r/ChatGPTPro

Someone asked me in another thread why I prefer ChatGPT to Claude. I use both constantly and, honestly, I think Claude is better out of the box. After I’ve customized both of them around the way I work though, I prefer ChatGPT pretty clearly.

A little background may be helpful for you to understand my answer in context. I’m not a coder, so I’m not comparing Claude Code with Codex. I use these tools as an HR executive, a lawyer, the Head of Responsible AI at my organization, and the founder of Hybrid Intelligence Academy, a side business focused on AI consulting and training. I also don’t use either product in anything close to its base form. Both are loaded with instructions and Skills designed around the work I’m doing.

For me, the difference comes down to image generation, strategic thinking, Custom GPTs, memory handling, video, writing, and behavioral control.

IMAGE GENERATION

This one isn’t close. For the kind of work I do, ChatGPT’s image generation and photo editing are far more useful than anything else I’ve tried. I can get realistic images, make very specific design choices, and control the output so it doesn't look like the AI slop that's all over LinkedIn, for example.

Claude doesn’t really compete in this category because it still doesn’t generate photorealistic images. Gemini does, of course, but I still get much more usable work from ChatGPT. The other image models also tend to have recognizable visual habits that I haven’t been able to prompt away.

STRATEGIC THINKING

Once properly configured, ChatGPT is the stronger strategic thinker for me. It does a much better job of testing my thinking as a thought partner. It has truly constructive suggestions in place where I find Claude is more likely to be evaluative. 

Again, this depends how the tools are configured. Base ChatGPT is far more sycophantic than Claude. I use instructions and a Skill specifically designed to push against that behavior. Once I do, I get much better strategic work from ChatGPT than I do from Claude.

CUSTOM GPTs AND MEMORY

Claude’s memory is one of its most impressive features. It’s also been one of the most intermittently annoying and inconvenient.

My work involves several roles that shouldn’t always bleed into each other. In my day job, I lead HR, handle legal work, and oversee responsible AI. Separately, I run an AI consulting and training business. Each of those roles calls for different information, different assumptions, and different voice. I don’t always want an assistant carrying everything it knows about me into whatever I’m doing next.

ChatGPT gives me several ways to separate the work. I can create a Project with project only memory, or I can create a Custom GPT that uses its own instructions and knowledge without pulling in saved memory or earlier conversations. Claude doesn't have anything analogous to custom GPTs, only Projects.

Anthropic has recently added separate memory for Claude Projects, so this may be getting better. However, it's still not like a GPT because the Project knows everything that has happened before in the Project. Sometimes I just want a tool that starts over with every query. In short, it's a time waster and annoying to have to say, “Yes, we’ve discussed that before. No, it has nothing to do with this.”

VIDEO

I can give ChatGPT a video and ask it to inspect what happened. It can 'watch' it, transcribe it, give me feedback, etc. I can also show it what’s happening on my screen with a screen capture video.

I haven’t found an equivalent workflow in Claude. This isn’t something I use every day, but when I need it, nothing else is really a substitute.

WRITING

This one is mostly personal preference. I know plenty of people who prefer Claude’s writing, and I understand why.

My own natural style is closer to ChatGPT’s. Claude has a stronger tendency to dress the thought up, add a metaphor, or make the prose a little more literary than I like. ChatGPT has plenty of terrible writing habits of its own, but I’ve had more success training those out of it.

BEHAVIORAL CONTROL

Claude is much more valuable in its base form. Sometimes it feels like Anthropic used ChatGPT for a month, wrote a list of everything annoying about it, fixed the list, and named the result Claude.

Once I start customizing though, my experience with ChatGPT is that it's easier for me to reshape with custom instructions, GPTs, Projects, and Skills. Claude’s Skills actually execute better in most circumstances, but Claude’s underlying behavior is harder to move.

I don’t think ChatGPT is universally better. Someone who codes all day may reasonably come to the opposite conclusion, and someone who wants a strong assistant without spending hours customizing it may be happier with Claude. I’m comparing the systems I actually use in the way that I actually use them.

A change worth knowing about if you use ChatGPT for serious research and pay attention to its sources, because it affects how you should read those citations.

What happened: Reddit's share of ChatGPT Search citations held steady around 3.8% from mid-July to early August, then dropped to ~0.5% by Aug 14, an ~86% relative fall in days (tracked by Promptwatch; covered by Forbes, Axios, SEJ). Reddit had been one of ChatGPT's most-cited sources for two years.

The part that matters for advanced use: ChatGPT didn't stop reading Reddit, it stopped showing it. Trackers found it still pulls Reddit threads while researching, about 1 in 4 pages it consulted, same as before; it just stopped listing them in the visible citations from ~Aug 13-14. So the sources panel now under-represents what actually informed the answer. If you've been treating ChatGPT's citation list as "here's everything that shaped this response," that assumption broke mid-August, at least for Reddit.

Likely mechanism (unconfirmed by OpenAI): it coincides with an Aug 8 change in how ChatGPT Search does query fan-out, it started using the site: operator far more (roughly 0.4% → 17% of its fan-out queries), meaning it's increasingly targeting specific trusted domains directly instead of broad web search. Plus the GPT-5.6 default rollout. For power users, that site: shift is the more interesting story: ChatGPT is narrowing where it looks, which changes what surfaces.

Practical takeaways for advanced ChatGPT research:

• Don't treat the citation list as a complete record of what informed an answer, retrieval ≠ citation now.

• It's ChatGPT-specific: Google's AI Overviews only dipped Reddit ~11% over the same window, no cliff. So cross-checking the same query across ChatGPT vs Gemini/Perplexity will surface different sources, which is actually useful for research triangulation.

• If Reddit-sourced perspective matters for your task (real user experiences, niche troubleshooting), you may now need to prompt for it explicitly or check Reddit directly, since ChatGPT won't surface it even when it's reading it.

Anyone else notice a shift in the sources ChatGPT shows since early August? Curious whether the site: targeting is making answers feel more "official-source-heavy" for anyone doing technical research.