General work
Start with ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro; use Kimi when its China-first workflow and local payment are material advantages.
English overview · verified snapshot
Choose by the work you need to finish—not one leaderboard
We keep foundation models, chat products, coding tools, API providers and subscriptions separate. The useful answer may be one model, a two-tool workflow, or no new subscription at all.
One question first
What are you actually trying to finish?
Each recommendation names the decision boundary, not a permanent winner.Software projects
Evaluate Astra and Fable 5.1 for frontier quality; keep Sol and Opus 5 for mature workflows. Gemini 3.8 Flash is a qualified lower-cost execution candidate, supported by DeepSWE and CursorBench.
Research
Use a source-native search product to collect evidence, then a different model family to challenge and structure it.
Video generation
Split generation from editing: compare Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, the specific MiniMax H3 variant, Seedance 2.5, and Wan 3 on the matching track. An API provider's post-trained variant is not the original model.
Subscription guardrails
Start low, measure replacement, then upgrade
See current Kimi, ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI and SuperGrok plan facts （中文）- Buy monthly first; annual savings only matter after stable use is proven.
- Separate app subscriptions, API billing, coding tools and provider plans.
- Upgrade only after a real feature cliff or repeatable usage limit is reached.
- Cancel the second subscription if it only repeats the first model's answer.
Specialist admission
We publish fewer tools and keep a wider research watchlist
A tool is recommended only when it leads a defined task, meets the quality floor at lower usable cost, or owns a genuinely unique entry point.Grok 4.6 / X for first-party post discovery
Use it for real-time X context, then verify the original account, timestamp, full thread and an independent source.
Choose by input, output and lip-sync need
Use Gemini / H3 / Seedance by generation task; use HeyGen when translated speech must match visible lips, ElevenLabs when voice-first dubbing is enough, and CapCut or Subtitle Edit for captions. Seedance 2.5 now has same-version Arena results: text-to-video and image-to-video are close to 2.0; editing is a small-sample leading-tier result.
Cheap only counts after the quality floor
A lower unit price is rejected when failed generations and manual repair make the usable result more expensive.
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