Best of

Best AI for writing

Q: How was this list chosen?

Editorial shortlist built from provider descriptions, price and the smartness rating. We have not run our own writing tests yet.

For everyday writing, Claude Sonnet 5.5 is our pick for the best balance of quality and price; Claude Haiku 5.5 is the cheap choice.

Last updated October 16, 2026.

Costs here use the prices AI companies charge software developers, so they show relative cost, not your monthly bill. See what ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini charge you.

Model and our take (editorial)	Type	Smartness	Reads at once*	Essay	Chat	PDF
Claude Sonnet 5.5 Made by Anthropic, the company behind Claude.The sensible default: close to the top tier for writing, fixing code and everyday work, at about half the price of Claude Opus 5.5.	Most capable	★★★★★	1,500 pages	$0.01	$2.62	$0.07
Claude Opus 5.5 Made by Anthropic, the company behind Claude.The strongest all-round pick when quality matters more than cost, especially for big, complicated jobs like long coding projects.	Most capable	★★★★★	1,500 pages	$0.03	$5.25	$0.15
GPT-6.1 Sol Made by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.Good value from OpenAI: strong at programming and working through long documents, at a mid-range price.	Most capable	★★★★★	1,580 pages	$0.01	$2.62	$0.07
Claude Haiku 5.5 Made by Anthropic, the company behind Claude.The cheap and fast Claude. Great for summaries, quick questions and anything you do a lot of.	Everyday and cheap	★★★★☆	1,500 pages	<1¢	$0.13	<1¢
GPT-6 Luna Made by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.OpenAI's fast, cheap model for chat, sorting things into groups and light tasks.	Everyday and cheap	★★★☆☆	1,580 pages	<1¢	$0.13	<1¢

Essay = a 1,000-word essay; Chat = a 100-message conversation; PDF = summarizing a 50-page PDF. *A rule of thumb: one page is about 500 words, and a model "reads" about 0.75 words per token. Smartness is our 1 to 5 banding of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (how); "Not rated yet" means no score is available. Costs are computed from list prices using the assumptions on How we work.

How we chose: Editorial shortlist built from provider descriptions, price and the smartness rating. We have not run our own writing tests yet.

Why each one

Claude Sonnet 5.5
The sensible default: close to the top tier for writing, fixing code and everyday work, at about half the price of Claude Opus 5.5.

Claude Opus 5.5
The strongest all-round pick when quality matters more than cost, especially for big, complicated jobs like long coding projects.

GPT-6.1 Sol
Good value from OpenAI: strong at programming and working through long documents, at a mid-range price.

Claude Haiku 5.5
The cheap and fast Claude. Great for summaries, quick questions and anything you do a lot of.

GPT-6 Luna
OpenAI's fast, cheap model for chat, sorting things into groups and light tasks.