The average Google AI Mode answer runs 315 words, more than twice the 141 words of the average Perplexity answer to the same everyday questions. Across five AI engines, the average answer is 229 words long.
Analysis of 25,940 AI answers to 2,984 questions · answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, September 2026
Key Findings
- 1.Google AI Mode answers run 315 words on average, more than twice the 141 words of a Perplexity answer to the same questions.
- 2.The average AI answer is 229 words long across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, and the median answer is 211 words.
- 3.14.9% of AI answers are under 100 words, and 3.4% run past 500 words.
- 4.10.4% of Google AI Mode answers run past 500 words, against none of Perplexity's.
- 5.AI answers to real estate questions average 288 words, more than twice the 123 words of answers about the weather.
Summary
Ask Perplexity whether you should refinance your mortgage and you get a tight answer of a paragraph or two. Ask Google AI Mode the same question and you get something closer to a short article: options, trade-offs, steps and sources, often past 400 words.
Answer length matters to anyone who wants their content used by AI. A long answer has room to explain options, name more brands and cite more sources; a short one keeps the verdict and drops the rest. The length of the answer decides how much of your page, and how many of your competitors, make it in.
The average AI answer is 229 words, about the length of a short blog introduction. The engine matters as much as the topic: Google AI Mode writes 315 words on average and Perplexity 141, and the same question can get twice as much explanation depending on where it is asked.
What we measured
On September 23, 2026 we asked 2,984 everyday questions in 31 topics, from money and health to recipes and weather, to five AI engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews (the AI summary above Google's search results). That produced 25,940 answers.
We counted the words in each answer's text, leaving out citation markers and links, then averaged by engine and by topic. The average across engines counts every answer once. The median is the middle answer: half are longer, half shorter. The 90th percentile is the length that only the longest one answer in ten exceeds.
Google AI Mode writes twice as much as Perplexity
The engines fall into three groups. Google AI Mode (315 words) and Gemini (258) write long answers. Google AI Overviews (202) and ChatGPT (180) sit in the middle, and Perplexity writes the shortest answers at 141 words. Google AI Mode's average answer is 75% longer than ChatGPT's.
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 25,940 AI answers to 2,984 questions · answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, September 2026
| AI engine | Average words | Median words | Longest 10% start at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Mode | 315 | 304 | 506 |
| Gemini | 258 | 265 | 415 |
| Google AI Overviews | 202 | 199 | 281 |
| ChatGPT | 180 | 153 | 325 |
| Perplexity | 141 | 132 | 232 |
Medians tell the same story with one twist. ChatGPT's median answer (153 words) is well below its average (180), and its longest one answer in ten starts at 325 words, above the 281 words for Google AI Overviews. ChatGPT writes mostly short answers and occasionally a long one. Google AI Overviews are the most uniform, with a median of 199 words and little spread.
Most AI answers fit on one screen
Very short and very long answers are both uncommon. 14.9% of answers are under 100 words, a few sentences, and 3.4% run past 500 words. Most AI answers land between those points, about the length a reader can take in without scrolling far.
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 25,940 AI answers to 2,984 questions · answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, September 2026
Google AI Mode writes most of the long answers: 10.4% of its answers pass 500 words, about one in ten, against 2.2% for Gemini and 2.1% for ChatGPT. Google AI Overviews, which sit above Google's search results, almost never do (0.1%). Not one Perplexity answer passed 500 words.
Money and home questions get the longest answers
The topic changes the length too. Real estate questions get the longest answers at 288 words on average, followed by beauty (285), home (283) and mortgage (279). Weather gets the shortest at 123 words, then tech (168) and travel (179). A real estate answer is 2.3 times the length of a weather answer.
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 25,940 AI answers to 2,984 questions · answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, September 2026
| Topic | ChatGPT | Gemini | AI Mode | AI Overviews | Perplexity | All engines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real estate | 262 | 313 | 378 | 249 | 168 | 288 |
| Beauty | 201 | 317 | 420 | 245 | 184 | 285 |
| Home | 232 | 310 | 367 | 275 | 176 | 283 |
| Mortgage | 203 | 328 | 421 | 210 | 160 | 279 |
| Money | 244 | 338 | 323 | 223 | 192 | 273 |
| Insurance | 209 | 327 | 377 | 222 | 149 | 271 |
| Business | 281 | 300 | 350 | 200 | 132 | 267 |
| Health | 154 | 230 | 270 | 175 | 116 | 198 |
| Taxes | 120 | 249 | 280 | 164 | 136 | 198 |
| Software | 161 | 146 | 284 | 206 | 129 | 191 |
| Shopping | 122 | 196 | 261 | 171 | 124 | 181 |
| Food | 149 | 189 | 243 | 172 | 111 | 180 |
| Travel | 130 | 206 | 243 | 164 | 118 | 179 |
| Tech | 109 | 168 | 243 | 185 | 105 | 168 |
| Weather | 92 | 116 | 168 | 147 | 81 | 123 |
Money and home questions need explanation: rates, eligibility, steps and trade-offs. A weather question needs a forecast. Google AI Mode drives the extremes, writing 421 words on mortgage questions and 420 on beauty, while Perplexity writes 81 words on the weather and ChatGPT 120 on tax questions. Product questions run longer: on "best product" questions Gemini averages 348 words and Google AI Mode 334, against 200 for ChatGPT and 191 for Perplexity.
What this means for content marketers
Write pages an AI engine can compress. An AI answer is about 200 words, so the pages that feed it should make their key facts easy to lift: a direct answer near the top, short paragraphs, clear numbers and one idea per section. A 3,000-word guide still helps, but a few of its sentences are what make it into an answer.
Match the engine that matters to your audience. Google AI Mode has room to explain options, compare brands and name more sources, so a detailed, well-structured page has the most space to be used there. On Perplexity and ChatGPT, where answers are shorter, the first clear sentence on your page carries most of the weight.
Then look at the answers for your own topics and note how long they are and which sources they use. Our seo copywriting services shape pages so AI engines can quote them, whatever the length of the answer.
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Cite this study
Suff Digital. (2026). Google AI Mode Writes 315 Words per Answer vs 141 for Perplexity. https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/average-ai-answer-length-words
Google AI Mode Writes 315 Words per Answer vs 141 for Perplexity - Suff Digital - https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/average-ai-answer-length-words
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