YouPro lets me access every popular premium AI chatbot for $20/month - but there's a catch
ZDNET's key takeaways
- You.com's premium subscription tier, YouPro, costs $20 per month or $15 per month if billed annually.
- With the subscription, users get to take advantage of the free perks, such as access to the internet and footnotes, and the most advanced large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI, Google, and more.
- There is no way to compare LLM performance on YouPro to the performance of a model on its native platform.
You.com, formerly YouChat, offers competitive features that have earned it a spot on ZDNET's list of best AI chatbots. I tried its premium tier, YouPro, which left me even more impressed than I was with the free version.
Also: The best AI image generators: Tested and reviewed
If you list the best features of every major AI chatbot on the market, including ChatGPT, Anthropic, and Copilot, and put them together, you'll get YouPro. That's a bold claim, so I'll explain.
Both free and paid versions of You.com give users access to the internet, which is already a major win over ChatGPT or Claude, which have knowledge cutoffs. In addition to internet access, You.com users have access to footnotes that link to the online source of its answers -- one of the best features of Copilot.
With YouPro, users can access the game-changing feature of AI modes, where users can toggle between different modes within the chatbot to have different search experiences.
The modes include Smart, which is also available to free users; Genius, which has advanced capabilities, including file uploads; Research, which as the name implies is tailored for in-depth analysis; Create, which can generate images from texts; and finally, the pièce de résistance, the Custom Model Selector.
Also: Want to work in AI? How to pivot your career in 5 steps
With the Custom Model Selector, users can easily toggle between leading AI models including OpenAI's GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo; Anthropic's Claude Instant, Claude 2, Claude 3 Opus, Clause 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Haiku; Google's Gemini Pro; and Zephyr (uncensored).
Many of these models are typically reserved for each company's premium subscribers. For example, GPT-4 is only available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, Claude 3 Opus is only available for Claude Pro subscribers, and Gemini Pro is only available for Google One AI Premium Plan subscribers.
All three of the subscriptions above are $20 a month each. However, all of those advanced AI models can be found on YouPro for one payment of $20 a month.
To see how well the Custom Model Selector worked, I entered the same prompt into three different models on the site -- GPT-4, Gemini Pro, and Claude 3 Opus, as seen in the photo below (expand to see the full response):
The results were reassuring because every model generated responses with different styles and formats, an indicator that a different AI model was used to generate each answer.
There is no way to tell if the results generated by each model on YouPro are on par with results generated on the model's native premium platform because generative AI models yield different outputs every time, even on the same platform.
Also: What is Suno? The 'ChatGPT for music' generates songs in seconds
It's also worth noting that when you select a different model, the screen reads, "Chat using [insert name of the model you chose], enhanced with You.com AI." The last part of the statement suggests your experience using the model on YouPro might differ from the native platform.
ZDNET's advice
If you want to experiment with the latest large language models without breaking the bank, YouPro is a great solution. With one $20-a-month subscription, you can access the latest models from giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
However, if you find one premium subscription you like and enjoy integrating the AI into your workflow, I would stick with your favorite because there's no guarantee your experience will be the same on YouPro.