ChatGPT vs GrowthBar: Which AI writer is right for you?

AI writing tools have completely changed how content marketing gets done. Tasks that once took days of research and writing can now be drafted in just a few minutes. This evolution has pushed several powerful platforms into the spotlight, each with a unique take on content generation. Two of the biggest names are ChatGPT, the flexible, do-it-all AI from OpenAI, and GrowthBar, a tool designed specifically for creating SEO-friendly content.

This post offers a straightforward, side-by-side comparison of their features, pricing, and best use cases. The idea is to help you figure out which tool is the right one for your workflow. While both are great for generating text or creating drafts, it's worth mentioning that a new category of tools is popping up. These tools focus on generating complete, publish-ready blog posts from just a single keyword.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) made by OpenAI. It's built to have conversations and produce human-like text on a massive range of topics. Basically, you give it a prompt, and the AI gives you a response. This simple setup makes it useful for just about anything, from writing emails and debugging code to summarizing dense documents and brainstorming ideas.

Its biggest advantage is its versatility. Powered by advanced models like GPT-5.2, its abilities go beyond text to include creating images and even generating video with Sora. But ChatGPT is a generalist. It wasn't built with SEO or long-form blog posts in mind. The output you get is raw text, which means you still have to do a lot of manual work to structure, format, optimize, and turn it into a polished article that's ready to go live.

What is GrowthBar?

GrowthBar is an AI-powered SEO tool built to help marketers and content teams create SEO-friendly content more efficiently. It’s powered by ChatGPT-4 but wraps that technology in a package of SEO-specific features. Its main appeal is combining an AI writer with research and optimization tools on one platform.

GrowthBar is also good , A versatile tool for content SEO, offering features like keyword research, AI content creation, content optimization, backlink analysis, and more. It is highly rated and used by various companies.

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Some of its key features include a 2-Minute Blog Builder, which generates a draft from a keyword, keyword research tools that show difficulty scores, competitor analysis, and content outline generation. GrowthBar’s primary goal is to streamline the initial drafting and optimization process for blog posts. It walks you from keyword to outline to a first draft, but it's meant to give you a starting point, not a finished product.

Feature comparison: ChatGPT vs GrowthBar

While both tools use AI to generate text, their functions and intended workflows are pretty different. Here’s a breakdown of how they stack up in key areas.

Core writing and content generation

ChatGPT works on a free-form, conversational model. It can write high-quality text on almost any topic, but creating a well-structured blog post takes detailed, step-by-step prompting. You might have to ask it for an outline, then ask it to write content for each heading, and then finally write an intro and conclusion. The quality of the final piece really depends on how good and specific your prompts are.

GrowthBar has a more structured process. When you type in a keyword, it looks at the top search engine results pages (SERPs) and creates an SEO-optimized outline with suggestions for headings, word counts, and keywords. From there, its AI helps you fill in the content for each section. This approach is more guided and is specifically made for creating blog posts, trying to align the content with what's already ranking.

SEO and research capabilities

ChatGPT has no built-in, real-time SEO tools. It can help with basic keyword ideas or suggest related topics from its training data, but it can't analyze live SERPs, give you keyword difficulty scores, or offer data-driven SEO advice. You'd have to do all your SEO work with other, separate tools.

This is a primary feature of GrowthBar. The platform includes keyword research, competitor analysis (showing keywords, backlinks, and Google Ads data for ranking pages), and an SEO optimization score that grades your content as you write. This integration lets you do your research and writing in the same place, which can really speed up the initial content creation work.

Ease of use and workflow

ChatGPT is incredibly easy to get started with. Its chat-based interface feels natural to anyone who's ever used a messaging app. However, creating a complete, optimized article is a disjointed and manual process. You have to generate different pieces of text, then copy and paste them into a document editor for formatting, editing, and optimization.

GrowthBar provides a more integrated workflow for bloggers. The whole process, from keyword research to outline creation to writing the first draft, all happens in one interface. It also has a Chrome extension that lets you use its AI writing features right inside content management systems like WordPress, making the workflow even smoother.

Pricing comparison: ChatGPT vs GrowthBar

The pricing for ChatGPT and GrowthBar reflects their different target users and features. Here’s how their 2026 plans look.

ChatGPT pricing

OpenAI has a few different tiers for ChatGPT, serving everyone from casual users to big companies.

• Free Plan: Gives you limited access to the base model, GPT-5.2 Instant. It's a good way to try out the basic features.
• Go Plan ($8/month): A low-cost subscription that offers more messages and uploads than the free tier. This plan might have ads to keep the price down.
• Plus Plan ($20/month): For individuals who need access to more advanced models, deep research features, and multimodal tools like the Codex agent for coding and Sora for video.
• Pro Plan ($200/month): Built for power users and small teams, this plan gives full access to the most powerful models like GPT-5.2 Pro with the highest usage limits.

GrowthBar pricing

GrowthBar’s pricing is based on usage, specifically how many AI content outlines you can create each month.

• Standard ($36/month): Comes with 25 AI content outlines, unlimited keyword research, and rank tracking for 25 keywords on one website.
• Pro ($74.25/month): Bumps the limits up to 100 AI content outlines, 1,000 tracked keywords across three sites, and adds collaboration features for small teams.
• Agency ($149.25/month): Gives you 300 AI content outlines, tracking for 5,000 keywords across 25 sites, and supports up to 10 users.

Limitations and key differences

Picking between these two tools really comes down to understanding their main trade-offs. ChatGPT gives you incredible flexibility for a huge range of text-based tasks, but it doesn't have the specific SEO workflow and research tools that GrowthBar offers. For content teams, this means ChatGPT's output is just the first step. The raw text it creates needs a lot of manual work for formatting, finding visuals, adding internal and external links, and including social proof like quotes or videos.

On the other hand, GrowthBar is made for SEO content creation, but it has its own set of limitations. While it generates an SEO-focused draft, the output still needs a lot of human editing to get the tone right, check for accuracy, and make it flow better. The AI-generated content can sometimes feel a bit generic. Also, its competitive analysis is limited compared to dedicated SEO platforms like Ahrefs or Semrush, and keyword rank tracking is a paid add-on, not part of its main writing plans.

The alternative for complete blog generation: eesel AI blog writer

For teams that find ChatGPT too broad and GrowthBar too focused on first drafts, there’s another option. The eesel AI blog writer is a solution designed to handle the content process from start to finish. It's a platform that generates complete, media-rich, and publish-ready blog posts from just a keyword, going beyond simple text to create a full content asset.

What makes it different is its ability to put together an entire article that's optimized for both search engines and human readers. This is done through a few unique features:

• Context-Aware Research: The tool automatically finds relevant, real-time data based on the topic. For instance, it will look up pricing for comparison posts or technical specs for product reviews.
• Automatic Assets: It doesn't just write text; it generates and integrates AI images, infographics, charts, and tables right into the post, which saves hours of manual work.
• Social and Media Integration: To add authority and a human touch, it embeds relevant YouTube videos and finds real quotes from Reddit discussions related to your topic.
• AEO Optimization: The content is optimized not just for traditional SEO but also for AI Answer Engines like Google AI Overview, making sure it's ready for the future of search.

  

It's the exact tool we used at eesel AI to grow our search presence from 700 to 750,000 impressions per day in just three months. With simple pricing at $99 for 50 blog posts and a platform that is completely free to try, it offers a scalable way to produce content.

To see how these tools perform in real-world scenarios, it can be helpful to watch a video review. The following video offers a deeper look into GrowthBar's features and compares it with other tools in the market, giving you a better sense of its workflow and value.

This video offers a deeper look into GrowthBar's features and compares it with other tools in the market, giving you a better sense of its workflow and value.

How to choose between ChatGPT and GrowthBar

So, which AI writer is the right one for you? The answer really depends on what you need.

• ChatGPT is your best bet for brainstorming, quick text generation, and a wide variety of non-SEO writing tasks where you just need raw text. Its flexibility is unmatched for general use.
• GrowthBar is a great choice for bloggers and SEO professionals who want an all-in-one tool to speed up the creation of SEO-focused first drafts and outlines. It makes the research and initial writing phases much more efficient.

However, for teams whose main goal is to scale up the production of high-quality, fully formatted, and optimized blog content without a ton of manual effort, a dedicated end-to-end tool is a more practical choice. If you're looking for a platform that takes care of everything from research and writing to assets and optimization, you should try eesel AI blog writer for free and see the difference for yourself.