AI Compare · Writing & Content
Writing and content: which AI fits, by plan and price
A pricing page cannot show writing quality. Here is what writing work needs from an AI plan, what each of the six tools we track documents, what it costs, and how to test it.
Prices for United States, before sales tax Data release 2026.10.16-3, Oct 16, 2026 Rules 2.1.0
On AI Compare, writing covers four tasks: editing an email without losing a detail, editing an article without changing its facts, drafting long pieces that stay consistent, and writing ads, posts and short copy. All four need a general-purpose assistant you can chat with. Long drafts also gain from projects and memory across chats.
The facts here come from each company's own pricing and help pages for individual US plans, checked on October 12 and 13, 2026. They tell you which plans include an assistant, with what usage limits, projects, memory and context. They cannot tell you whether a rewrite keeps every date and name, follows your word limit or quietly adds a detail. That is where most of the difference in writing lies, and we have not run our tests on these plans yet.
The tasks, and what each one needs
- Edit an email without losing a detail Rewrite a rough email so it keeps every date, amount, name and request.
- Edit an article without changing its facts Tighten a draft while keeping every figure, quote and claim intact.
- Draft long pieces that stay consistent Draft a long article, report or chapter that stays consistent from start to finish.
- Write ads, posts and short copy Write headlines, ads and social posts within tight length and tone limits.
Which plans document each task
For each product, the lowest-priced plan that documents every feature the task needs. Documented means offered, not tested.
| Product | Edit an email without losing a detail | Edit an article without changing its facts | Draft long pieces that stay consistent | Write ads, posts and short copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | ChatGPT FreeFree | ChatGPT FreeFree | ChatGPT FreeFree | ChatGPT FreeFree |
| Claude | Claude FreeFree | Claude FreeFree | Claude FreeFree | Claude FreeFree |
| Gemini | Gemini (free)Free | Gemini (free)Free | Gemini (free)Free | Gemini (free)Free |
| Perplexity | Perplexity FreeFree | Perplexity FreeFree | Perplexity FreeFree | Perplexity FreeFree |
| X Subscription (Cursor, Grok, X) | X Subscription FreeFree | X Subscription FreeFree | X Subscription FreeFree | X Subscription FreeFree |
| GitHub Copilot | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Suno | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Udio | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| ElevenLabs | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Otter | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Wispr Flow | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Superwhisper | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Runway | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Luma | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Higgsfield | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| HeyGen | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Synthesia | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Descript | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Midjourney | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Ideogram | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Adobe Firefly | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Canva | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Lovable | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Replit | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| v0 | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Microsoft Copilot | Microsoft Copilot (free)Free | Microsoft Copilot (free)Free | Microsoft Copilot (free)Free | Microsoft Copilot (free)Free |
Test them on your own work
Documented features say what a plan offers, not how well it does the work. Run the same kit in each AI you are considering and score the answers, blind if you like.
-
Edit an email without losing a detail
A rushed internal email with a moved meeting, a budget cap, a deadline and a confidentiality request. The rewrite must keep every detail and promise nothing new.
-
Edit an article without changing its facts
A 370-word local news draft with eleven figures, six dates, a quotation, an objection and two hedges. Cut it to about 300 words and check that every fact survives and nothing uncertain becomes certain.
-
Turn project notes into a report that agrees with itself
Status notes for a clinic expansion: a budget to add up, a supplier delay, decisions taken and questions still open. The report must get the totals right, keep the decided apart from the undecided, and invent no opening date.
How to choose
Every writing task needs a general-purpose assistant. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini document one on every plan, free included. ChatGPT lists everyday text chats as unlimited on Free, Go ($8 a month), Plus ($20) and Pro ($100, $200 or $500), subject to abuse guardrails. Claude Free has rolling five-hour session limits; Pro ($20 a month, or $200 a year paid up front) gives at least five times Free usage per session, and Max ($100 or $200 a month) five or twenty times Pro. Gemini's free tier runs 3.5 Flash-Lite with usage limits; Google AI Plus ($4.99 a month) doubles them and Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month, or $199.99 a year) gives four times the free limits.
Three of the six are not mainly writing tools. GitHub Copilot's documentation scopes it to software work, so it is not offered as a writing assistant. Cursor itself is a coding tool; its plans, sold since October 12, 2026 as the X Subscription, bundle Grok Chat, a general chatbot that shares one usage pool with Cursor. Perplexity Free is framed as search only, and writing is not documented for it; Perplexity Pro ($20 a month, or $204 a year paid up front) adds document, spreadsheet and presentation creation.
For long drafts, look at projects, memory and context. Projects keep a draft, notes and instructions in one place: ChatGPT lists them on every plan, Claude allows five on Free and lists Projects on Pro and Max, Gemini offers Gemini Notebook, described as a research and writing assistant, on every plan, and Perplexity lists Projects on Pro and Max. Memory across chats is documented on every ChatGPT and Claude plan and on Perplexity Pro and Max. Gemini's memory needs the Keep Activity setting on, and turning Keep Activity off is also how you stop Google training on your chats, so on Gemini you choose between the two. For one long piece in a single chat, Claude documents up to 1 million tokens on every plan, Google AI Pro 1 million, and ChatGPT Plus 54K for its Instant model and 256K for reasoning models.
Check where you write and what happens to your drafts. Google AI Pro adds Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Sheets; Google AI Plus has Gemini in Gmail for proofreading but not Docs. ChatGPT works inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Google Sheets through extensions, limited on Free and Go. Claude Pro and Max add Claude for Microsoft 365. OpenAI says ads may appear on ChatGPT Free and Go in the US; Anthropic says Claude has no ads on any plan. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity use your chats for training by default until you switch it off, and Anthropic does not state Claude's default, so check the setting if your drafts are confidential.
The rest is quality, and only testing shows it. Most differences in writing quality are not something documented features can show. Our email-edit kit gives each assistant the same messy email and a rewrite brief with a word limit, then you check every date, time, room, amount, deadline and name against the original. Run it on the free tiers of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini before you pay. We have no kit for long drafts or short copy yet. All prices are US list prices before tax; for a side-by-side view, see ChatGPT vs Claude or Claude vs Gemini.
Questions
Can a pricing page tell me which AI writes well?
No. Plan pages list features and limits, not writing quality, and we have not run our tests yet. Run the email-edit kit in two or three assistants with the same email and count how many facts each one keeps.
Is a free plan enough for writing?
For occasional emails, the free tiers of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all include a general assistant. ChatGPT lists everyday chats as unlimited within guardrails, Claude Free has five-hour session limits, and Gemini's limits refresh every five hours up to a weekly cap. ChatGPT Free may show ads.
Can I use GitHub Copilot or Cursor for writing?
GitHub's documentation scopes Copilot to software work. Cursor is a coding tool, but its X Subscription plans include Grok Chat, a general chatbot that shares one usage pool with Cursor.
Which plans remember my preferences between chats?
Every ChatGPT and Claude plan documents memory across chats, as do Perplexity Pro and Max. On Gemini, memory needs Keep Activity on, the same setting you turn off to stop training on your chats. Whether memory keeps a long piece consistent is untested.
Can I write with AI inside Google Docs or Word?
Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month) adds Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Sheets. ChatGPT has extensions for Word and Google Sheets, limited on Free and Go. Claude Pro and Max add Claude for Microsoft 365.
Written by the What the tech desk with AI assistance from the facts in our data release 2026.10.16-3. Read how AI Compare works.