The difference is far smaller than is often claimed: the 2 figures are of the same order of magnitude. Google's only official figure (~0.3 Wh, published in 2009) is even equivalent to the energy of a current short ChatGPT query. The famous "10 times more" comes from an old calculation, since invalidated, that put ChatGPT at ~3 Wh, an overestimate; the gap only becomes wide on reasoning models and very long prompts.
Read the source article: How much energy does a ChatGPT query use? About 0.3 Wh in 2026