I tested the top 6 xAI alternatives in 2025 to find the best for business

You’ve probably seen the buzz around Elon Musk’s xAI and its chatbot, Grok. It’s hard to miss. With a direct line to the real-time chaos of X (formerly Twitter) and a personality that’s best described as "rebellious," it’s definitely interesting to mess around with.

But let’s be honest for a second. When you’re trying to run a business, is a "rebellious" AI really what you want handling your customer support tickets or fielding questions on your internal helpdesk? I’m going to guess that’s a hard no.

That’s what sent me down the rabbit hole of looking for practical xAI alternatives. I wanted to find tools actually built for the day-to-day grind of a business, with the kind of control and reliability you actually need. This isn’t about finding the AI that can write the snarkiest tweet; it’s about finding one that can make your team’s life easier.

Oh, and a quick heads-up: we’re talking about xAI, the company. Not the "XAI" crypto thing or the academic concept of "Explainable AI." Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get into it.

What is xAI and its chatbot, Grok?

So, what exactly is xAI? It’s Elon Musk’s AI company, and its goal is… well, to "understand the true nature of the universe." No small feat. Their first big product, Grok, is a conversational AI that kind of embodies that huge, unfiltered ambition.

Grok’s whole deal is built on a couple of key features:

• Real-time knowledge: It taps directly into the X platform, so it always has the latest gossip, news, and memes at its digital fingertips.

• A unique personality: It’s programmed to be less buttoned-up than other AIs, which can lead to some pretty amusing (and sometimes wild) responses.

While this makes for a great headline, it’s a bit of a nightmare for most businesses. An unpredictable tone is a massive brand safety risk, just imagine it getting sarcastic with a frustrated customer. Besides that, Grok is a generalist tool. It wasn’t designed to do specific jobs like triaging support tickets or looking up order information. It’s a fascinating experiment, but it’s not a business solution right out of the box.

Our criteria for the best xAI alternatives

When I started looking for a proper business tool, I knew I needed more than a quirky personality. I was looking for something dependable, easy to control, and that could actually connect to the software my team already uses.

So, I put together a simple checklist to judge all the options:

• Business focus: Is this thing actually built for business tasks like customer service, or is it a general model that I have to train and tame myself?

• Integration & setup: How much of a headache is it to connect to our help desk (like Zendesk or Freshdesk), chat tools (Slack or Teams), and knowledge bases (Confluence or Google Docs)? Do I need to hire a developer, or can I get it running myself?

• Customization & control: Can I actually control its tone of voice? Can I tell it exactly what knowledge to use and set up specific workflows? Or am I just stuck with whatever it decides to do?

• Testing & deployment: Is there a safe way to see how it will perform before I let it talk to real customers? Can I roll it out slowly?

• Pricing transparency: Is the pricing easy to understand? Or am I going to get a nasty surprise on my bill after a busy month because of weird per-resolution fees?

Comparison of the top xAI alternatives in 2025

Here’s a quick rundown of how the top contenders compare at a glance.

Feature	eesel AI	OpenAI (ChatGPT Enterprise)	Anthropic (Claude)	Google (Gemini)	Perplexity AI	Poe by Quora
Primary Use Case	Customer Service & Internal Support	General Purpose Content & Q&A	Safe, Ethical AI Conversations	General Purpose & Workspace Integration	Sourced Answer Engine	AI Model Aggregator
Help Desk Integration	One-Click (Zendesk, etc.)	Custom API	Custom API	Custom API	No	No
Custom Actions	Yes, self-serve	Via API / Developers	Via API / Developers	Via API / Developers	No	No
Simulation Mode	Yes, on past tickets	No	No	No	No	No
Pricing Model	Flat, predictable tiers	Per-user, custom	Usage-based	Usage-based	Per-user subscription	Per-user subscription

The 6 best xAI alternatives for business

After digging through a bunch of tools, these are the six that really stood out, each for different reasons. They range from complete, business-ready platforms to powerful AI models that you need to build on yourself.

1. eesel AI

My top pick for any business wanting to automate customer support or internal help is eesel AI. It’s a complete platform designed to slot right into your existing setup, not just another standalone AI model you have to figure out.

Why it’s on the list: The setup is ridiculously easy. You can genuinely get it working in minutes, not months, and you don’t even have to talk to a salesperson. It has one-click integrations for all the major help desks and knowledge sources. Once you connect everything, it starts learning from your past support tickets and help articles to give answers that are actually relevant and match your brand’s voice.

eesel AI offers one-click integrations with major help desks and knowledge bases, making it one of the top xAI alternatives for business.::

Pros:

• Super simple setup: You can sign up and get going all on your own. No mandatory demos or long onboarding calls required.

• Total workflow control: You decide exactly which tickets the AI handles. You can create specific rules to automate simple questions, pass complex ones to a human, and even have the AI take actions like tagging tickets.

• Risk-free simulation: This feature is a huge deal. You can test the AI on thousands of your past tickets to see exactly how it would have performed. This gives you a solid forecast of your resolution rate before it ever touches a live customer chat.

The eesel AI simulation dashboard shows how the AI would have performed on past tickets, a key feature for businesses looking for reliable xAI alternatives.::

Cons:

• It’s not a general-purpose AI. You can’t ask it to write a poem or brainstorm creative fiction.

• It’s built specifically for business automation, think support, IT service management, and internal Q&A.

Pricing:

eesel AI’s pricing is refreshingly straightforward. It avoids those unpredictable per-resolution fees that punish you for being busy.

• Team Plan: $299/month ($239/month if billed annually) for up to 1,000 AI interactions.

• Business Plan: $799/month ($639/month if billed annually) for up to 3,000 interactions, plus extra features like training on past tickets and AI actions.

• Custom Plan: For enterprise needs with unlimited interactions and more advanced capabilities.

2. OpenAI

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. The Enterprise plan gives you access to their most powerful models, which can do a massive range of things, from drafting marketing emails to helping your engineers write code.

Why it’s on the list: It’s the market leader for a reason. Its abilities pretty much set the standard for what a large language model can do, and there’s a huge ecosystem of other tools built on top of it.

Pros:

• It’s incredibly powerful and flexible for almost any text-based task you can imagine.

• It’s so well-known that many people on your team have probably already used it.

Cons:

• You’re getting the raw AI model, not a finished product for your support team. Getting it to work in a support queue means a lot of developer time and effort.

• It doesn’t come with built-in business features like ticket routing, simulation modes, or a way to roll it out gradually.

• Without a platform built on top, it can feel like a "black box," and you don’t get the fine-grained control you need for customer-facing stuff.

Pricing:

ChatGPT’s pricing is tiered, with business plans priced per user.

• Free/Plus/Pro: Individual plans from $0 to $200/month.

• Business Plan: $30 per user/month ($25 if billed annually). This gets you a secure workspace, admin controls, and connectors for apps like Google Drive.

• Enterprise Plan: You have to contact their sales team for a custom quote, but it includes better security, SLAs, and dedicated support.

3. Anthropic (Claude)

Claude, from Anthropic, is the AI you pick when brand safety is your number one concern. It’s built on what they call a "Constitutional AI" framework, which is a fancy way of saying it’s designed from the ground up to be helpful, harmless, and honest.

Why it’s on the list: Its focus on a reliable and predictable tone is the polar opposite of Grok’s wild-card personality, making it a much safer bet for business communications.

Pros:

• It’s excellent at maintaining a consistent and safe tone that aligns with your brand.

• It’s great at handling long documents and complex instructions, so it’s useful for summarizing technical docs or dense reports.

Cons:

• Just like with OpenAI, Claude gives you amazing raw material, but it’s up to you to build the actual business application on top of it.

• You’ll need custom development work to connect it to your help desk or other business systems.

Pricing:

Claude offers plans for individuals and teams, but the team plan has a 5-person minimum.

• Free/Pro/Max: Individual plans ranging from $0 up to $100+/month.

• Team Plan: $30 per person/month ($25 if billed annually), with a minimum of 5 members.

• Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing. You’ll have to talk to sales for this.

• API Pricing: Based on how much you use it (token usage), which can make budgeting a real challenge.

4. Google (Gemini)

Gemini (which you might remember as Bard) is Google’s shot at a ChatGPT competitor. Its biggest advantage is how deeply it’s woven into the Google ecosystem, if your team lives in Docs, Sheets, and Gmail, it’s worth a look.

Why it’s on the list: It’s a Google product, so it’s backed by some serious infrastructure and has access to a mind-boggling amount of data.

Pros:

• It fits right into Google Workspace, which can be a nice productivity boost for teams already using those tools.

• It uses Google Search to pull in real-time, up-to-date information.

Cons:

• It can be a pain to connect to any of your company knowledge that lives outside of the Google universe.

• If you want to do any real business automation, you usually have to jump over to the much more complex, developer-heavy Vertex AI platform.

Pricing:

Google’s pricing for Gemini is a bit scattered. For individuals, you get the advanced features through a Google One AI Premium plan. For businesses, it’s an add-on to Google Workspace plans, and API access is priced by usage. There isn’t a simple, standalone business plan, which makes it tricky to figure out the true cost.

5. Perplexity AI

Perplexity takes a different path. It calls itself an "answer engine," not a conversational chatbot. Its standout feature is that it gives you direct answers with clear citations and sources for everything it says.

Why it’s on the list: It puts a big emphasis on accuracy and letting you check its work, which helps build a level of trust that’s often missing with other AIs.

Pros:

• It builds trust by showing you exactly where its answers came from.

• It’s fantastic for research, fact-checking, or internal knowledge lookups where being right is what matters most.

Cons:

• It’s not designed for conversational automation. You can’t use it to handle a back-and-forth customer support chat or have it take actions in your other software.

• Its use for interactive customer support is pretty much zero.

Pricing:

Perplexity has a free version and a Pro plan for individuals at around $20/month. But trying to find clear pricing for business or enterprise teams on their website is tough, which can be a dealbreaker if you’re trying to plan a budget.

6. Poe by Quora

Poe is like a Swiss Army knife for AI. It’s an aggregator platform, which means it gives you access to a bunch of different AI models (from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and more) all under one roof.

Why it’s on the list: It’s a great tool for putting different models in a head-to-head competition to see which one is best for a particular job.

Pros:

• You can try out a wide variety of top AI models with a single subscription.

• It lets you create your own custom bots that are powered by different underlying models.

Cons:

• It’s a sandbox for playing with AIs, not a platform for automating business tasks.

• It’s missing the deep integrations, workflow controls, and security features you’d need for any serious enterprise work.

Pricing:

Poe is a subscription service for individuals. While they offer premium access to different models, they don’t have a transparent pricing page for business or team plans. This makes it feel more like a tool for hobbyists and developers than a scalable solution for companies.

How to choose the right xAI alternative for your business

Here’s a little bit of advice: stop asking "which AI model is the most powerful?" and start asking "which platform actually solves my business problem?"

Here’s what I mean:

• If your goal is to automate replies in your Zendesk queue, you need a tool with a native Zendesk integration, not a generic API that your developers have to hook up themselves. Tools like eesel AI let you do this in one click.

• If you need complete control over what your AI says and does, look for a platform that lets you build and customize workflows, not a black-box model.

• Always ask how you can test the AI’s performance. A live demo is nice, but a simulation where you can test the AI on your own past data is way more valuable.

This video explores several leading xAI alternatives like Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, offering insights into their capabilities for professional use.

Look for a business-ready platform, not just a model

The big, general-purpose xAI alternatives like ChatGPT and Claude are amazing pieces of technology. But for a business, they’re like a powerful engine without a car. You still have to build the chassis, the wheels, and the steering wheel yourself.

For most business needs, you’re better off with a complete platform that gives you the whole car right out of the box: the integrations, the workflow controls, the reporting, and a safe way to get started.

That’s where a platform like eesel AI comes in. It’s designed from the ground up to be that complete solution, plugging directly into the tools you already use to deliver real results, quickly and safely.

Ready to see what an AI actually built for business can do for your support team? Get started with eesel AI for free or book a demo with our team.