Chat Assistants
AI chatbots and conversational assistants
Chat assistants are the most widely used form of AI today. Powered by large language models, they answer questions, write and edit text, analyze documents, help with coding, and reason through complex problems in natural conversation. This category covers general-purpose assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, real-time assistants like Grok and Perplexity, and open-weight alternatives like DeepSeek and Qwen that can be self-hosted. When choosing one, consider context length, reasoning strength, language coverage, pricing and whether open weights or API access matter for your workflow.
Task guides covering this category
Each entry below is an existing brief with its own budget and the conditions it still lists as unmet. A price that fits the budget is not a completed task.
T1 · Choose an assistant for PDFs, documents and code
The task: Spend at most US$20 in a month without annual prepayment, analyse PDFs, produce documents that can still be edited, and occasionally change code, while keeping desktop, terminal and API bills clear. The budget covers one of these US$20 subscriptions, not both.
Monthly budget · up to US$20
Candidates from this category
ChatGPT Plus · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
US$20/month: the price condition is met. Not a claim about the cheapest paid tier in every region.
Claude Pro · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
US$20/month: the price condition is met. The US$200 annual payment is upfront; its roughly US$17 monthly equivalent does not satisfy this billing condition.
Latest source row read 2026-10-15
T2 · Check Sora and DALL·E 3 generation access
The task: Spend US$20 a month on current channels to produce a new image and a new short video on September 23, 2026, and check each channel separately rather than treating the brand as one product.
Monthly budget · up to US$20
Candidates from this category
DALL-E - official GPT in ChatGPT · Does not meet this task
Retired on August 30, 2026; the subscription price does not restore it.
Latest source row read 2026-10-15
T8 · Compare ten PDFs in a Chinese evidence table
The task: Use monthly billing of at most US$20 to compare ten public Chinese and English PDFs into a Chinese evidence table, with traceable citations, noted disagreements and an exportable deliverable. File sizes and scan quality are not yet known.
Monthly budget · up to US$20
Candidates from this category
Perplexity · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
The official hub lists Pro at $20 a month or $200 a year, so monthly billing fits this pre-tax budget while the annual total is a different commitment.
Kimi · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
Projects permits 50 files at 100MB each, and Free lists two projects with 500MB of project storage; a new-plan USD monthly billing cycle was not verified.
Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365 Premium) · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
The US store lists Microsoft 365 Premium at US$19.99 a month or US$199.99 a year, and the research agent sits on Premium or Pro rather than Personal or Family: monthly billing fits this pre-tax budget, while the annual total is a different commitment.
Latest source row read 2026-09-23
T11 · Which assistants can be used from mainland China
The task: You are working from mainland China and can pay by monthly subscription of at most CNY 100, or use a free tier. You need everyday question answering plus reading your own documents, and you need to know which regions each option covers before you depend on it. A tool that only works through a workaround, or whose regional availability nobody states, has not met the task.
Monthly budget · up to CNY 100
Candidates from this category
Kimi · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
CNY 49, 99, 199 or 699 a month, with annual passes sold separately: the 49 and 99 tiers fit, and the price is stated in CNY on the vendor page.
Doubao · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
Free tier, or CNY 68, 200 or 500 a month by continuous subscription as declared in its App Store entry: the 68 tier fits, but this is a store declaration rather than a checkout price.
Qianwen · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
The China iOS listing declares Work Assistant Advanced at CNY19, Elite at CNY49 and Flagship at CNY128 by continuous monthly subscription. The named19/49 SKUs fit CNY100 arithmetically and128 does not, but neither proves this task’s complete file entitlement or the lowest plan. The membership agreement makes actual price and benefits depend on the current product/checkout page.
DeepSeek · Unconfirmed; not recommended yet
The US App Store declares the consumer assistant free; the separately metered API charges by model tokens. A different billing currency alone does not rule a workload in or out ofCNY100, and an API price does not establish this consumer document-reading workflow or its cost.
Latest source row read 2026-10-15
