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Ni Biashara Networks · AI Picker

Which AI for which job?

Your competitors are already using AI to answer customers, write, plan and build. Answer three questions and get a plain answer: what to use, why, how to start in five minutes and roughly what it costs.

Last checked 20 October 2026 against each provider's official pricing and docs. Prices change, so check the linked pages before you buy.

The picker

Three questions. One answer.

Change any answer and the pick updates. Every option is also listed in full below.

01What are you trying to do?
02What can you spend?
03How technical are you?

Our pick for you

Choose your answers and the pick appears here. Every option is in the cheat sheet below.

Read the cheat sheet

The cheat sheet

Every option, side by side.

Prices are in US dollars. API prices are per million tokens, the small chunks of text models read and write; a million tokens is a lot of text.

The Claude app (with Cowork)

Best for everyday work if you don't code: writing, customer replies, documents, spreadsheets and planning.

Talk to it like a sharp assistant on the web, on your desktop or on your phone. It searches the web, reads your files and makes documents. Cowork, which takes on longer tasks for you, is now part of Claude and rolling out to Pro and Max.

  1. Go to claude.ai and sign up.
  2. Paste a real customer message and ask for a reply in your tone.
  3. When a request works, save it so you can reuse it.
Free
$0, with Sonnet and Haiku
Pro
$20 a month ($17 billed yearly); adds Opus and Claude Code
Team
From $20 a seat a month, billed yearly

Claude Code

Best for building and automating: websites, scripts, tools and fixes.

It reads your project, writes the code, runs it and checks it. It works in your terminal, your code editor, the Claude desktop app or the browser, and connects to your other tools through MCP.

  1. Get Claude Pro or higher at claude.com/pricing.
  2. No terminal? Open the Claude desktop app and use the Code tab. Comfortable with a terminal? Run curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash (Mac, Linux).
  3. In your project folder type claude and describe what you want built.
Pro
$20 a month ($17 billed yearly)
Heavy use
Max, from $100 a month
Free plan
Not included

A bot on Telegram or WhatsApp (members)

Best for answering customers 24/7 where they already are.

Customers don't install anything. A bot answers the common questions, takes details and hands the rest to you. Running it on a fast model costs very little per message.

  1. Write down your ten most common customer questions and the answers.
  2. Tell us which app your customers use in the Networks form.
  3. We set it up in your own accounts. You own it.
Setup
Quoted before any work starts
Running
A short reply on Haiku 5.5 costs under a tenth of a cent at API rates, plus any messaging-app fees

Long, deep work: Claude Opus 5.5 or Fable 5.1

Best for long research, careful analysis and big builds that run for a long time.

Opus 5.5 is the strong everyday choice for hard work. Fable 5.1 is Anthropic's most capable widely released model, for the hardest problems. Both take longer and cost more, so use them where the thinking matters.

  1. On Claude Pro, choose Opus in the model menu.
  2. Give the whole brief at once: the goal, the files and what a good answer looks like.
  3. Let it run, then ask it to check its own work.
Opus 5.5
$4 in, $20 out per million tokens
Fable 5.1
$10 in, $50 out per million tokens
Example
A long report (50,000 tokens read, 10,000 written): about $0.40 on Opus 5.5, $1.00 on Fable 5.1
On plans
Pro includes Opus; Fable comes through usage credits on Pro and is available on Max

Fast and cheap: Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Haiku 5.5

Best for high volume: replies, sorting, summaries, data clean-up and bots.

Most daily jobs don't need the biggest model. Sonnet 5.5 is quick and strong. Haiku 5.5 is the cheapest Claude, built for volume. Keep Opus for the hard cases.

  1. Create an account at platform.claude.com and add a small credit.
  2. Test your instructions in the Console.
  3. Call it from your app, your bot or Claude Code.
Sonnet 5.5
$2 in, $10 out per million tokens
Haiku 5.5
$0.10 in, $0.50 out (inputs up to 100,000 tokens)
Example
A customer reply (2,000 tokens read, 500 written): about 1 cent on Sonnet 5.5, under a tenth of a cent on Haiku 5.5

Local and free: Ollama or LM Studio

Best for private data, offline work and $0 per use.

The model runs on your own computer. Nothing leaves it and there is no bill per question. Local models are smaller than the top cloud models, so use them for drafts, sorting and private notes, not your hardest problems.

  1. Install Ollama (free and open source) or LM Studio.
  2. With Ollama, run ollama run gemma4 in a terminal. On a Mac with 8 GB of memory, use the smallest version: ollama run gemma4:e2b.
  3. Ask it something private. It stays on your machine.
Per use
$0
Mac
Apple Silicon (M1 or newer), 16 GB memory recommended; 8 GB runs only the smallest models
Windows
16 GB RAM and a graphics card with 4 GB of its own memory recommended

Other good tools: Claude is what we use every day, but it is not the only good choice. ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot are strong too. If your team already pays for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the assistant built into it may be the easiest start. Pick the one your team will actually use.

Did you know?

Three things most owners haven't heard yet.

Local AI is free.

Ollama and LM Studio run models on your own computer. No account, no bill per question, and private notes never leave the machine.

MCP plugs AI into your tools.

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets an AI read your documents, update your systems or call a service. It's how Claude Code connects to Google Drive, Jira or our Shelves.

AI can pay per call.

With x402, an AI agent pays a few cents in USDC for exactly the data it uses, with no account or subscription. Our Shelves work this way, from $0.01 a call.

Want a hand?

We'll help you set it up.

Ask in one of our rooms, where other owners share what works, or tell us what you're trying to do and a person will point you to the right setup. If it needs work from us, we say what it costs first.

Tell us what you needFind a room

Sources

Where these facts come from.

Last checked 20 October 2026. Examples are worked from the listed API prices and are rough.