Best AI chatbots of 2026 — ChatGPT tops hands-on tests

The arrival of the first successful AI chatbot in 2022 reshaped how people work and learn. To see where things stand now, a hands-on comparison ran 112 individual tests: ten text-based prompts and four image tasks. Each chatbot was scored out of 100 for text and 20 for images, for a 120-point total.

Free tiers proved more capable than expected, with little throttling, frequent access without an account, and markedly improved response quality. ChatGPT emerged as the overall winner with a 109 total (91 text, 18 image). It handled many tasks near-perfectly, produced a solid travel itinerary, and aced a basic coding test, but it struggled to locate and summarize a current-event article (returning results in traditional Chinese from Yahoo’s Taiwan portal), fell short of a required 1,500-word story, and presented parts of that story as an outline.

ChatGPT’s free offering also includes standalone apps and a browser, with Plus and Pro paid tiers at $20 and $200 per month.

Taiwan