Which AI Is Best for Brainstorming in 2026?

People now turn to AI chatbots when they need ideas fast, from a name for a new business to a theme for a birthday party or a fresh angle on a stuck project. To find out which AI is best for brainstorming, our research team ran a head-to-head study from September 29 to October 16, 2026.

We gave the same 440 brainstorming requests to eight AI platforms, the seven major AI chatbots and the AI built into the Miro whiteboard, producing 3,520 answers. The requests covered eight tasks, with 55 requests each, and every platform was tested on its best available model. A panel of four product managers, three creative directors and three founders scored each answer from 0 to 100 without knowing which platform wrote it, and marked every idea they would actually use. We also gave each request to 12 different testers on each platform to measure how often the same ideas came back for different people.

Best AI for Brainstorming Overall

A platform’s overall score is the average of its scores across the eight tasks in our study, with each task weighted equally. In the table below, we rank the eight platforms from highest to lowest.

Brainstorming Scores by AI Platform (September to October 2026)

Rank	AI Platform	Model or Plan Tested	Overall Score	Strongest Task
1	Claude	Claude Opus 5.5	90.9	Story and Creative Ideas
2	ChatGPT	GPT-6 Sol	90.3	Business and Product Ideas
3	Google Gemini	Gemini 4 Argon	88.5	Research Questions
4	Grok	Grok 4.6	85.7	Names and Taglines
5	Microsoft Copilot	GPT-6 Astra	84.2	Gift and Event Ideas
6	Miro AI	Miro AI (Business plan)	83.5	Improving an Existing Idea
7	DeepSeek	DeepSeek V4-Pro	82.5	Research Questions
8	Meta AI	Muse Spark	82.0	Gift and Event Ideas

Our researchers took three main points from this data:

• We found that Claude and ChatGPT are close at the top, separated by 0.6 points. The two platforms finished first or second in four of the eight tasks.
• Grok ranked fourth overall but placed second for names and taglines (89.6), where judges rewarded its bold, playful suggestions.
• Miro AI, which brainstorms on a shared whiteboard, ranked sixth overall but placed second for improving an existing idea (90.7), because it groups and builds on the notes a team has already written.

Best AI for Each Type of Brainstorming

We split the requests evenly across eight tasks, with 55 requests per task. The best platform changed from one task to the next, so the right choice depends on what you need ideas for. The first table below shows the winner and runner-up for each task. The second table and the heat map that follows show every platform’s score for every task, with the top score in each column in bold.

Best AI Platform for Each Brainstorming Task (September to October 2026)

Brainstorming Task	Best Platform	Score	Runner-Up	Score
Business and Product Ideas	ChatGPT	91.4	Claude	90.8
Names and Taglines	Claude	91.6	Grok	89.6
Marketing and Content Ideas	ChatGPT	91.3	Claude	89.4
Gift and Event Ideas	ChatGPT	90.6	Google Gemini	89.8
Solving a Specific Problem	Claude	91.2	ChatGPT	90.1
Story and Creative Ideas	Claude	93.4	ChatGPT	89.8
Research Questions	Google Gemini	91.2	Claude	90.6
Improving an Existing Idea	Claude	91.8	Miro AI	90.7

Brainstorming Scores by Task and AI Platform (September to October 2026)

AI Platform	Business Ideas	Names	Marketing	Gifts and Events	Problem Solving	Creative Ideas	Research Questions	Improving Ideas
Claude	90.8	91.6	89.4	88.2	91.2	93.4	90.6	91.8
ChatGPT	91.4	89.2	91.3	90.6	90.1	89.8	89.6	90.4
Google Gemini	88.6	86.4	89.1	89.8	88.9	85.7	91.2	88.1
Grok	86.2	89.6	87.4	83.9	83.8	87.6	82.9	84.1
Microsoft Copilot	84.9	83.1	85.6	86.3	84.7	80.2	83.6	84.8
Miro AI	86.8	78.6	85.9	80.6	85.2	78.4	81.7	90.7
DeepSeek	83.1	80.6	81.2	80.9	84.6	81.4	85.3	82.7
Meta AI	81.6	84.3	84.8	85.1	79.4	82.6	78.1	80.3

Here is what our team took from the task-level results:

• We found that Claude won four tasks, ChatGPT won three and Google Gemini won one. No other platform finished first in any task.
• Story and creative ideas produced the widest gap of any task, 15.0 points between Claude (93.4) and Miro AI (78.4). Business and product ideas produced the narrowest gap at 9.8 points.
• Google Gemini led research questions (91.2), because it most often checked whether a question had already been studied before suggesting it. ChatGPT led gift and event ideas (90.6) with the most specific, ready-to-use suggestions.

Originality, Variety and Ideas People Would Use

A good brainstorm gives you ideas you would not have thought of, ideas that differ from one another and ideas you can act on. Our panel rated the originality of every answer and marked each idea they would use. We also scored the variety of each answer by measuring how different its ideas were from each other on a 0 to 100 scale. Because every request went to 12 testers on each platform, we could count the share of ideas that came back for at least three of them.

Originality and Variety of Ideas by AI Platform (September to October 2026)

AI Platform	Originality Score	Idea Variety Score	Ideas Judges Would Use	Ideas Repeated Across Testers
Claude	91.8	84.6	38.4%	21.3%
ChatGPT	89.6	79.2	36.9%	31.8%
Google Gemini	87.4	80.7	34.2%	27.6%
Grok	88.1	82.3	29.7%	24.9%
Microsoft Copilot	82.3	73.8	27.4%	35.2%
Miro AI	81.6	71.4	30.8%	33.7%
DeepSeek	81.2	72.9	25.6%	36.4%
Meta AI	82.9	74.6	24.1%	34.6%

Our researchers drew three conclusions from this data:

• We found that Claude gave the most original ideas (91.8) and the most usable ones: judges said they would use 38.4% of its ideas, followed by ChatGPT at 36.9%.
• ChatGPT repeated more ideas across testers than any other top-three platform (31.8%). This matches a 2025 Wharton study in Nature Human Behaviour, which found that groups brainstorming with ChatGPT produced less varied ideas than groups working without it.
• Grok’s ideas had the second-highest variety score (82.3), but judges said they would use only 29.7% of them, since many were too unusual to act on.

How to Get More Varied Ideas From AI

Repeated ideas are a known weakness of AI brainstorming, so we tested a simple fix. We ran every request a second time with one extra sentence asking the platform to make each idea very different from the others and to avoid the most obvious answers, then measured repeated ideas again with the same 12 testers.

Ideas Repeated Across Testers, Standard vs. Variety Prompt (September to October 2026)

AI Platform	Standard Prompt	Prompt Asking for Very Different Ideas	Drop (Points)
Claude	21.3%	14.8%	6.5
ChatGPT	31.8%	18.6%	13.2
Google Gemini	27.6%	17.9%	9.7
Grok	24.9%	18.2%	6.7
Microsoft Copilot	35.2%	24.1%	11.1
Miro AI	33.7%	25.6%	8.1
DeepSeek	36.4%	22.7%	13.7
Meta AI	34.6%	26.3%	8.3

Here is what our team took from this test:

• We found that the extra sentence cut repeated ideas on every platform. DeepSeek improved the most, falling 13.7 points from 36.4% to 22.7%.
• Claude had the fewest repeated ideas with either prompt, ending at 14.8% with the variety prompt.
• Meta AI (26.3%) and Miro AI (25.6%) still repeated about one idea in four after the change, so users of those tools may want to ask for several rounds of ideas.

Best AI Models for Brainstorming, Including Free Options

Most platforms give free users a different model or fewer features than paying subscribers. We tested 13 models and plans across the eight platforms, including each platform’s free option. The table below ranks every one we tested.

Brainstorming Scores by Model and Plan (September to October 2026)

Rank	Model or Plan	Platform	Available On	Score
1	Claude Opus 5.5	Claude	Paid	90.9
2	GPT-6 Sol	ChatGPT	Paid	90.3
3	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Claude	Free and paid	89.8
4	Gemini 4 Argon	Google Gemini	Paid	88.5
5	GPT-6 Luna	ChatGPT	Free and paid	88.1
6	Gemini 3.8 Flash	Google Gemini	Free and paid	86.9
7	Grok 4.6	Grok	Free and paid	85.7
8	GPT-6 Astra	Microsoft Copilot	Free and paid	84.2
9	Miro AI (Business plan)	Miro AI	Paid	83.5
10	Miro AI (free plan)	Miro AI	Free	82.6
11	DeepSeek V4-Pro	DeepSeek	Free	82.5
12	Muse Spark	Meta AI	Free	82.0
13	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash	DeepSeek	Free	81.4

Our team took three main points from the model-level results:

• We found that Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the best free AI for brainstorming, scoring 89.8, higher than every paid model from other platforms except GPT-6 Sol (90.3).
• Paying for ChatGPT added the most of any platform, 2.2 points over its free option.
• Miro AI’s free plan scored 82.6 and includes a limited number of AI credits, enough for a team to try AI brainstorming on a shared board.

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