If you pay for both ChatGPT and Claude, don't decide from one impressive prompt. Give both the same real tasks for a week, record which answers you would actually use, and consider dropping the plan that has no recurring job or feature you would miss.
Pick the tasks from your own history
Look at roughly the last two weeks of chats and pick three to five jobs you do again and again: meeting summaries, customer emails, spreadsheet interpretation, code review, research summaries. Skip the clever prompt you tried once.
For each job, write down what an acceptable answer must preserve. A meeting summary keeps the agreed dates and the open questions. A delivery email doesn't promise an earlier shipment nobody approved. For a spreadsheet task, work out the expected answer yourself first.
Keep the test fair
- Fresh conversations, identical source material, same day.
- Remove personal data and anything you aren't allowed to upload.
- Match settings where you can (search access, custom instructions).
- Save the first answers before you ask for revisions.
If a prompt turns out to be ambiguous, fix it for both tools and mark that run. Don't coach your favorite until it wins.
Score usefulness, not polish
Use a simple 1-3 scale: 1 = unusable, 2 = usable after edits, 3 = ready after your normal review.
| Criterion | What to check |
|---|---|
| Input fidelity | Keeps your constraints, adds no unsupported details |
| Correctness | Facts and calculations survive checking |
| Editing burden | Little correction needed |
| Next step | The requested action is clear |
An invented fact outweighs good prose. Next to each score, write why: "had to remove an invented sender name" is useful, "felt less smart" isn't.
What one real test showed
On October 28, 2026 we ran one combined prompt with synthetic office data in EVA (interface labels: GPT-6.1 Sol, Claude Opus 5.5, Gemini 4 Argon): a meeting summary, a delivery email and a conversion table.
The math was a tie. September had 100 trials and 20 conversions, October 150 and 24; all three answered 20% and 16%, a 4-point drop, and said the table alone doesn't explain why.
The writing answers differed in how closely they stayed inside the facts given:
GPT-6.1 Sol: Open dependency: security review has neither an owner nor a deadline. Claude Opus 5.5: Best regards, Jordan Gemini 4 Argon: The pilot launch remains on track for November 9. The input gave no sender name, and it said the launch date was unchanged, not "on track". One run isn't a model ranking; the habit it supports is checking for details you never asked for, even when the arithmetic is right.
Decide after a week
Keep both if each one regularly handles work you need, or a specific tool makes the weaker plan worth it. Otherwise, consider canceling the plan you preferred for at most one task type. Note when a usage limit stopped you and what you were doing: a blocked file review matters more than an unused allowance.
At the October 30, 2026 price check, ChatGPT Plus listed $20/month and Claude Pro $20 billed monthly (excluding tax). Same headline price, so judge by finished work.
The full version has the complete scorecard, the FAQ and links to plan-by-plan breakdowns.
Originally published at evaonline.ai.
