GoKawiilElyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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ZDNET's key takeaways
Gemini Pro edged out ChatGPT Plus in my comparison.
ChatGPT won agentic AI, but Gemini led in writing and ecosystem.
Both cost $20, and they tie across many tasks.
I've been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber since the day it launched, but I also have access to Gemini Pro through my Google One storage plan. Google has a new AI Pro plan that costs just $19.99 a month and comes with access to Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini integration in my favorite Workspace apps, as well as in Chrome and Search, NotebookLM, and 5TB of Drive storage.
At this point, I'm wondering if I need ChatGPT Plus. But before I make any rash decisions, I want to test which AI is truly better. People have plenty of valid complaints about OpenAI and its chatbot, but I find it genuinely useful and good at most tasks I throw at it on a daily basis. So, I spent the last week pitting ChatGPT Plus (GPT-5.4 Instant) against Gemini Pro (3.1 Fast).
Also: I tested ChatGPT vs. Claude to see which is better
I'm testing the paid versions of both to see what the $20 subscription fee actually gets me, but I'm skipping any sort of coding benchmarks. Our resident expert, David Gewirtz, spends his days testing AI coding capabilities. Since he's got that side covered, I'm looking at this from the perspective of an everyday user who needs an AI, not a software engineer.
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