month. Comes with everything in Boss Mode, plus extra perks such as extended input length, custom AI templates, and a dedicated account manager.

For which target user is Jasper best suited?

Given Jasper’s ability to generate both blog posts and images, we’d say agencies and professional content writers with a budget will benefit most from the tool. That said, small business owners may also find Jasper’s templates for generating emails, product descriptions, and social media copy helpful.

> Try Jasper (free trial)

5. Lex (free plan)

Lex started as a “weekend hack project” for Nathan Baschez, one of the two co-founders of newsletter collection Every.to. Nathan used Google Docs a lot and wanted to try building a better version of Google Docs — and with GPT-3 integrated in.

When you start a new document in Lex, you’re presented with a blank doc that looks a lot like the Google Docs interface. You can type your own content or activate Lex’s AI writing feature with some simple keystrokes. If you do the latter, Lex generates a decent-sized paragraph of content for you.

Like ChatGPT, you can use Lex for free. Just be warned that the waitlist to access the tool is loooong. You can bypass the waitlist if you have an invite or take up a paid Every subscription. (We still have a few invites, if you leave a comment or ping us @tooltester, we’ll get you one).

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

1. Post quality content regularly: Post engaging and entertaining content that resonates with your target audience. This will help you attract more followers and engagement.

2. Use trending music and sound effects: Add popular music and sound effects to your videos to gain more attention and engagement.

3. Utilize hashtags: Add relevant and popular hashtags to your posts to increase visibility and attract more viewers.

4. Collaborate with influencers: Connect with influencers in your niche to gain more visibility and expand your

How good was the writing? While the list-based format of Lex’s response here is most similar to ChatGPT’s, Lex is also capable of generating prose. It produced a paragraph of points for me when I gave it the exact same prompt in another document. But regardless of the format of Lex’s responses, I’ll need to do quite a bit of expansion on the suggested points by myself to get a complete article.

Also, Lex left its last sentence hanging at “gain more visibility and expand your…” This isn’t a publication error!

Pros of Lex

Cons of Lex

Lex pricing

• Free: Lex is free for now, but there is a long waitlist to access it. (Around 18,000 people are on the waitlist as of writing.) You can skip the waitlist by getting an invite or paying for a subscription to Every. A paid subscription to Every costs $20 / month or $200 / year.

For which target user is Lex best suited?

Use Lex if you want a clean interface for writing content with the help of AI. Lex’s collaboration features also make it a useful tool for organizations where content creation is a team effort among writers, editors, and other stakeholders.

> Try Lex for free

6. OpenAI Playground (free)

If the original ChatGPT platform isn’t working, then why not try a great ChatGPT alternative offered by the same people who built it?

Called OpenAI Playground, this open-source platform can also generate text in response to natural language queries. But the difference is that OpenAI has specially trained the ChatGPT model to engage users in a conversational manner, while OpenAI Playground lets users experiment with other OpenAI-developed language models.

You can use various settings, such as “temperature” and “Top P,” to refine the response you get from OpenAI Playground. Trying these out can be fun if you have the time to do so, but otherwise, you may find them too technical for your liking.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

1. Find your niche. You’ll want to stand out from the crowd on TikTok, so it’s important to find your niche. What kind of content do you want to create? Are you into comedy, beauty tutorials, or dance videos? Find something that you’re passionate about and stick to it.

2. Quality content. If you’re going to stand out from the crowd, you need to create content that is high-quality and engaging. Consider investing in good equipment like a tripod, lighting, and a microphone to make sure your videos look professional.

How good was the writing? Quibble with the phrasing: the points are presented as tips for becoming a TikTok star, but “quality content” by itself isn’t a tip or action I can take to grow my TikTok following. I would rephrase this to something like “Produce quality content.” The copy is also somewhat repetitive—check out how the phrase “stand out from the crowd” is used twice, for example.

Pros of OpenAI Playground

Cons of OpenAI Playground

OpenAI Playground pricing

• The OpenAI Playground is free to use!

For which target user is OpenAI Playground best suited?

Geekier writers may enjoy experimenting with the writing capabilities of different language models in the OpenAI Playground!

> Try OpenAI Playground for free

7. Perplexity (free)

ChatGPT may have gotten people talking about whether it will replace Google as a search engine, but not many may know that similar AI-powered search services already exist.

Perplexity is one of them. Similar to YouChat (discussed below), you’ll have a search bar for typing in your user input. Perplexity then processes your query and returns a response, and unlike ChatGPT, it also lists its sources in the form of hyperlinks.

The default response type is “Concise,” but you can switch the tool to “Detailed” if you want a somewhat longer explanation. Since Perplexity cites the sources it used to generate its response, you can also dig into these sources and fact-check the response for accuracy.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

Becoming famous on TikTok requires creating disruptive content, finding a niche, piggybacking on influencers, and investing in advertising. Additionally, it is important to post high-quality content consistently, know TikTok trends and engage with followers and other users. Finally, having a recognizable brand can help increase popularity.

How good was the writing? I had “Concise” mode enabled here, which could be why Perplexity asserted a bunch of points without explaining how they can help a person become famous on TikTok. Even the more “Detailed” response didn’t offer much context. I suppose I have to click through to Perplexity’s sources of information to learn more.

Pros of Perplexity

Cons of Perplexity

Perplexity pricing

• Perplexity is free to use!

For which target user is Perplexity best suited?

Perplexity is a decent free tool if you’re looking for casual answers to questions, such as definitions of concepts, for incorporating into your writing.

> Try Perplexity for free

8. YouChat (free)

Think of YouChat as an AI chat experience baked into a search engine, somewhat similar to Perplexity.

The AI-powered You chatbot complements the platform’s other search features such as image, video, and news search. Type your question into the search bar and it’ll provide a response plus the sources relied on to generate it.

Apart from generating text, YouChat can also translate text and write code. It is also available as Android and iOS apps if you’re keen to access a conversational AI platform on the go.

Sample response to the question “How can a person become famous on TikTok?”

To become famous on TikTok, you should focus on creating content that is engaging and entertaining for your audience. You should also be active in participating in trends and using popular hashtags. Additionally, you should regularly interact with other users, comment on their videos, and collaborate with other content creators. Lastly, you should invest in promoting your content and building up a social media presence across multiple platforms.

How good was the writing? Similar comment to the one I left for Perplexity’s response: it would be great to know the reasons why these points can help a person become famous on TikTok. And YouChat doesn’t cite all the sources for its information, so I can’t investigate further by checking out the sources that influenced its response.

Pros of YouChat

Cons of YouChat

YouChat pricing

• YouChat is free to use!

For which target user is YouChat best suited?

You’ll find YouChat helpful if you want succinct answers to questions and would rather not click through search engine results to get them. That said, I think Perplexity can do the same and more accurately too.

> Try YouChat for free

How to choose the right ChatGPT alternative

After reviewing the pros and cons of the eight AI writing tools we’ve listed above, you might have some idea of which one is right for you. Here are a couple more tips to help you make a final decision:

Assess your needs

What do you need your AI writing tool to do?

You obviously want it to help you generate text, but consider if you need fully fleshed-out blog posts (like what Content At Scale or Copy.ai can do) or just short paragraphs of information to add to your writing (for this, see Lex or Perplexity for example).

Alternatively, if you need a tool that can generate social media ad copy or emails, then shortlist tools that can do that. Jasper and ChatSonic are strong options here.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to build an entire website using AI, we’ve got a full guide to the best AI website builders you may find helpful.

Compare the tools’ features

Some tools have features that others lack. For example, you won’t find word processors in Perplexity or YouChat as they aren’t dedicated writing tools. If you plan on writing content in your chosen AI writing tool, take a look at Content At Scale, Copy.ai, and Lex to name a few.

Even if certain tools share the same features, one tool’s version of the feature may be better than that of other tools. When it comes to blog post creation, for example, I like how Copy.ai lets you tweak its suggested outline and talking points before it generates the blog post for you. Jasper can also generate complete blog posts, but you have less control over the final result.

Consider your budget

While subscribing to an AI writing tool tends to cost less than hiring freelance writers, doing so can still take a big chunk out of a modest content creation budget.

If money is especially tight, free alternatives to ChatGPT like Perplexity, YouChat, and OpenAI Playground can help save the day. Some tools, such as Copy.ai and WriteSonic, also have free plans that let you generate a limited number of words for free every month.

Choosing a ChatGPT alternative: which one is for you?

In general, most of the top ChatGPT alternatives we’ve tested here do a decent job of generating copy. (If I was really writing an article on how a person can get famous on TikTok, we’ve gotten a lot of useful material to go off on!)

ChatGPT’s large language model still seems to have an edge as it generally produces the best quality output. But it’s also perfectly reasonable to use GPT next to other writing tools and chatbots – at Tooltester we currently use Content At Scale for longer blog posts and ChatSonic mostly when ChatGPT is down.

Perhaps these are challenges that AI writing tools will overcome as their underlying AI models improve.

And with tech giants Google and Microsoft gearing up to launch their own AI chatbots to rival ChatGPT, it’s clear that competition in the AI conversational world is only just heating up. Watch this space!

If you have a question about picking a ChatGPT alternative, we’d be happy to help. Leave a comment below and we’ll get back to you.

The authors

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Robert Brandl

Founder and CEO

Hi, my name is Robert Brandl, and I am the founder of Tooltester. I used to work in a digital marketing agency where I managed website and email marketing projects. To optimize my client's campaigns, I always had to find the optimal web tools. Tooltester (founded in 2010) opens this knowledge to you, hopefully saving you endless hours of research. If you have any questions, please leave a comment. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Inka Wibowo

Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I started using website builders and content management systems over 10 years ago, when I managed websites for clients in my first marketing role. Since then, I've worked on hundreds of web and digital projects. Now, at Tooltester, I'm happy to be able to use my experience to help users like you find the right website builder for your needs.

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