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Claude or ChatGPT?
Choosing the right tool for the job
Fauzi
May 05, 2024 • Reading Time: 10 minutes
In the last couple of issues, I mentioned Claude and ChatGPT a few times. Naturally, you may have questions about what Claude is, how it differs from ChatGPT, and which of them you should be using. Well, you are in luck! Today we are going to discuss the differences between them and which kinds of tasks they excel at. This way, the next time you want to, for instance, summarize a long piece of text, you know exactly which one gives you the best results. Spoiler alert: These days I use Claude more than I do ChatGPT, and I think you should do the same.
Let's get started!
What is Claude?
Claude is an AI Chatbot much like ChatGPT, powered by a Large Language Model created by a company known as Anthropic (founded by 7 former OpenAI employees in 2021). Claude was created with a special focus on safety and reliability.
Claude in action
What can Claude do?
For the most part, Claude's capabilities have a lot of overlap with those of ChatGPT. However, a few things make Claude stand out.
For instance, Claude is able to process more information than ChatGPT, which means it can process bigger chunks of text. This can be helpful for scenarios where you want a large PDF processed, analyzed, and summarized, or you want a large piece of text proofread.
The measure of how much information an LLM can process is known as its context window. Some Large Language Models have larger context windows than others, meaning they can process more information per prompt.
Another key difference between Claude's capabilities and ChatGPT's capabilities is Claude's default personality. Over the many times I have used Claude, it has noticeably been more… eeerh human… than ChatGPT. It is noticeably more creative, concise, helpful, and empathetic. So much so that I almost exclusively use Claude over ChatGPT for any tasks that are writing/reading related.
Okay, now that you have an understanding of what Claude is and what it can do, let's compare some of its features to ChatGPT.
ChatGPT vs. Claude Features
Here's a non-exhaustive list of the features present on both free and paid versions of ChatGPT, versus what you get with Claude. You will find that for the free versions, Claude gives you more features, and more bang for your zero bucks (sorry, it was right there I couldn't help myself). However, for the paid versions, things get more nuanced depending on the kinds of tasks you want to perform.
If you can afford it, I strongly recommend getting the paid versions of either ChatGPT or Claude, as long as you intend to use them often. It makes a tremendous difference in the quality of work you can get done. For instance, ChatGPT uses a model called GPT-3.5 for the free version, which cannot browse the web and is hilariously inaccurate for any tasks that require reasoning. The paid version, however, uses GPT-4, which is much better all-around, more powerful, and gives you web browsing, image generation capabilities and a whole lot more we do not have time to get into today. This is also true for Claude, as the free version gives you access to their less capable (but better than GPT-3.5) Sonet model, but the paid version gives you access to a more powerful model, Opus.
Free
Feature | Claude | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
File Uploads (Images, PDFs, Spreadsheets) | Yes | No |
Web browsing i.e. The ability for the LLM to access the internet for new information | No | No |
GPT Store | No | No |
Mobile App | Yes - iOS |
Paid
Feature | Claude | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
File Uploads (Images, PDFs, Spreadsheets) | Yes | Yes |
Web browsing i.e. The ability for the LLM to access the internet for new information | No | Yes |
GPT Store | No | Yes |
Mobile App | Yes - iOS |
Interlude: A Quick Word on the File Uploads and GPT Store Features
GPT Store
The GPT Store, which was created by ChatGPT, is like an App Store for Large Language Models. It contains specialized versions of these models, that have been tuned for specific tasks through extensive prompting. For example, there is a Data Analyst GPT which you can give an Excel file and it will, among other things, visualize the data. Or this GPT, which claims to predict future stock prices 🧢. As a ChatGPT premium user, you should always check to see if there is a GPT for your needs before using vanilla ChatGPT.
Another cool feature related to the GPT Store is a GPT builder, which lets you create your own GPTs without any technical knowledge. It's quite clever because it uses ChatGPT to interpret your natural language and creates the GPT for you. I could write a whole post about the GPT store. Maybe I will.
GPT store on ChatGPT
GPT builder
File Uploads
File uploads are by far my most used feature on both Claude and ChatGPT. While it may not seem that useful at first glance, it becomes incredibly powerful when you think about just how many things you do with PDFs, Excel Workbooks, pictures of receipts, etc. With this feature, you are able to upload the files and ask ChatGPT or Claude questions related to the contents of the file.
1. Using Claude's file upload feature
2. File upload results
Some other common use cases for this feature are:
Upload your CV and a job description and ask Claude or ChatGPT to:
Suggest edits to your CV to match the requirements of the job spec
Generate practice interview questions you are likely to get for the job, given your experience
Combine with a web search in the case of ChatGPT, to get a reasonable salary range for the job, given your experience
Upload a picture of a receipt and ask Claude or ChatGPT to create a table you can copy/paste into Excel of the receipt.
I use the file upload feature so often, that I ended up building an AI agent that lives in WhatsApp since the majority of PDFs I read are on my phone. Once I send the agent a PDF, it responds with a summary. Subsequently, I can text it like I would a normal person, and it answers all my questions based on the information in the PDF. This saves me a lot of time! It can also be applied easily to other domains like customer service. If this type of automation is interesting to you or your business, let's talk!
Which chatbot for which Task?
Now that we have spoken about the features of both ChatGPT and Claude, which of them should you use for your tasks? I will attempt to answer that question using the tables below, both for the free and paid versions.
The results highlight a few tasks I have used chabots for in the last couple of months. They are heavily biased towards my own usage, preferences, and prompts(refer to this post on prompting). While there are multiple ways of comparing these eg. benchmarks, I find it useful to try either chatbot just to get a sense of what they are good at. It is the only foolproof way of knowing if you are indeed using the right tools for the right job.
Free
Task | Examples | Preferred Chatbot |
|---|---|---|
Creative writing | Composing an email, writing an essay, poem, or a story | Claude |
Brainstorming ideas | Generating recipes based on ingredients, types of exercises for specific muscle groups | Claude |
Proof-reading and fact-checking | Proof-reading emails and essays | Claude |
Logic and reasoning | Riddles, complex word problems | Claude |
Analyzing text | Finding a specific sentence in a 5000-word essay | Claude |
Summarizing text | Summarizing a research report in a PDF | Claude |
Mathematics | Generating Excel formulae, arithmetic | Claude |
Image processing | Interpret an uploaded image | Claude |
Coding | Generate Python code to read the contents of a file | Claude |
Language Translation | Translate text from English to Greek | Claude |
Paid
Task | Examples | Preferred Chatbot |
|---|---|---|
Creative writing | Composing an email, writing an essay, poem, or a story | Claude |
Brainstorming ideas | Generating recipes based on ingredients, types of exercises for specific muscle groups | Claude |
Proof-reading and fact-checking | Proof-reading emails and essays | Claude |
Logic and reasoning | Riddles, complex word problems | Tie |
Analyzing text | Finding a specific sentence in a 5000-word essay | Claude |
Summarizing text | Summarizing a research report in a PDF | Claude |
Mathematics | Generating Excel formulae, arithmetic | Tie |
Image processing | Interpret an uploaded image | Claude |
Coding | Generate python code to read the contents of a file | Tie |
Language Translation | Translate text from English to Greek | Claude |
It is important to note that the companies behind these chatbots are constantly improving the models, so while I recommend Claude for most things (especially if you're using the free versions), things will change once the models are inevitably updated. When that happens, I will be here with all the updates. Until then, happy prompting!
— Fauzi
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