March 15, 2025 | By Ben Tannenbaum

Comparing Major LLMs in 2025: Features, Market Share, and Strategic Implications

The landscape of Large Language Models (LLMs) continues to evolve rapidly in 2025, with several major players competing for market share and user attention. This article provides a comprehensive comparison of the five leading LLMs: ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. We'll analyze their features, market position, and strategic implications for brands looking to optimize their AI presence.

Current Market Share Landscape

As the chart illustrates, OpenAI's ChatGPT continues to dominate the market with approximately 78.9% of global LLM traffic. However, we're seeing interesting shifts in the competitive landscape, with DeepSeek now securing 9.6% of the market—a significant increase from its position a year ago. Google's offerings have declined to 5.2%, while Perplexity maintains a steady 2.1% share focused primarily on search-oriented use cases.

Feature Comparison

Beyond market share, understanding the unique capabilities of each LLM is crucial for brands determining where to focus their optimization efforts. The following table provides a detailed comparison of key features across the major platforms:

A standout feature in the comparison is Gemini's massive 2 million token context window in its Pro version, which far exceeds competitors. This allows Gemini to process and maintain context across the equivalent of approximately 1,500 pages of text in a single conversation—a significant advantage for tasks involving large documents, complex research, or extended conversations. While Claude offers a respectable 200K tokens and both ChatGPT and DeepSeek provide 128K tokens, Gemini's capacity represents a 10-20x increase over what was standard just a few years ago.

Strengths and Specializations

Key Differentiators by Platform

Strategic Implications for Brands

Based on our analysis of both market share and feature capabilities, here are the key strategic implications for brands looking to optimize their presence across LLMs:

1. Primary Focus on ChatGPT: With nearly 80% of global LLM traffic, ChatGPT should remain the primary focus for brand optimization efforts. Its comprehensive feature set and dominant market position make it the most efficient platform for maximizing AI visibility.
2. Perplexity for Transactional Content: Brands with significant US presence and a focus on e-commerce should consider specific optimization for Perplexity, particularly for product-related content. Our research shows that for transactional queries, Perplexity captures a significant share of high-intent traffic.
3. Monitor DeepSeek's Growth: DeepSeek's rapid growth trajectory suggests it may become an increasingly important platform, particularly for technical content and developer-focused brands. While not yet requiring dedicated optimization, brands should monitor its evolution.
4. Leverage Cross-Platform Optimization: Many optimization strategies for ChatGPT will translate to other platforms, particularly those focused on content quality, structured data, and comprehensive information. Focus on creating content that serves users well across all platforms.
5. Consider Vertical-Specific Strategies: Different LLMs show strengths in specific verticals. For example, Claude excels at document analysis and complex reasoning, making it potentially valuable for legal, financial, or educational content.
6. Evaluate Context Window Requirements: For brands with extensive documentation, complex products, or detailed knowledge bases, Gemini's 2M token context window offers unique capabilities for comprehensive information processing that other models cannot match.

Regional Considerations

Our research indicates significant regional variations in LLM usage patterns:

• Europe and Asia: ChatGPT maintains over 90% market share, making it the clear priority for these regions.
• United States: More competitive landscape, with Perplexity capturing up to 40% of transactional queries.
• Technical Communities: DeepSeek shows stronger adoption among developers and technical professionals globally.
• Enterprise Markets: Claude and ChatGPT dominate enterprise adoption, with Gemini gaining traction in Google Workspace-centric organizations.

Looking Forward: Trends to Watch

As the LLM landscape continues to evolve, several key trends are worth monitoring:

1. Increasing Specialization: We expect to see more domain-specific LLMs optimized for particular industries or use cases.
2. API-First Approaches: The ability to integrate LLM capabilities directly into applications and workflows will become increasingly important.
3. Multimodal Evolution: The ability to process and generate multiple types of content (text, images, audio) will continue to advance.
4. Real-time Capabilities: Access to current information will become a standard feature across all major platforms.
5. Regulatory Impact: Emerging AI regulations may create regional variations in feature availability and capabilities.
6. Expanding Context Windows: The race to increase token limits will continue, with all major providers likely to expand their context windows to accommodate more complex use cases.

For brands looking to optimize their presence across LLMs, the key takeaway remains: focus primarily on ChatGPT while maintaining awareness of platform-specific strengths and regional variations. By creating high-quality, structured content that serves users well, brands can maximize their visibility across the evolving LLM landscape.

About Aiso

At Aiso, we help brands optimize their presence in AI responses. Our platform analyzes millions of ChatGPT conversations to understand how users interact with AI and what they're searching for. With ChatGPT dominating approximately 80% of global LLM traffic, we focus on helping brands maximize their visibility where it matters most. Our research into transactional search patterns provides unique insights into consumer behavior in the AI era, enabling brands to position themselves effectively in this new channel.

Whether you're looking to understand how AI is reshaping your industry or need strategic guidance on optimizing your brand's presence in AI responses, Aiso provides the data-driven insights and tools you need to succeed.