VideoFree AI vs Claude & ChatGPT: who actually wins?
TL;DR The best free models trail the top ones by about four months; ones that run on your laptop, by about a year. For emails and summaries, that's fine.
Is free AI really as good as the paid stuff? I skipped the marketing and looked at an independent test that scores models out of 100.
Claude Opus scored 58 and GPT 53. The best open models were close behind: Xiaomi's MiMo 46 (about Grok level) and Kimi 44. Qwen 3.8 scored 34, but it runs on a good laptop.
The simple version: the best free AI is about four months behind the top. The one that fits on your own computer is about a year behind. For summaries, emails and private documents, that's often totally fine.
Be careful with scores companies publish about their own models. Independent tests often show a bigger gap.
Sources: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3 (Oct 2026); Epoch AI (2026).
