LLM Models

Last updated: 28 Feb 2025

General Purpose

As of now, OpenAI's ChatGPT is still among the top general purpose LLMs that are easily accessible. Accounts on the free plan have access to most of the latest models, including web search functionality, text and image file uploads and analysis, advanced voice mode chat and much more. More advanced features can be accessed with the Assistants API, which could potentially be cheaper than a subscription especially when using the GPT-4o mini model.

Academic Research

While ChatGPT has recently updated to allow deeper reasoning and fewer content restrictions, NotebookLM from Google is still far superior for large documents. The huge context window and citation of sources combined with a smooth UI gives fast and reliable summaries of research papers, textbooks, legal documents, user manuals, or even just long emails. Deep Research is available in the Gemini mobile app and is free on the one month trial.

Coding

The latest release of Claude 3.7 is now setting the bar high for creating simple applications and websites out of nothing. Do not expect to write one prompt and get a fully functioning program that does exactly what you want, but it does not take long to work through some troubleshooting together if you know the basics behind what is happening. Be mindful that given the longer processing required for complex tasks, the costs could be relatively higher compared to other models. It is still ridiculously cheap for the amount of time it saves you. 

Maths

Of course DeepSeek R1 has been making waves recently, but the security concerns are valid unless you know how to self-host and run a local instance of this open-source model. At least its release has pressured competitors to finally unveil their stockpiled innovations, leading to waves of new updates from all directions ever since.

Otherwise, the ChatGPT integration with Wolfram Alpha has always been a reliable partner if you are not quite ready for the proper Wolfram AI just yet. You can access this from any account via the GPTs feature. 

Sensitive data

Ideally you only ever run private information through locally hosted models without an internet connection, but that is not always possible unless you have access to expensive hardware. The option to do this is one advantage of using real open source models (unlike OpenAI). Alternatively, the next best option would be to use Microsoft Copilot if you are concerned about privacy but still want to keep things easy. The quality and usability may not be enough for all tasks, but they have a level of protection for anyone signed in with a work or school account.