ChatGPT is a website you log into. Maison is software on a computer you own. For a lot of people, the website is the right answer.
Written by the people who make Maison, including where ChatGPT wins.
It opens in any browser and is free to try. Maison has a waiting list, needs a Mac, and takes about an hour to set up.
For a good answer to a single question, a website is the right tool.
Every person, every decision, and why. It works from your own projects and files.
It works with your files and mail, follows up on what you mentioned last week, and keeps going overnight.
What it learns stays on your own disk, in files you can read. It is never training data, and it stays yours if you leave.
Conversations are examples.
One is a website you log into and the other is software you install on a machine you own. From that follow the four differences that matter: Maison keeps one continuous memory, it goes and does the work rather than describing it, everything it learns lives on your disk, and it is bought as software with people behind it rather than as a seat.
For some of what people use ChatGPT for, yes, but they are not the same kind of product. If what you need is a good answer to a discrete question, a website that gives you a good answer to a discrete question is the right tool and it is free. The case for Maison starts when the work is continuous and the context is expensive to rebuild.
When you want it now, on any device, for nothing, and when the work fits inside a single conversation. Maison is by waiting list, needs a Mac with Apple Silicon, and takes about an hour the first time. That is a real difference and it points one way.
Ask what the last conversation cost you, not in money but in explaining. If most of what you type is context that already exists somewhere in your own files, you are paying to re-supply what you already own, and a memory of your work is what removes it.