Why hackers moved from ChatGPT to Perplexity
1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“At some point, I switched from ChatGPT and Gemini to Perplexity as it promised AI-powered search.”flail, 2026-05-15original comment ↗
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ChatGPT vs Perplexity
| ChatGPT | Perplexity | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 13 | 2 |
| Hackers who criticize | 9 | 1 |
| Moved away from it | 6 | 0 |
| Moved to it | 6 | 1 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of ChatGPT
“But as a buyer, why would you want OpenAI to play middleman when you can have the LLM itself vet the stores?”theturtletalks, 2026-08-07original comment ↗
“I switched from ChatGPT to Claude 3 months ago because my account was down for like 6 hours.”boron1006, 2026-07-14original comment ↗
“GPT's code ends up way more verbose/complex/overengineered than it needs to be.”mschuetz, 2026-06-27original comment ↗
“With what I do ChatGPT does nott feel great to use.”2020science, 2026-03-30original comment ↗
“There was another comment I recall from today, discussing how OpenAI is not-so-subtly adopting a social-network-esque model, in how it's fine-tuned its chat system to…”read full quote
“There was another comment I recall from today, discussing how OpenAI is not-so-subtly adopting a social-network-esque model, in how it's fine-tuned its chat system to always suggest another question that the user might want to ask.”
Praise for Perplexity
“Use Perplexity or Reddit's AI to search for high-quality resources.”ILoveHorses, 2026-02-03original comment ↗
Other moves from ChatGPT
- ChatGPT → Claude (3)
- ChatGPT → Gemini (2)