I Broke Up With ChatGPT After 3 Years. Here's My New Stack.

Even last year, I used it every single day. It was the default. The muscle memory. The first tab I opened.

I stopped using it two weeks ago.

Not because of the ads they announced last week. The ads were the final straw. The real problem started earlier: ChatGPT is no longer the best tool for any of the tasks I need it for.

Most people asking "which AI is best?" are asking the wrong question. The best AI is three AIs, each doing what it's good at.

The New Stack

Claude Opus 4.5 for writing. Claude maintains coherence across 200,000 tokens while ChatGPT loses the plot around 50,000. For newsletters, documents, and anything requiring sustained quality, Claude thinks before it speaks. ChatGPT optimises for speed. Claude optimises for accuracy.

Gemini 3 for visuals. The 1 million token context window processes video, audio, and images natively. Nano Banana Pro generates whiteboard-style infographics in one shot. ChatGPT's image generation looks polished but takes four or five regenerations to match your brief. Pretty matters less than precise.

Perplexity for search. When I need current information with citations, Perplexity links every claim to the original source. ChatGPT invents sources and hallucinates URLs. Perplexity grew 370% year-over-year by doing one thing well.

Where ChatGPT Still Wins

Voice mode. I tested both side by side. Asked them to summarise news while driving. ChatGPT delivered a detailed briefing with sources and signed off with "Safe driving!" Gemini gave three sentences and asked what type of news I wanted. ChatGPT treats voice like conversation. Gemini treats it like search.

The Real Problem With Ads

OpenAI says ads won't influence answers. But advertising revenue creates pressure to keep you in the app longer and optimise for engagement over accuracy.

When you ask ChatGPT for travel advice, expect hotel ads. When you ask about fitness, expect supplement recommendations. Trust erodes slowly, then all at once.

The Takeaway

ChatGPT's market share dropped from 87% to 68% in twelve months. That's a 22-point collapse. Users are leaving for a reason.

If you take one thing from this: Gemini for visuals, Claude for writing. Those two subscriptions will carry you further than any single tool in 2026.

The stack you built in 2025 is already obsolete. Your job isn't to pick the perfect tools. Your job is to keep evaluating.