Choosing a chatbot for studying is no longer about models but how you use them: an Irish guide reveals the real dilemma

By Tech Insider · October 26, 2026.

Tech Insider has published a guide for students in Ireland comparing four assistants: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. According to the outlet, all four have changed in the past five weeks. It cites the launch of Claude Opus 5.5 (September 22), Sonnet 5.5 (September 28) and Haiku 5.5 (October 7), the arrival of GPT-6 (from October 7) and the availability of Gemini 4 Argon (October 13).

Its recommendations are editorial and based on what the makers themselves publish, not on independent testing. The article itself admits it has not run an exam-based test and that no independent benchmark of university coursework in Ireland exists. The results should therefore be read as a product guide, not as a measurement.

These are the guide's main picks:

• Best all-rounder: ChatGPT. According to OpenAI, GPT-6 includes an "Intelligent UI" that generates interactive, visual screens within the chat. The free plan uses GPT-6 Luna and Plus costs $20 a month. • Best for essays and long reading: Claude. Anthropic says Docs, Slides and Design came out of beta on October 23 and work on all plans, including the free one. Pro costs $20 a month. • Best value, if you qualify: Gemini. Google says eligible university students can get a free 12-month student plan. The article warns that it could not confirm whether Irish institutions qualify, and that those claims come from a single source. • Best for checking sources: Perplexity, an answer engine that cites the web. Its pricing, according to the article, also comes from a single source.

Some concrete figures help size up the offering. According to Google, Argon costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens until November 30, 2026, and $4 and $20 thereafter. Tokens are the chunks of text into which the model splits what it reads and writes. Anthropic also states that Opus 5.5 costs 40% less than Opus 5, although the article's sources give no usage figure for students.

The article also flags a practical problem. According to OpenAI's help pages, GPT-6 coexists with the GPT-5.6 family and does not retire earlier models. Which model responds depends on the plan and the rollout phase. Two classmates may see different labels and get different answers.

Our take: the most interesting thing about the guide is not who wins, but what recurs in every section. The workflows it proposes for ChatGPT and Claude share a structure: the student writes, answers or drafts first, and the AI then corrects, grades or critiques. It is the difference between a tutor and a ghostwriter, and the guide explicitly advocates the former. We share that view: the educational value of AI lies in the effort the person keeps making, not in the text that gets handed in.

There is also a deeper consequence. When all four products are good enough and prices converge around $20 a month, the model stops being the deciding factor. What matters instead is the ecosystem (Google's storage, Claude's document work, Perplexity's source verification) and, above all, each institution's rules. The guide notes that Irish universities set their own rules, sometimes per module, and recommends keeping a record of the prompts used and citing the product and model version.

There is one caveat in keeping with our editorial line. In the short term, the risk is not that students use AI, but that they use it to skip learning, and that the gap between those who pay $20 a month and those who cannot may widen. Useful free plans and student discounts reduce that risk but do not eliminate it. The same goes for reliability: chatbots can state false information with confidence, and any claim that ends up in an assignment needs a primary source behind it.

In the long term, the outlook is brighter. A personalized, patient and nearly free tutor for every student is one of the clearest paths toward a society with more developed talent and less educational inequality. Getting there will require institutions to move from banning or ignoring the tool to assessing the process, not just the final product.

As industry context, the figures in this guide should be treated with caution. Several come from a single source, the article itself acknowledges inconsistencies in Perplexity's documentation, and the products change every week. If a feature matters for an assignment, test it before relying on it.