Gemini: Shopping

Send four AI agents to get real car insurance quotes: Gemini and ChatGPT got none, Claude and Muse got five each

Thy Toeung needed to review their car insurance before their son turned 16. They made a data sheet listing every driver, vehicle and the cover they wanted, and asked Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Muse to act as their insurance-shopping agent and get real quotes from six reputable insurers. Gemini's auto-browse explained it couldn't use the websites and handed back a comparison table to fill in. ChatGPT took 2 hours and 279 messages across 12 attempts and got no quotes; Toeung believes sites such as Allstate, Nationwide and Liberty Mutual block AI agents. Claude ran for 3.3 hours and got 5 real quotes. Muse, on its free tier, used several sub-agents and got 5 quotes in about 20 minutes. Toeung switched insurer and got about twice the cover for around 40% of the previous price.

Work out why new running shoes felt wrong and find the old model second-hand with Gemini

Kevin R. Kosar replaced a favourite pair of New Balance 880v11 running shoes with a similar-looking $100 Fresh Foam X 860v14, and two test runs left their lower back slightly sore. Kosar asked Gemini to compare the two. It explained that the new shoe is a little heavier and built for overpronators, while the 880v11 is a neutral shoe. Gemini then pointed to second-hand retailers, where Kosar bought two pairs of slightly used 880v11s; the new pair became around-the-house shoes.

Ask Gemini to order dinner from a delivery app (it refused on an unsupported phone)

Android Police's Ali Salman Zia asked Gemini on their Pixel 8 to order a chicken burger, then to order it from Foodpanda; both times it gave the same refusal and told them to use a delivery app themselves. They found Google limits food and ride ordering to the Pixel 10 series and Galaxy S26, Z Flip 8 and Z Fold 8, for users 18+ in the US or Korea, with supported apps such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub.

Fill a back-to-school supply cart from the teacher's list with Gemini and Instacart

Tom's Guide's Amanda Caswell gave ChatGPT, Gemini and Alexa+ the same school supply list: follow it, stick to required quantities, pick reasonably priced items and skip optional ones. Gemini built an Instacart cart, skipped optional items, asked them to approve colours and totalled about $60–$90 ($105 with the optional water bottle). ChatGPT, on their Walmart account, followed the list carefully but slowly for $92.55; Alexa+ added the optional items and reached $251.48.

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for Prime Day tech picks, and check the discounts they claim

A TechRadar editor asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude what discounted tech to buy on Prime Day. Gemini focused on deals but overstated one: it said Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones were 50% off when they were actually 20% off at $198 (was $248). ChatGPT tailored picks to their interests from past chats but was less tuned in to actual discounts, and Claude, which knew least about them, gave fairly generic deals.

Find five Prime Day tech gifts under $100 each: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini

TechRadar's editor-at-large gave ChatGPT (GPT-5), Claude (Sonnet 4.5) and Google AI Mode (Gemini 2.5 Pro) the same Prime Day gift brief: five fun tech gifts under $100, smaller than a bread box, ideally heavily discounted. They found all followed the brief closely; Gemini answered fastest and returned the most varied list and the best breakdown, Claude pulled its picks from TechRadar's own guides, and ChatGPT leaned toward Amazon devices.

Build a reusable Gemini shopping-assistant prompt with live product links

A tech columnist asked Gemini 2.0 to write them a shopping-assistant prompt (role, workflow, follow-up questions and web search), loaded it into a chatbot wrapper with web browsing on, and fine-tuned it to return live product links. They say it delivered almost exactly what they needed in early tests, and lets them weight three key features, e.g. 'wet and dry', 'cheap' and 'rotary' for a men's shaver.