7 Best AI Assistant Apps for Android in 2026

"Best AI app" is a category with three different jobs inside it, and most lists pretend they are one.

A general assistant answers questions, writes and edits text, reasons through a problem. It is the closest thing to a brain you can carry.

A screen-and-camera assistant looks at what is on your display or in the lens and answers about it. It is a different product: it is less about the model and more about the reach it has into the phone.

A search assistant finds the answer and shows you where it came from. It is closer to a research tool than a chatbot.

All three are useful. None of them substitutes for another. If you install one hoping it does all three, you will be disappointed by all three.

Every version, size, minimum Android and licence below is the catalogue entry for the package this site serves.

The general assistants

1. ChatGPT — the broadest, and the one to try first

ChatGPT is the default answer almost regardless of what you are doing, and that is because of reach rather than raw intelligence.

• Version: v1.2026.210 · Size: 48.6 MB · Android: 8.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: OpenAI

Voice conversations, image generation, file uploads, web browsing inside the app, a substantial store of custom GPTs. At 4.9★ across 38,400 reviews it is also the highest-rated assistant here by volume of opinion. Several tasks genuinely keep improving: it is the strongest of these at long, structured writing, at following a chain of reasoning, and at working with a document you hand it.

The trade is that the free tier is throttled. The strongest model, the newest features and the fastest generation sit behind a paid plan, and on a busy day the free tier can make you wait. If you mostly want a competent answer to a question, it is still the one to install.

Pick this one if: you want one assistant that does everything, and you are willing to pay to avoid the waits.

2. Claude — the careful writer

Claude is the assistant people reach for when the output has to be right rather than fast — which is why it has quietly become the preferred tool for editing prose and working through argument-heavy material.

• Version: v1.2.80 · Size: 38.4 MB · Android: 8.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: Anthropic PBC

It holds a long conversation without losing the thread, it is conspicuously good at refusing to fabricate, and it will tell you when it is uncertain rather than inventing confidence. That makes it the strongest pick for anything you are going to send to another human. At 4.9★ across 18,400 reviews it carries a very small install at 38.4 MB, noticeably lighter than ChatGPT on this site.

The trade is raw feature count. Claude does not have the same breadth of integrations, and its mobile app is more deliberately minimal than ChatGPT's. If you want a Swiss-army assistant, it is not it. If you want a careful one, it is.

Pick this one if: you write, edit or reason for a living, and you want fewer made-up things in the output.

3. DeepSeek — the free one with real reasoning

DeepSeek is the surprise of this list: at 4.9★ across 31,200 reviews, it is the highest-rated here without a paid tier, and it shows its reasoning openly.

• Version: v1.4.2 · Size: 28.6 MB · Android: 7.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek-AI Co.)

The model is genuinely strong at mathematics and logic, the "thinking" mode walks through its reasoning step by step so you can check it, and the free tier is not the crippled thing you expect — generous limits, no hard paywall at the time of writing. It also runs on Android 7.0, older than most of these.

The trade is the organisation and the polish. DeepSeek is the smallest operation here by a wide margin, response times vary, and there is no ecosystem of integrations. At 28.6 MB it is also the smallest assistant on this page with the strongest free offer.

Pick this one if: price is the deciding factor, or you want to actually read the reasoning behind an answer.

The ecosystem assistants

4. Microsoft Copilot — the one for Office and Windows users

Copilot is the assistant that lives where you already work, provided that place is Microsoft.

• Version: v28.9.42 · Size: 56.8 MB · Android: 8.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: Microsoft Corporation

If you use Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams on a work account, Copilot brings the model to those documents rather than making you copy them across — the single biggest timesaver in this category for anyone in that world. It also reads images and answers about them. At 4.7★ across 26,300 reviews it is good, not outstanding, and that rating is honest about its focus.

The trade is that Copilot is only as good as your Microsoft footprint. Outside it, it is an average assistant; inside it, it is the only one that makes sense. It is also the heaviest here at 56.8 MB.

Pick this one if: you live in Microsoft 365 and the point is reaching your own documents.

5. Grok — the X-native one

Grok is the assistant most useful to people who read X, because it is the one with the freshest view of it.

• Version: v2.5.0 · Size: 34.8 MB · Android: 9.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: xAI (Elon Musk)

It has live access to X posts, it is the only one here that can tell you what is happening on that platform right now, and it leans intentionally less filtered in tone — something you either want or do not. At 4.8★ across 15,400 reviews it is the smallest assistant here by review count, which is a fair signal of its narrower audience.

The trade is scope. Grok is not trying to be your writer and researcher and analyst; it is an X-aware conversationalist with a decent model. If you do not care about X, it is a reasonable general assistant and not more.

Pick this one if: you live on X and want an assistant that reads it.

The search assistant

6. Perplexity — the one that shows its work

Perplexity is the answer to the tallest complaint against AI assistants: you cannot tell if the answer is true.

• Version: v2.28.0 · Size: 32.6 MB · Android: 8.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: Perplexity AI, Inc.

Perplexity answers with sources attached to every claim, so you can follow the thread to what it actually read. It does not replace a search engine so much as it replaces the part of searching you dislike — trawling the results to find the answer — and it does that well. At 4.9★ across 22,100 reviews it is well regarded by exactly the people who care about sourcing.

The trade is that it is not a general assistant. It is thin at open-ended writing and at tasks involving your own files; its strength is firmly the research question. Treat it as the second app you install, not the first.

Pick this one if: you want to verify the answer, and you are tired of answers you cannot check.

The screen-and-camera assistant

7. Gemini — the one that sees your phone

Gemini is the assistant with the reach the others do not have, and it is the reason this category needs three buckets at all.

• Version: v1.0.6621 · Size: 24.2 MB · Android: 10.0+ · Licence: freeware · Developer: Google LLC

Gemini can read what is on your screen, watch the camera and answer about what it sees, and it sits inside the Google apps you already use. Ask it about the text on the page you are looking at, and it answers — no copy-paste. It is also the lightest install on this page at 24.2 MB, and it is the only one here that requires Android 10 rather than 8.0.

The trade is exactly the reach that makes it useful: it sees more of your phone than you might want a cloud assistant to see. If that is fine, it is the most capable one here. If it is not, this is the one to skip.

Pick this one if: you want to point your phone at something and ask, and you are comfortable with the screen access that requires.

The seven, side by side

What none of these fix

They are all cloud, all the time. None of these seven runs a model on your phone. Everything you type leaves the device, so the privacy decision is which of these you trust with what.

They do not have your private context for free. Screen reading and file access have a habit of locking the genuinely useful parts behind a paywall, so "which app should I use" is a smaller question than "what do I get without paying."

Free tiers move. Throttling and feature gates change. A rating and a version number are a snapshot, not a promise — the right pick today can shrink tomorrow.

Citing sources is not the same as being right. Perplexity's links let you check, which is the point. No assistant guarantees the underlying source was accurate.

The two-minute version

One assistant, everything? ChatGPT — the broadest, best-supported choice, and the one to install first.

Writing and reasoning where accuracy matters? Claude — the careful one, and the lightest serious option here.

Free, with strong logic? DeepSeek — the highest-rated assistant on this page without a paywall.

Ask about what you are looking at? Gemini — the only one that reads your screen and camera.

Verify the answer? Perplexity — the one that shows its sources.

Every app named here resolves to a page in the FileCobra catalogue — the build fails if one does not. Versions, package sizes and system requirements are read from that catalogue rather than written by hand. Where our ingestion worker has fetched a release itself, it records a SHA-256 of the exact file we serve and publishes it on the app’s page. We do not run an antivirus lab: where a VirusTotal report exists we link it, and where none exists we say so rather than imply one.