AI · First steps
What is the best free AI to start with?
The best one is the one you'll use every day. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot have free versions; test the same task in all four and keep one.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
There's no single best free AI for everyone. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot have free versions, in many languages, with usage limits that change often. Each has its own style, and the right choice depends on what you do day to day and where you already live digitally. The most honest method is simple: give the same real task to all four, compare the answers and keep the one that helped you most.
Be wary of any list that says "number one is this one." The assistants are updated almost every month, and what was true in January may not be true in October.
Why AI is not a chatbot
People who compare AIs as if they were customer-service robots look for the one that "answers correctly." But the question changes once you understand you're choosing a work partner: what matters is the tone, the patience, the way it handles your context.
In Bairo's view, AI is an extension of you. In his words, "artificial intelligence is an extension of the human, not the problem." If it's an extension, the best one is the one that fits your way of thinking and working, like a shoe that fits your foot.
Step by step today
- Get to know the four most used, without fanaticism. - ChatGPT (OpenAI): the best known, with voice conversation, image and file uploads and a study mode. - Claude (Anthropic): often chosen for long texts, reading documents and careful writing; it also has a learning mode. - Gemini (Google): voice conversation and integration with Gmail, Drive and other Google services, for those who already use those accounts. - Copilot (Microsoft): built into Windows and the Microsoft ecosystem, also with voice.
- Choose a task from your week and write a complete request. Example:
I own a small clothing shop in my neighborhood. Write a
WhatsApp message telling my customers the winter collection
has arrived, in a friendly tone, without exaggeration and in
4 lines at most. Give me three versions.
- Paste the same request into all four and compare: which one understood best? Which sounded most natural? Which made up the least?
- Run a second test with a document. Take a text with no personal data (a medicine leaflet, a set of rules, a public notice) and ask:
Summarize this document in 5 simple points. Then list the 3
things an ordinary person tends to misunderstand about it.
Say on which page or in which passage each point appears.
- Check who got it wrong. Open the original document and check. The AI that invents a passage that doesn't exist loses points, however beautiful its answer.
- Look at the free plan's conditions on each one's official page. Limits and prices change; read them at the source, not in an old video.
- Choose a main one and a backup. Use the main one every day. When it hits its limit or gets stuck, take the same question to the backup.
A question to ask any of them before deciding:
What do you do well and what do you tend to do badly? Be honest
and give me practical examples for someone who [describe your work].
How Bairo did it
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez didn't wait for the perfect tool. He says he spent six months at home, in front of the computer, building with whatever was available at that moment, without knowing how to code. Out of that came the foundation of the platform and the artificial intelligence of CEASA Bank, a financial platform for agribusiness.
And it was precisely by using AI heavily that he felt the cost: every conversation consumes tokens, and tokens are expensive. Instead of complaining about the price, he created CLAIN, an orchestrator that spreads the work among many niche agents. The idea behind it is the same as in this text: no single AI needs to be the best at everything, as long as each one does its part well.
Precautions
Free doesn't mean free of cost to your privacy: read what each service does with your conversations, don't paste anyone's personal data, check in an official source everything the tool claims, don't trade your doctor or lawyer for a well-written answer, and remember that all of them learned from human texts and repeat our biases, each in its own way.