What’s the difference between ChatGPT and Claude?

Here are some of the main differences (with respect to features, usage, strength areas) between ChatGPT and Claude:

ChatGPT tends to be more of an “all-in-one” toolkit: aside from text generation, it supports image and sometimes video generation (depending on plan), more plug-in/agent/marketplace features.
Claude focuses a bit more on depth of text and document understanding, long-form context, analysis, and enterprise workflows.

Claude has been emphasised for handling “longer sequences of text” (large context windows), making it well suited to tasks like summarising very large documents.
ChatGPT still handles large text but may have comparatively smaller effective context windows in many settings (though exact numbers depend on model versions and subscription).

According to usage studies: ChatGPT tends to be more used for creative, conversational, “augmenting” tasks (e.g., writing, brainstorming).
Claude appears to be more focused (or adopted) for enterprise, automation, document processing, coding workflows.

ChatGPT: supports multi-modal inputs – text + images, and in some configurations voice or video. It has a marketplace of “custom GPTs”.
Claude: While it supports text & image inputs (depending on version) and strong document-analysis capabilities, some of the more “bells & whistles” like image generation or advanced media generation might be less emphasised in Claude (or available under different plans).

Anthropic (Claude) emphasises “helpful, harmless, honest” design and alignment frameworks.
OpenAI has its own safety/alignment approach; the difference is more in nuance and practice than in a clear “one is safe, one isn’t” divide.

The exact pricing, availability by region, free vs paid features vary for both ChatGPT and Claude. Users should check current plans for each.
Because ChatGPT is more popular and has wider “consumer-friendly” awareness, plugin/marketplace ecosystem is more mature (in many contexts) vs Claude’s more enterprise-oriented rollout historically.

Which one should you pick or how to decide?

Depending on what you want to use it for, one may fit better:

If you want a tool for general-purpose productivity: brainstorming, writing, images, building custom bots, integrating with many apps, ChatGPT is a strong choice.
If you have more specialised/enterprise-scale tasks: e.g., handling large documents, summarising long reports, automating workflows, more “serious” coding or deep analysis, Claude might shine more.
If you care about multimedia generation (images/videos) and plug-in/marketplace ecosystems, favour ChatGPT.
If you care about extensive document context and say “I’ll feed the model a huge file and want deep insight”, consider Claude.
Also depends on budget, region, availability of each service in your country, and specific model version you get.