I left OpenAI's ChatGPT in March 2025 and moved to Anthropic's Claude full time. I did not expect to come back. Eighteen months later, I pay for both, and an increasing share of my work is going to ChatGPT.

That was not the outcome I was rooting for.

I had used ChatGPT since March 2024. Concerns about data control and privacy were part of why I left, along with unease about news surrounding OpenAI's leadership. I was more comfortable putting my money and time into Anthropic. For a long while, that felt like the right decision.

Since August 2026, I have been using ChatGPT heavily again. I have been comparing the two on work I actually need done: writing and editing, generating and reviewing code, improving processes, and analyzing data. I am a full-stack developer with more than thirty years in software. These tools have to earn their place in that work.

The redesign of My Family Devotion made the difference particularly clear. I wanted to improve the site's user interface, user experience, and SEO. In my comparison, the ChatGPT workflow produced:

• A more polished design that adapted better to different screen sizes and worked better on mobile.
• Cleaner HTML and code, with far fewer rounds of correction to reach a higher-quality deliverable.
• Better graphics, including higher-resolution assets, along with better logo, icon, and typography choices.
• Faster completion and more work accomplished within the usage allowance.

Astra also spotted that the individual devotions were missing unique page titles and descriptions. That gave me a specific SEO issue to address alongside the visual redesign. Any resulting change in search traffic or rankings would need to be measured separately.

That project helps explain why more of my work has been moving back. I still use Claude, and the preference varies by task. But on this redesign, ChatGPT gave me a better result with less back-and-forth. Those are differences that matter when I am responsible for finishing and maintaining the application.

My subscriptions are Claude Max 5x and ChatGPT Pro 5x. As of September 2026, both have a published US web subscription price of $100 a month. The matching 5x labels refer to each company's own baseline; they do not promise equal capacity. What matters to me is how much useful work each subscription buys.

A model can produce an excellent first answer and still be expensive to work with. The answer might need revision, the code needs testing, and the analysis needs checking. I need enough usable capacity to get through all of that. Access to an impressive model is worth less if I cannot afford to finish the work with it.

Token use is a large part of this. Tokens are the units used to represent the content models process and generate. The short question I type is only part of what an AI system may process during a task. Conversation history, files, instructions, tool results, and reasoning can all contribute to usage. Three details matter particularly in longer sessions:

• Context management determines what information is carried into the next step. Loading a whole repository when a few files would do can consume capacity without helping the answer.
• Prompt caching reuses processing of unchanged input. Both OpenAI and Anthropic document API caching that can reduce repeated-input costs. It is not the same as retrieving an old answer, and its availability does not guarantee that a particular request benefits from it.
• Compaction reduces the context carried forward so a long task can continue. OpenAI describes it as balancing quality, cost, and latency. From my side of the conversation, it also needs to preserve the decisions and constraints that matter. If I have to reconstruct them afterward, that adds work.

There is an important billing distinction here. API charges and a subscription's usage allowance are different things. I cannot take an advertised API cache discount and assume it gives me the same increase in subscription capacity. Anthropic's usage documentation explains that long conversations, model choice, and features affect the allowance. OpenAI's documentation for Codex and ChatGPT Work also describes usage that varies with task complexity, context, tools, and caching.

Both companies have optimization mechanisms. My side-by-side results do not reveal which internal mechanism explains the difference I experience. They do tell me where I currently get more useful work for my money.

I would consider a lower-ranked model if it gave me substantially more room to work and still met the standard the task required. Extra attempts are useful only if they lead to a result I can verify; reviewing ten bad patches is expensive too. Sometimes paying more for a model that gets a difficult job right sooner is the economical choice. The comparison has to include the whole task, including my time.

Cost has not displaced the concerns that made me leave ChatGPT. I still want clear answers about what gets retained, what can be used for training, and what control I have over either. I need to understand the terms of the particular product and account I am using. A company's reputation cannot answer those questions for me.

The same goes for safety features. When an agent can access files, run commands, or connect to another service, I want meaningful control over those permissions and a clear record of what it did. Transparency also means explaining limits and changes well enough that I can plan around them.

Reliability belongs in the cost calculation as well. An outage during the time I have set aside to work, an interrupted task, or a limit I cannot reasonably anticipate can make a capable tool difficult to depend on. I want to evaluate that alongside the quality of its answers.

Lately, my experience as an Anthropic customer has left me feeling that my business matters less than I thought it did. That is a judgment about the experience I am paying for, not a claim to know anyone's motives. ChatGPT, to my surprise, has been earning more of my work. I am willing to acknowledge that even though I once thought I was finished with it.

I am still paying both companies. Anthropic can earn that work back, and OpenAI can lose it. I have spent too long in this industry to keep choosing a tool because it is the one I defended last year.