There are over a million of AI models out there which makes choosing the right model overwhelming. Just in HuggingFace alone there are 1.8M as of this posts' publication! This guide breaks down what AI models are, their key applications, and how to select the best fit to your needs. Whether you're looking to automate tasks, write copy, create images, coding, or any other digital task this guide is for you.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- AI models are the core technology powering applications from writing to coding, image creation, and more.
- Choosing the right AI model depends on your specific use case—whether it's generating text, images, video, code, web search, or general tasks - always start with "why you need it".
- Popular AI models include language models (like GPT-4 for writing and coding), image generators (such as DALL·E and Midjourney), and specialized engines for search and video creation.
- Choose ChatGPT-4o or Claude Opus 4 for general-purpose tasks, deepsearch, and content creation.
- Choose ChatGPT-4.1, Claude Sonnet 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, or Vercel v0 for coding-related tasks and web-apps.
- Choose Perplexity or Grok 3 for web-search, citations, and social discussions.
What is an AI model?
An AI model is a computer program that learns from a set of data to fulfil a request. It can recognise patterns, make predictions, or answer questions without needing a human to tell it what to do each time.
You can think of it like a digital brain that studies and then uses what it learned to solve new problems, such as telling if a photo shows a cat or a dog.
An AI model is not the same as an AI platform. For instance, AI platforms like ChatGPT provide different AI models (e.g. GPT-4.5, GPT-4.1, GPT-4o, o4-mini, o3-mini, o3). Others like Claude or Gemini do the same, but why? How would the user know which one to choose? Keep reading to find the answer to this question ;).
What is AI Used For?
“Why do you need an AI?” Always start here to help you choosing the right AI model for your needs. If you are just exploring or learning about this world, here are some common everyday examples of using AI include:
- Coding
- Writing and content creation (e.g. articles, blogs, media)
- Image generation and editing
- Video generation
- Transcription and translation
- Mathematics problem solving and calculations
- Data analysis
- Predictive modelling and fraud detection
- Research (including deep research - the process of analysing and connecting multiple related sources), web search, and summarising information
- General-purpose conversations with AI
And may other everyday tasks! Pretty much any non-physical job that you can think of can benefit from AI in one way or another. If you are new to AI make sure you check out What is AI in Simple Terms?
AI Models Comparison: Key Differences to Know
What AI models are out there? How can I choose the right AI model for my project? Remember to always start with “why”. It all depends to your needs and what you are trying to achieve (and why). Here is a concise decision matrix to aid with your decision:
Still struggling? Here is a concise list and breakdown of the most popular AI models at the moment if you are still unsure:
- GPT-4.5 - best for deep reasoning, creative tasks, and writing
- GPT-4.1 - best for general-purpose, coding, and writing
- GPT-4o – best for general-purpose, interpreting images or screenshots, generating images, and fast completions
- o4-mini - best for speed, low usage, and repetitive tasks. Ideal for chatbots, comments, and short suggestions
- o3-mini - best for fast help with simple or repetitive tasks. Ideal for code snippets or explanations
- o3 - best for deep reasoning including context, planning, and data analysis
- Claude Opus 4 - best for deep reasoning, coding, and agentic workflows. Anthropic’s most powerful model
- Claude Sonnet 3.5 - best for simple tasks with fast responses in coding or code line explanations
- Claude Sonnet 3.7 - best for hybrid mix between reasoning and fast tasks
- Claude Sonnet 4 - best for more reliable completions and smarter reasoning (improved version of Claude Sonnet 3.7)
- Gemini 2.5 Pro - best for deep reasoning, complex code generation, interpreting long context, and scientific and technical analysis. Ideal for building web apps, agents, and research
- Gemini 2.0 Flash - best for working with visuals (i.e. comments on UI, screenshots, or diagram-based tasks) and quick questions
- xAI Grok 3 - best for math, science, coding, image generation, and real-time social media data access from X/Twitter
- DeepSeek R1 - best for reasoning, coding, and math
- YOLO - best for in-real-time object detection to “see” the world around it
- BERT - best for text classification or NLP tasks
- LLaMa (by Meta) - best open-source LLM model to build personalised general knowledge experiences
- Whisper - best for audio transcription in any language
Didn’t have enough? Here are other models that you might be interested in: Granite 3.0 (IBM tool that with multiple integrations - chatbots, dashboards, etc.), Mistral 7B (good for building AI assistants and summarisation bots), Stable Diffusion (good for image generation), XGBoost (good for credit scoring, fraud detection, churn prediction).
As the AI world continues to grow, so will the AI models in both quality and quantity!
Best AI Models and Tools by Use Case
So which AI model should you use? If it is still unclear here you have a breakdown of the best AI models and tools by use case so you know what AI to use in your day to day life.
Best AI Models and Tools for Writing
OpenAI’s GPT-4o
Price: Free (with limits). Paid plan from $20/month
OpenAI's ChatGPT remains the gold standard for AI-powered writing assistance. With access to GPT-4o, it excels at generating high-quality content across multiple formats including articles, emails, creative writing, and professional documents. The platform supports file uploads, image analysis, and real-time web browsing, making it perfect for research-based writing.
Grammarly
Price: Free (with limits). Paid plan from €12/month
Grammarly has evolved from a simple grammar checker into a comprehensive AI writing assistant. Beyond catching errors, it now offers generative AI capabilities for creating drafts, rewriting content, and adjusting tone.
Perplexity
Price: Free. Paid plan from $20/month
Perplexity’s writer combines real-time, citation-backed research with top-tier drafting models, turning plain prompts into polished, source-linked blogs, emails and reports in seconds. The Pro Search plan includes selection of different AI models, including those from other platform's paid plans to select the best one to your particular use case.
Best AI Models and Tools for Image Generation and Editing
OpenAI’s GPT-4o
Price: Free (with limits). Paid plan from $20/month
Although GPT-4o is best known for text, it now supports generating and editing images using natural language prompts. Great for advanced users wanting to create or modify images quickly and intuitively.
Midjourney
Price: $10/month
A favourite among artists and designers, Midjourney produces highly creative, detailed images via Discord. Renowned for its unique aesthetic and ability to interpret imaginative prompts.
Freepik AI Image Generator
Price: Free (limited); premium from €9.99/month
Freepik blends AI image generation with a massive library of stock visuals and easy-to-use editing tools. Ideal for marketers, web designers, and content creators. My go-to option for image generation to be honest.
Want more? See the best AI tools for image generation.
Best AI Models and Tools for Video Generation
Veo
Price: Free limited trial (pay-as-you go credit-based pricing model)
Veo, powered by Google DeepMind, is a cutting-edge AI video generator. It produces cinematic-quality videos from text or image prompts, and even adds realistic sound effects and dialogue. Veo excels at handling nuanced prompts, mimicking a range of cinematographic styles such as timelapse or aerial shots. It’s integrated with tools like Google Vids and Canva, making it suitable for creatives, marketers, and businesses needing scalable video content.
Sora
Price: Included in ChatGPT Plus ($20/month)
Sora is OpenAI’s innovative text-to-video model. It generates realistic and imaginative video scenes up to 20 seconds long directly from written descriptions, images, or existing video clips. Sora supports storyboarding, background changes with Remix, and seamless video length editing with Recut, making it ideal for storytellers, educators, and marketers seeking creative flexibility and high fidelity.
Runway
Price: Free (limited). Paid plan from $12/month
Runway is a leading platform that transforms text prompts and images into professional-grade videos. Its suite of models (Gen-1, Gen-2, Gen-3 Alpha, etc.) ensures consistent characters across scenes, lifelike motion, and detailed control over style and composition. Runway is perfect for content creators and businesses looking to automate production while maintaining creative control.
Still not enough? See the best AI tools for video generation.
Best AI Models and Tools for Web Search
Perplexity
Price: Free. Paid plan from $20/month
Perplexity is a conversational AI search engine that uses a blend of in-house language models (like Sonar) and top external models (including GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and others). It specialises in providing real-time, cited answers to queries, lets you ask natural follow-up questions, and can even summarise uploaded files. My current go-to option for web searches and more reliable queries!
XAI’s Grok 3
Price: Included in X SuperGrok ($30/month)
Grok 3 by xAI is a next-generation AI model created by Elon Musk’s team to focus on truth-seeking and superior reasoning. Grok 3 integrates real-time web search (via its DeepSearch engine), extensive pretraining, and “Big Brain” mode for complex queries. It is designed to answer questions conversationally, provide direct citations, and handle multimodal prompts (text and image).
Best AI Models and Tools for Coding
Claude’s Sonnet 4
Price: Free. Paid plan from €15/month
Claude Sonnet 4 is a state-of-the-art AI coding partner from Anthropic. Renowned for its excellent code generation, bug fixing, and agentic workflows, it supports the entire software development lifecycle. My personal favourite for coding-related tasks.
Claude Opus 4 ranks higher with plan starting for €15/month.
OpenAI’s GPT-4.1
Price: Free. Paid plan from $20/month
GPT-4.1 is the latest and most advanced from OpenAI, specifically tuned for coding and instruction following. It features a massive 1-million-token context window, multimodal capabilities (text, image, code), and high performance on complex programming tasks.
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro
Price: Free
Gemini 2.5 Pro is Google’s most advanced coding AI, notable for its high performance on software evaluation benchmarks (63.8% on SWE-bench). The model excels in large codebase understanding, agentic coding, realtime collaboration, and can generate applications (including UI and backend) from text or image prompts.
V0 (by Vercel)
Price: Free. Paid plan from $20/month
V0 lets you create web apps and generate production-ready code (React, Vue, Svelte, HTML/CSS) simply by describing your project in natural language. It offers tight integration with Vercel’s cloud infrastructure, meaning you can generate, preview, and deploy your application instantly. Perfect for frontend developers, designers, and anyone wanting rapid prototyping or automated UI generation. My personal go-to for quick components.
Looking for more? See the best AI code assistant AI tools.
Best General-Purpose AI Models and Tools
OpenAI’s GPT 4o
Price: Free (with limits). Paid plans from $20/month
Multimodal model processing text, images, and audio with advanced reasoning and real-time interaction. Supports large context windows (up to 128K tokens) and excels in programming, summarisation, creative content, and audio interactions. Integrates widely, ideal for individuals and enterprises.
XAI’s Grok 3
Price: Included in X SuperGrok ($30/month)
Focuses on advanced reasoning, real-time web search, and multimodal tasks. “Big Brain” mode supports complex queries and tool use, making it excellent for research, coding, finance, and legal analysis.
DeepSeek’s R1
Price: Free. Enterprise options available
DeepSeek’s R1 is a strong general-purpose AI model. It also excels in logical reasoning, maths, decision-making, and coding.
Not satisfied? We have an entire directory of the best AI tools, sites and apps if you still want more research =).
How to Choose The Right AI Model for You
In conclusion, the ideal AI model will significantly transform and improve the output to your needs. With countless AI models available in 2025, it is still a challenge to select the right AI model, but I hope that this guide was able to summarise the top recommendation on popular AI models to help you make a informed decision.
To sum up:
ChatGPT is best for everyday questions, image generation/editing, and voice conversations. Use GPT-4.5 for image generation and creative tasks, o3-mini for math or science-related questions, GPT-4.1 for coding, and GPT-4o for general-purpose. ChatGPT is not the best for research.
Claude is best for coding, data analysis, and NLP tasks. Use Sonnet 4 for coding, Opus 4 for deep reasoning and writing, and Sonnet 3.5 for quick simple tasks. Claude is not the best for image generation.
Gemini is best for making videos (with Veo), very long inputs (i.e. long-text, image, videos), and integrating with web apps. Use 2.0 Flash to extract data from images or diagram-based tasks, and 2.5 Pro for coding, deepsearh, and research. Gemini is not the best for content writing.
Grok is best for deep research, reasoning, math, image generation, and coding. Also capable of finding information on X/Twitter. Grok is not best for writing.
Perplexity is best for real-time web search, research, and question-answer queries. Perplexity is not the best for coding.
For the other models, refer to the ‘AI Models Comparison’ section further above.
Remember, the best AI model evolves with your goals, so start with the "why you need an AI model" and experiment with the available options to find the perfect fit for each task.