Best AI chatbots and assistants in October 2026

The assistants people use every day to ask questions, write, plan, read files and get things done, from the big general ones to the ones built around a single job. Below are the 23 that Raunak picked, in Radar's order, then the most popular of the other 621 in this category on Radar.

1. 1ChatGPTOpenAI's everyday assistant: chat, files, pictures, voice and agents that browse and act for you.Free plan
2. 2ClaudeAnthropic's assistant, careful writing, long documents and serious coding help.Free plan
3. 3GeminiGoogle's assistant, plugged into Search, Gmail, Docs and your Android phone.Free plan
4. 4GrokxAI's assistant, with what people are posting on X right now in reach.Free plan
5. 5Microsoft CopilotMicrosoft's assistant across Windows, Edge and the Office apps.Free plan
6. 6DeepSeekFree chat with DeepSeek's open-weight reasoning models.Free
7. 7Meta AIMeta's assistant inside WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, or on its own.Free
8. 8Le ChatMistral's fast European assistant, with web search, documents and code.Free plan
9. 9Qwen ChatAlibaba's Qwen models to chat with, text, images, video and code.Free
10. 10KimiMoonshot AI's assistant, known for reading very long documents and agentic work.Free plan
11. 11PoeOne app for most of the big models, plus bots other people have built on them.Free plan
12. 12Character.AIChat and role-play with characters, made by you or by the community.Free plan
13. 13PiA warm, conversational companion that's good at talking things through.Free
14. 14HuggingChatChat with the best open models, free, in Hugging Face's own app.Free
15. 15Duck.aiDuckDuckGo's private AI chat: popular models, conversations kept anonymous.Free
16. 16Brave LeoThe assistant built into the Brave browser, private by design.Free plan
17. 17ReplikaAn AI companion that remembers you and chats like a friend.Free plan
18. 18Z.aiChat with Zhipu's GLM models, strong at coding and agentic tasks.Free
19. 19MonicaAn all-in-one assistant in your browser: chat, summarise pages, write and translate.Free plan
20. 20MerlinA browser extension that brings top models to any page you're reading.Free plan
21. 21SiderA sidebar assistant for reading, writing and chatting with several models at once.Free plan
22. 22TypingMindA polished chat app for your own API keys, bought once, used with any model.Paid
23. 23MstyA desktop app to chat with local and online models side by side.Free plan

Free to start: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini all have a free plan or are free outright.

Popular open-source AI chatbots and assistants on GitHub

By stars on GitHub.

1. openclawThe AI that really does things. Any OS. Any Platform. The lobster way. 🦞★ 392,261
2. deepseek-harnessDeepSeek Harness: Everything is a Plugin.★ 251,872
3. NextChat✨ Zero-config AI chat assistant. No API key needed, sign up and instantly chat with GPT-5, Claude 4, Gemini 2.5, DeepSeek & 100+ top…★ 88,851
4. LlamaFactoryUnified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ LLMs & VLMs (ACL 2024)★ 75,535
5. daily stock analysisLLM 驱动的多市场股票智能分析系统：多源行情、实时新闻、决策看板与自动推送，支持零成本定时运行。 LLM-powered multi-market stock analysis system with multi-source market data, real-time…★ 66,560
6. litellmThe fastest, litest AI Gateway. Rust core with Python SDK. Call 100+ LLM APIs in OpenAI (or native) format with cost tracking, guardrails,…★ 61,439
7. CL4R1T4SLEAKED SYSTEM PROMPTS FOR CHATGPT, CLAUDE, GEMINI, GROK, PERPLEXITY, CURSOR, LOVABLE, REPLIT, AND MORE! - AI SYSTEMS TRANSPARENCY FOR ALL!…★ 51,327
8. new-apiA unified AI model hub for aggregation & distribution. It supports cross-converting various LLMs into OpenAI-compatible,…★ 50,122
9. Made-With-MLLearn how to develop, deploy and iterate on production-grade ML applications.★ 49,754
10. chatboxPowerful AI Client★ 42,046

Apps to try in the browser, on Hugging Face Spaces

By likes on Hugging Face.

1. 🌌The Ultra-Scale PlaybookThe ultimate guide to training LLM on large GPU Clusters♥ 4,086
2. 📚The Smol Training PlaybookThe secrets to building world-class LLMs♥ 3,333
3. 🌍Chat With Janus-Pro-7BA unified multimodal understanding and generation model.♥ 2,030
4. 💻UncensoredChatChat with XORTRON - Criminal Computing♥ 752
5. 🧠DeepSeek-R1 WebGPUNext-generation reasoning model that runs locally in-browser♥ 573
6. ⚡Chatterbox Turbo DemoChatterbox Turbo Demo♥ 537
7. 🌳Bonsai 27B WebGPU KernelsRun a 1-bit 27B LLM locally in your browser on WebGPU♥ 473
8. 🏃Chat With Llama3 8bLatest text-generation model by META - Meta Llama3 8b.♥ 399
9. 🚀LLM Embeddings Explained: A Visual and Intuitive GuideHow Language Models Turn Text into Meaning, From Traditional♥ 375
10. 🔍Free AI DetectorFree, no-signup AI detector with sentence-level analysis.♥ 355

Launched on Product Hunt

By upvotes on Product Hunt.

1. CoworkTurn Claude into your digital coworker▲ 1,089
2. TheySaid 2.0Conversational AI surveys, interviews, user tests, polls▲ 893
3. RecallChat with everything you’ve read, heard, watched, or noted▲ 847
4. IntegrityUnified project brain: docs, canvases, and AI chats together▲ 805
5. CapalyzeChatGPT for datavores: scrape → ask → visualize▲ 800
6. HeroUI ChatThe easiest way to generate beautiful UIs▲ 792
7. Supabase AI Assistant [LW24]Idea to Postgres database▲ 748
8. Proxy 1.0Your AI Assistant that actually gets things done▲ 706
9. Claude Import MemorySwitch from ChatGPT to Claude with import memory feature▲ 704
10. LittlebirdThe AI assistant that already knows your work▲ 704