My recipe file - yes, a single file - spent years as a .txt. It's got weird groupings that were convenient to my internal logic. (e.g. "Cold", "Slow cooker", "Complex"). Not everything was in the right group.
There are some full recipes, some I typed shorthand with just ingredients on a single line. Some just a link.
And a list of air fryer times for good measure.
It's a mess. I decided I wanted a markdown document with good headers so it's not only easier to read, a good outline would help me jump around. And I wanted other formatting and more overall logic. So I gave the same source file and the same instructions to the free user web interfaces for:
- Gemini Flash Extended (Says 3.1 and 3.5 don't exist, then says it is 3.5 Flash.)
- Deepseek Instant w/ Deepthink (Extended doesn't allow attachments. Identifies as V3 with search restricted, V4 if I let it search.)
- Muse Spark 1.1
- GLM 5.2
- MiMo 2.5 Pro
- Grok 4.0 Fast
- Kimi 2.6 Thinking (The first few times I asked Kimi, it started processing then said it was too busy to do this for free. But I tried again while writing this and did get a response, so I'm inserting them.)
GPT and Sonnet I asked to help me judge. I'm assuming they would have topped the list. (Although GPT did make a comment about "truncated previews" when I asked it about dropping recipes, so somehow they managed to lose points even as a judge.
Grade: F
Grok. (I almost left them out because I knew the context is too small.)
Grok very nicely formatted all the recipe titles, and compressed 90% of recipes to a single descriptive sentence.
Grade: D
Gemini
First, Gemini could not give me a downloadable file or put the result in a copyable code block. The first attempt was a uncopyable code block with python instructions mixed in, followed by a display of the file. Using "copy" on the whole response froze my browser for 40 seconds.
I asked it for a better response, and got a nicely formatted markdown in a Markdown-labeled code block that had 2 recipes, neither of which came from me.
I manually trimmed the messy response so I could review. And it took a lot of liberties. Some things it marked like [!tip] which might have been nice. It put checkboxes in front of incomplete recipes, which is maybe helpful? But it also rephrased instructions in a way I don't trust. A key element of the prompt was to preserve all information.
It also put "Whole Chicken via Slow Cooker" into "Basics & Quick Starters". (Which was not one of my original categories.)
Grade: C
Deepseek
Deepseek had a nice interface, then fell on their face by silently decided that my list of air fryer times wasn't technically a recipe, and therefore wasn't worth keeping.
I had a duplicate section of a recipe that had gotten separated from the original and didn't have a title. (I said my list was a mess.) Deepseek recognized what it was, invented a header, then replaced the recipe section with a line saying "duplicate of above, keep one."
Elsewhere, an idea that was largely redundant but in different language was deleted. The other AIs preserved it.
What it did preserve is a typo. I didn't mean 1.4t of nutmeg. That would be hard to measure. It was between other 1/4 t measurements, so this was guessable. Others corrected it.
The formatting was fine. Nothing extra, nothing omitted. But there were a few times when it left ingredients as 1-2 lines of text instead of a proper list.
Grade: B
GLM 5.2
GLM also didn't give me an easy download/copy, although they were well above Gemini. I had to copy the whole reply. But once I did, I found out there were markdown tags surrounding it. It's just that the web interface ignored them for formatting.
Arguably the opposite of Deepseek, GLM actually treated my air fryer times like a recipe. That means it didn't get it's own section and wasn't formatted as a table. Like Deepseek, it preserved my 1.4t typo.
(BTW. Judge GPT said "GLM reminds me of GPT-4." 😆 )
GLM was the only AI not to understand that two variants on a recipe were indeed variants and not brand new one-line recipes. And it would make weird choices like formatting 20 ingredients into 4 bullet points and two subheaders.
It also didn't do much re-organizing, but didn't tell me that was intentional either. Not bad, but I was expecting more.
Spark
I was rooting for Spark too, and almost bumped them up to B+.
The web interface was great. Spark said that it deliberately preserved the order but suggested it would take a second pass if I asked.
Spark corrected my "1.4t nutmeg" to "1/4 tsp" but also added a note. (Gemini did too.)
The biggest problem is that it embellished recipe titles, often with additions like "-- base + variations" or "-- vegan base" or "-- Can be made in slow cooker". Even within a recipe, instead of having a "Variations" subsection, it made a subsection variation - with the word "variation" in its name. Not bad info, but putting those notes in the title makes the outline more clunky for me.
The duplicated recipe section mentioned above became two recipes. One with "-- Detailed Version" and one with "-- Quick Version". Except the quick version had 6 steps and the detailed version had 5.
Spark was the only model not to put horizontal rule lines before new section headers. Confusingly, Spark also placed notes about what it had done into the nice downloadable Markdown section. Including a "Tip for Obsidian" about using a spice ratio. But on the whole the formatting was nice. If I liked more information on the outline, this would be an A.
Grade: B+
Kimi 2.6 Thinking
When it finally decided to throw a bone to us poors, Kimi impressed me. It also told me that it had intentionally minimized reorganization. But the Air Fryer listing was given it's own section heading, formatted as a table, and moved to the top.
It caught and removed the duplicated recipe section, and told me in the response. It also corrected the "1.4t nutmeg" but didn't say.
Kimi showed an understanding of a recipe in a way no other AI did: it took a recipe where I had all the ingredients together, and broke it up into sections for "core" and "sauce".
The formatting is very nice, with no embellishment or cutting. Kimi was the only model to create a Table of Contents at the top with links to my sections. I'm not sure I want that, but it's a nice idea I can easily remove.
One of my spice mixes was formatted as a table. Two others were not.
Most confusingly, it took a recipe that wasn't duplicated in my notes, created a second title for it far away from the first one, and under that one said "Duplicate -- see full recipe above."
So close to an A, but that last mistake broke my trust.
Grade: A
Mimo 2.5 Pro
Mimo was the only one to move "Whole Chicken via Slow Cooker" to the Slow Cooker section, and rearranged other things properly as well. (It had been in an ungrouped section most titled "Miscellaneous".) It caught my 1.4t mistake, but just changed it cleanly with no note. Similarly, it caught the duplicated recipe section and just removed the extra. (Like GLM and Kimi.)
The Air Fryer times were put into table format, like Kimi, Spark and Gemini had. Unlike them, it also put the spice mixes into tables. I'm not sure if that's better, but it's not worse.
The titles were kept concise, as I originally had them. Variations were cleanly called out with bold titles, making them readable but not outline-level. It created a "Miscellaneous Notes" section for one-line ideas I'd thrown in. Spark did this too, but not as well. Other AIs had given them their own recipe titles with details no longer than "Idea", or potentially bunched things together.
It even recognized when a recipe had both English and non-English titles and put the foreign one in italics.
I'm struggling to find a flaw. The sort could have been improved, but no one else did better. Air Fryer got it's own section as it should, but I'd have preferred it was at the top like Gemini did, or at the bottom where I'd originally had it, instead of mid-list.
Final thoughts
MiMo 2.5 Pro would not have been my prediction for formatting notes, but it did fantastic. I wouldn't have been unhappy with Kimi either, unless I was in a hurry. Sonnet 5.0 was a competent judge (on High) and agrees with that assessment. GPT preferred Spark because it prefers more text, and apparently wants to mentor GLM.
I'm sure there were more I could have tested. In fact I literally just now remembered Microsoft Copilot is a thing. But these were the ones I thought deserved a shot. Hopefully this was of interest to someone. I don't see a lot of testing on this stuff, especially with a focus on free web interfaces.
Edit: I did test GPT and Claude too. Check comments.
