ChatGPT Review: Best all-around AI assistant for most teams

ChatGPT has been our default assistant for the better part of a year, and that is the review in miniature: when a task is vague, urgent, or half-formed, this is the tool we open first.

The range is the selling point. In a typical week we used it to draft client emails, summarize a 60-page PDF, generate spreadsheet formulas, brainstorm product names, and handle a late-night debugging session. No other assistant we tested switched between those jobs as smoothly. Voice mode has quietly become our favorite feature — dictating a messy idea on a walk and getting a structured outline back feels like having a colleague on call.

Custom GPTs deserve a specific mention for teams. We built small internal helpers — one tuned to our style guide, one that knows our refund policy — and they hold their instructions well. The connectors that pull in Google Drive and other workspaces remove most of the copy-paste that used to make AI assistants feel like extra work.

The honest downsides: heavy users will hit rate limits on the Plus plan during peak hours, and the model still sometimes answers with more confidence than accuracy, so anything factual needs a spot check. Plan differences between Free, Plus, and Team also shift every few months, which makes buying advice age quickly — check the current comparison on OpenAI's pricing page before you commit.

Pricing is straightforward: a capable free tier, Plus at roughly $20 a month for the stronger models and features, and Team seats above that with admin controls. For most individuals the free tier is a real product now, not a demo.

We recommend ChatGPT as the first subscription for almost anyone, and the one to keep even if you also pay for a specialist tool.