Bard vs. ChatGPT: What’s the difference? [2024]

Ever since ChatGPT first came on the scene, it’s held a dominant position as the go-to AI chatbot to help you do everything from brainstorming new ideas to writing emails to generating Google Sheets formulas. But ChatGPT’s not without its limitations. For example, only paid subscribers can access the more powerful GPT-4 models, which can browse the web and generate AI images. 

Gemini (formerly Google Bard), on the other hand, offers a lot of what ChatGPT does—including web browsing—faster and for free. But there are plenty of other features that set them apart. Here are the main differences I discovered while comparing Gemini vs. ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT vs. Gemini at a glance

At a base level, both chatbots use natural language processing, which means users key in a prompt or query, and the chatbots generate a human-like response. There are a few key differences, though, that boil down to the models they’ve been trained on and access to the AI chatbot itself. 

I’ll walk through some of the core differences between ChatGPT and Gemini in depth in the coming sections, but here’s a quick breakdown of how they compare.

Gemini and ChatGPT have similar features, but Gemini offers them for free

At first glance, Gemini and ChatGPT offer the same basic features in addition to their AI text responses: 

• Chat history. All conversations are automatically stored and managed in the side panel of each chatbot’s home page for easy reference. Both chatbots also allow you to turn off saving your chat history entirely. 

• Quick-action buttons. ChatGPT lets you dislike responses (to inform future responses), but Gemini lets you like or dislike responses. Both apps let you share your conversations with the click of a button. 

• Voice dialogue. Both AI chatbots allow you to interact with it verbally. In Gemini, this feature operates more like voice-to-text, and you have to manually play each of Gemini’s responses. ChatGPT, however, lets you verbally communicate back and forth with it. 

• Text formatting. Both AI chatbots automatically apply basic formatting—like headings and bolded text—to their responses, making it easier to scan through. 

Gemini and ChatGPT also offer a lot of the same advanced features—but the key difference is that Gemini offers them for free, whereas ChatGPT limits them to ChatGPT Plus users. 

• AI-generated images. Both AI chatbots can generate images using natural language prompts (more on that in a bit). 

• Web browsing. ChatGPT and Gemini can perform web searches to inform their responses (but only paid users can access the web-browsing feature in ChatGPT). 

• Citing sources. Gemini can provide a list of relevant sources to its text responses if prompted. It’ll also automatically link an image pulled from the web to its original source. ChatGPT can cite sources only if it’s running on the GPT-4 model. If you ask ChatGPT using the GPT-3.5 Turbo model to cite its sources, it tries to be helpful by providing you with a list of resources to verify its response. For example, when I asked it to cite its sources about kestrels, it suggested I refer to “reputable field guides on birds of prey, ornithology textbooks, or websites dedicated to birdwatching and bird identification” to learn more. 

Gemini is built for research, whereas ChatGPT is the better writer 

Gemini’s one very chatty assistant, zealous in its approach to gathering research for you to make your life easier. Does it cite its sources as it goes? No. But it will if you tell it to. 

Or you can click Double-check response (the Google icon) under any response to learn more or fact-check Gemini’s response. (Text highlighted in green indicates links to Google Search results with similar information; text highlighted in orange indicates results with differing information.) It’ll even offer related search queries on a given topic, which can be helpful when you’re doing any level of research. 

ChatGPT can also crawl the internet to inform its responses—if you have access to the GPT-4 model. But in my experience, ChatGPT’s web searches run slower than Gemini and can sometimes be glitchy. 

GPT, the LLM powering ChatGPT, isn’t as forthcoming with its sources, but it’s the industry standard when it comes to natural language tasks, powering other AI tools like Jasper, Copy.ai, and Bing’s AI tools. As part of ChatGPT, it functions as a chatbot, but it can also serve as a summarizer, a translator, and other roles on a more textual level. I also found ChatGPT to be better at brainstorming blog ideas, writing long-form articles or business emails, and coming up with content marketing ideas.

This makes ChatGPT (in my opinion) a better writing tool than Gemini. As a quick example, here’s what ChatGPT gave me when I asked it to write an Instagram caption to announce Zapier Canvas. 

Without prompting it, ChatGPT automatically knew to keep the caption in line with the unofficial rules of writing Instagram captions: keep it brief, include hashtags, and add fun emoji. 

Sure, it’s a little generic, but I could share this caption as is, and it’d work.  

Gemini, for its part, wrote a decent message. But the tone and formatting are better suited for an email than an Instagram post.

In both cases, a couple of prompt tweaks would drastically improve the output, but this gives you a sense of how the two chatbots operate differently. 

Both let you share conversations, but Gemini has a few extra perks

ChatGPT and Gemini make it easy to share conversations, but here’s where ChatGPT and Gemini differ. 

Gemini lets others pick the conversation up from where you left off

If you share a Gemini conversation, anyone with access to the chat can pick up where you left off. 

ChatGPT used to let users continue a conversation from a shared link, but for some reason (which I have yet to find), they’ve discontinued that. Instead, only Enterprise users can share chat templates. It’s not the exact same as letting teammates continue a conversation from where you left off, but it does give them a way to kickstart the chat. 

ChatGPT doesn’t let you share conversations with images 

If you upload an image to a chat with Gemini and then share the entire chat, the image will be visible to and downloadable by anyone who has access to that conversation. 

If you upload an image to a conversation with ChatGPT, you’ll have to keep it to yourself. Or you can copy or screenshot the response. Sharing conversations with images is not yet supported. 

Gemini lets you export responses to Google Docs and Gmail 

Since Gemini is a Google product, it’s no surprise that it’s connected to your Google Workspace—specifically, Google Docs and Gmail.

Let’s say you used Gemini to create an article outline. Now you can export that response to Google Docs and begin drafting—no copying and pasting required (unlike ChatGPT). You can do the same thing with Gmail, too.

Both apps can analyze images and generate AI images; Gemini also pulls images from the web

When it comes to images, Gemini and ChatGPT have made leaps and bounds since their early days. Here’s how their image-related features stack up. 

Gemini can retrieve images from the web

Gemini can surface relevant images from Google Search, which is a key feature that sets it apart from ChatGPT. Whether you’re researching specific dog breeds, images from the James Webb telescope, or bicycle repairs, Gemini can churn out specific images from other web pages for visual context. You can also click on an image, and Gemini will open the web page with the image source in a new browser tab. 

ChatGPT, on the other hand, can’t retrieve images from the web. Even if you explicitly prompt it to (it’ll ignore that part of your request). 

Both apps can create images

Gemini and ChatGPT (paid subscribers only) can generate AI images—the former uses Gemini (the AI model) to do so, while the latter uses DALL·E 3. This means you can use either AI chatbot to do things like generate blog images and create business logos. Or you can use them for what they were clearly intended to do: create museum-worthy images of a fluffy dog painting a vast array of galaxies. The results are comparable, too. Here’s what that fluffy dog painter looks like according to ChatGPT:

And here’s the four-legged painter according to Gemini: 

Both apps can analyze images

You can upload images with your prompt and ask Gemini to analyze them for you. For example, you can ask Gemini to caption an image.

ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users can do the same thing with ChatGPT, but again, you can’t then share that conversation—or any ChatGPT conversation with images—with other people. 

ChatGPT can process data-related tasks 

Rather than copying and pasting information into a ChatGPT window and feeding it prompts, paid users can now upload files and ask the ChatGPT’s Data Analyst bot to analyze and interpret things like code, spreadsheets, images, and all types of documentation.

It goes beyond just interpreting data, though. The Data Analyst can convert files from one format to another. For example, you can turn an article into a presentation (and vice versa) with a simple prompt. 

And it can turn your data into graphs and different visualizations of that data. Here’s a pie chart it generated based on a .csv export of survey data. 

You can’t upload files to Gemini (yet). So I pasted an article into its message box and asked Gemini to turn it into a presentation, but all it could do was give me a text-based outline of a presentation. 

Without the ability to upload files to Gemini, that also rules out interpreting .csv exports of survey data.

Both apps offer integrations with other tools, but the approach is different

Gemini includes Gemini Extensions, which retrieves real-time information from other Google apps, including Gmail, Google Drive, Hotels, Flights, Maps, and YouTube. This means you can do things like ask Gemini to find cheap flights for your next trip or pull details from an email confirmation in Gmail—all without leaving the chat. 

Here’s an example of Gemini retrieving flight options for an upcoming trip. 

With Zapier’s Google Vertex AI and Google AI Studio integrations, you can also access the model behind Gemini from all the apps you use at work. It’s a little less applicable to the everyday user, but it works. Here are a few examples to get you started.

ChatGPT also lets you connect to other apps with its Zapier integration. This means that you can use it to send data across thousands of other apps and incorporate AI into your other workflows. For example, you can have ChatGPT draft blog outlines and then automatically add that text to a Google Doc. Learn more about how to automate ChatGPT, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

ChatGPT lets you build your own custom versions of it 

OpenAI recently released a way for Plus and Enterprise users to create their own version of ChatGPT called GPTs. And there are no limits to how many GPTs you can build. All you have to do is tell the GPT builder, in plain English, what you want to create, and the builder will take it from there. 

Here’s what the GPT builder suggested when I asked it to create a chatbot that shares only fun facts about otters. 

You can configure your GPT to browse the web, generate images using DALLE·3, and run code. You can even pull in GPTs into your ChatGPT conversation by entering @[GPT name] followed by your prompt in the message bar. This way, it’s easy to toggle between chatbots and get the right kind of AI-powered support for the occasion.

Gemini vs. ChatGPT: which is better?

That was a lot to digest, so let’s do a quick rundown of each AI chatbot’s pros and cons.

Gemini: pros and cons

ChatGPT: pros and cons

It’s worth mentioning that ChatGPT and Gemini share a notable con: both chatbots are prone to generating plausible-sounding but inaccurate responses (also known as hallucinations).

At the end of the day, the better AI tool depends on what you’re using it for—and whether you can deal with those pesky hallucinations. 

Related reading:

This article was originally published in March 2023 by Elena Alston. The most recent update was in March 2024.