My chatbot use in the last week
In the last seven days, I needed to use several chatbots for personal reasons (no coding or anything) slightly more intensively than usual, and I was curious with regard to which chatbot I’ve been using and how much. These quick numbers aren’t that relevant for several reasons, such as:
- I kept using Claude only for answers that needed rather simple answers, not complex analysis with nested lists, tables, and long threads with many follow-ups.
- For complex issues, including, e.g., medical and nutritional topics, I relied on GPT-5 in both Copilot and ChatGPT, then also Grok and Qwen3 (I wanted to test the new Qwen3-Max-Preview, and I found it quite good). So bear in mind that in most cases, the interactions (initial questions plus follow-ups) with these chatbots resulted in long answers.
- For synthesis of web searches, but also for some topics of moderate complexity, I used Kimi K2.
- The use of the other chatbots listed below was purely for the sake of variation, or because I judged them appropriate for the respective specific cases.
So it’s more like “apples and oranges” or maybe eggplants and bananas, so to speak.
| Chatbot | Interactions | Threads |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot (GPT-5) | 67 | 15 |
| ChatGPT (GPT-5) | 35 | 10 |
| Claude | 53 | 28 |
| Grok | 24 | 9 |
| Qwen | 20 | 3 |
| Kimi | 11 | 5 |
| Gemini | 4 | 3 |
| DeepSeek | 4 | 2 |
| Lumo | 4 | 2 |
| Total | 222 | 77 |
Grouping the first two chatbots under the same LLM, albeit differently configured by them, which is GPT-5:
| LLM | Interactions | % |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-5 | 102 | 45.9 |
| Claude Sonnet 4 | 53 | 23.9 |
| Grok 3 | 24 | 10.8 |
| Qwen3-Max-Preview | 20 | 9.0 |
| Kimi K2-0905 | 11 | 5.0 |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 4 | 1.8 |
| DeepSeek-V3.1 | 4 | 1.8 |
| Unknown (Lumo) | 4 | 1.8 |
A quick chart for the interactions, based on the first table:
I had the feeling that I used Claude much less, but this might be due to the fact that it was “a quick fix” that I even forgot I’ve used. I also didn’t realize that I used Grok slightly more than Qwen, most likely because Grok was meant as a second opinion to GPT-5, and also because Qwen gave me very long but useful answers (à la ChatGPT). But I definitely hated when on occasions Grok kept repeating (with minor variations) entire paragraphs from previous answers in the same thread. Grok 3 is so passé, but it’s the only free one.
● I prefer GPT-5 in Copilot than in ChatGPT because of the more generous limits.
GPT-5 in ChatGPT
And yet, sometimes I was limited after as few as 5 messages!
GPT-5 in Copilot
Microsoft offers more flexible access to GPT-5 in Smart mode, but it’s not clearly defined. Copilot allows up to 5 Thinking interactions per day, and standard GPT-5 messages have no clearly announced limit, but they are not completely unlimited either. Microsoft seems to apply a dynamic calibration based on system load.
I have the experience of 20+ “GPT-5 (Smart)” answers in rapid sequence in the same thread, without triggering any limit!
● I noticed that Claude has changed the fonts in the Web UI (but not in the mobile app yet). From Reddit: New vs. old Claude UI fonts: The old fonts were Styrene B and Tiempos Text; the new fonts are “anthropicSans” (Anthropic Sans Text Light) and “anthropicSerif” (Anthropic Serif Text Light). They’re visibly thinner.
I would single out this comment: “I like the new font. In code, I don’t like the != changing to the = with a slash through it.”
That’s because they also replaced whatever fixed font they were using with “jetbrains” (JetBrains Mono Regular). Some developers love it (but I don’t, because I prefer the traditional !=).
● If Claude seemed a bit stupid 2-3 weeks ago, here’s why. Anthropic, on Sept. 17: A postmortem of three recent issues: “This is a technical report on three bugs that intermittently degraded responses from Claude. Below we explain what happened, why it took time to fix, and what we’re changing.”
● OpenAI says models are programmed to make stuff up instead of admitting ignorance (see the study: Why Language Models Hallucinate)