I'm in awe they are still allowing free users at all. And I'm one of them. The free tier is enough for me to use it as a helper at work, and I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier.
It’s not that they are “allowing free user at all” they are expanding their free offerings. Last year I paid $20/month for ChatGPT. This year I haven’t paid anything though my usage has only increased.
I've used them all, and they all have their place I guess.
ChatGPT is far and away my favorite for quick questions you'd ask the genius coworker next to you. For me, nothing else even comes close wrt speed and accuracy. So for that, I'd gladly pay.
Don't get me wrong, Claude is a marvel and Deepseek punches above its weight, but neither compare with stuff like 'write me a sql query that does these 30 things as efficiently as possible.'. ChatGPT will output an answer with explanations for each line by the time Claude inevitably times out...again.
