Comparative Application Domains of Leading LLMs

LLMs have become ubiquitous across work and personal life. We examine how users apply five major LLMs – 1.) OpenAI’s ChatGPT, 2.) Anthropic’s Claude, 3.) Google’s Gemini, 4.) xAI’s Grok, and 5.) open-source LLMs (exemplified by DeepSeek) – in six key application domains. These application domains include:

• Writing and content creation,
• Coding and software development,
• Practical guidance and education,
• Information seeking and research,
• Multimedia content generation, and
• Companionship or social conversation.

Drawing on a recent NBER study of billions of ChatGPT messages and recent reports on other models, we highlight usage patterns, notable trends, and differences in user behavior for each category. We also include summary tables to contrast these models’ primary use cases.