No single chatbot is enough, but this stack covers everything

The rise of AI chatbots has made them indispensable. And with the AI race at full speed in 2025, there's a plethora of options to choose from. There's even a site for finding new AI chatbots. But that's easier said than done because, most of the time, you try one thing, and it becomes part of your workflow—you don't explore if there's better outside. And when it comes to AI chatbots, you should never settle for one option. While some might score better in certain benchmarks, no AI chatbot is superior in all applications.

If you rely on just one chatbot, you’ll quickly run into gaps—whether it’s missing context, outdated knowledge, or weak performance in specific tasks. The solution isn’t to wait for the “perfect” AI assistant, but to build a stack of complementary tools. Together, they can cover everything from research and fact-checking to writing, coding, and everyday problem-solving.

Why you shouldn't rely on a single AI chatbot

No single option is an all-rounder

As good as your favorite chatbot might seem, it's not perfect in all use cases. It may shine in creative tasks like writing, summarizing, or brainstorming new ideas, but it may really feel off when you try to do something else. The quality of the data used to train the chatbot may be better in some topics and weaker in others, so no matter what optimization is done, it will excel at specific tasks but not everything.

Some chatbots are also trained and optimized using more data in one domain than in others, thus delivering better results in particular applications. Using multiple chatbots also gives you more creative and varied results. Ask the same question to two or three different AI chatbots, and you’ll notice how differently they frame answers, suggest solutions, or spark ideas. That variety can help you see options you wouldn’t get from sticking with one.

There’s also the accuracy factor. Even the best models still make mistakes, sometimes confidently so. Because of this, cross-checking answers across multiple chatbots helps you spot errors and arrive at a more reliable conclusion. When reviewing any content from an AI chatbot, approach it with skepticism. The same way you did before when directly searching for information on the web via search engines.

Finally, personalities and interaction styles differ. Some chatbots respond in a straightforward, factual tone, while others are more conversational or playful. Depending on the task—serious research, coding help, or casual brainstorming—you may prefer one style over another.

The all-around AI chatbot stack

The go-to toolkit for reliable AI assistance

With these caveats in mind, the trick isn’t choosing the “best” chatbot—it’s combining the right ones into a stack. Each fills a different role: one might be better at research, another at summarizing documents, another at generating creative ideas, and so on.

1. ChatGPT – Best for general use cases

As one of the pioneers of the market, ChatGPT is one of the most versatile AI chatbots on the market. Its biggest strength lies in adaptability—you can guide it with custom instructions, switch between creative or professional tones, and use it for both quick answers and deep dives.

ChatGPT banks on personalization to make the responses more fitting to your needs. For instance, it offers different personalities, including Cynic, Robot, and Listener, that you can use to set the style and tone the chatbot uses when answering your questions.

Additionally, you can add your custom instructions to personalize the chatbot further by adjusting the style, tone, and more. Besides that, you can let the chatbot save your inputs to memory so the answers it gives you are more in tune with the information you've provided in the past. But that's not all. ChatGPT is packed with many amazing features.

2. Claude – Great for coding and mathematics

Claude is known for its strengths in deep and structured reasoning. It's why Claude is one of the go-to models for software development, mathematics, and other STEM-related tasks. But besides that niche, it also allows you to connect to external tools like Linear, Gmail, Zapier, Notion, Google Drive, and more to supercharge your productivity.

For instance, with Asana connected, you can ask the chatbot to create new tasks or complete existing ones by simply giving the instructions. With Gmail, you can go through your emails, and with that information, you can tell the chatbot to take actions on your behalf. In short, connecting Claude to your work apps unlocks endless possibilities.

3. Gemini – Best for learning and exploration

With the launch of Gemini 1.5 Pro, Google added a massive context window of one million tokens. It set a new benchmark at a time when the best options maxed out at a few hundred thousand tokens, making it one of the best LLMs for large conversations. With its one-million context window, you should use Gemini anytime you need to input large text, like an entire book, for summarizing.

But what makes Gemini stand out is NotebookLM, a research and note-taking tool that uses AI to help you understand and work with documents. Once you upload your sources, you can chat with NotebookLM, and it will provide responses based on your reference material with citations. It can also guide you based on your material, making it easy to connect the dots and understand whatever you want to learn. Its Audio Overview feature is especially handy, as it can make podcasts from your notes, making it a really powerful learning tool.

4. Perplexity AI – Best at research on current topics with citations and live web results

Perplexity AI is a specialized chatbot that aims to be a modern replacement for traditional search engines like Bing, Google, and DuckDuckGo. It's so good that you can use Perplexity as a Google Search replacement, although some might argue that using AI chatbots like search engines is a bad idea. It pulls the latest data from the web and is well updated on current events, like traditional search engines, but with the convenience of AI added on top.

Unlike many AI tools that generate text without showing their work, Perplexity always provides sources alongside its answers. Combined with its ability to stay updated on the latest events, this makes Perplexity AI especially useful when you want reliable and up-to-date information or need to dig deeper into a newly developing topic. It’s quick at summarizing articles, pulling highlights from multiple sources, and even offering follow-up questions to refine your search.

While it may not match the creativity of other chatbots for storytelling or brainstorming, Perplexity excels as a trustworthy tool for research, quick fact-checking, and staying current with up-to-date information.

Don't put your eggs in one basket

AI chatbots are really powerful tools if you know how to take advantage of them. But even if you're an expert at writing the perfect prompts, don't rely on a single chatbot for all your needs. Different LLMs have different strengths and weaknesses and proof is found in benchmarks like LMArena.

So, if you rely on that one chatbot that you've been using exclusively for two or three years, you could be missing out on a lot. If you're not satisfied with responses from one chatbot on a specific topic when the prompt is perfect, don't waste your time trying to convince it to give you what you want—switch to an alternative and see how, at times, it's just a limitation of the model that is causing issues, not your prompt.