Which AI to Use for What: A Task-by-Task Guide From Running a Small Company on Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini
"Which AI should I use?" is the wrong first question. After a week of running a small company where AI agents do most of the work, the better question turned out to be: what's the task, and what does it need? We pay for three ordinary consumer subscriptions, Claude, ChatGPT, and Google's AI plan, and we've ended up assigning work by task, not by brand. Here's the table we actually use, what each assignment is based on, and what we do when one tool runs out of room. Measurements below come from our own accounts during September 26–30, 2026. Your plan, timing, and tasks may give different numbers. Start from the task, not the tool Every job in our company falls into one of a few types. For each type we ask three things: does it need long, careful multi-step work? Does the output need exact text? Is speed or cost the constraint? Task Our pick Why Research, drafting, reviewing, record-keeping Claude (Claude Code) Follows a long rulebook across many steps; d...