Battle of the chat apps: What's the difference between Slack, Facebook Workplace and Microsoft Teams

Whether you work at a startup or a Fortune 500 company, you'll probably be using a work chat app soon, if you're not already.

These tools make real-time collaboration a snap, letting you fire off quick conversations with colleagues on your phone or laptop, share documents and use your favorite third-party apps.

At the head of the pack is Slack, which has grown like crazy since launching in 2013 and currently claims 4 million daily users and 1.25 million paid users.

But social networking giant Facebook recently launched its first business app called Workplace and it's already winning fans. And Microsoft has doubled down on this young market with Teams, a new homegrown app that it announced earlier this month.

So which of these apps is right for your workplace?

Business Insider took a hands-on look at the three big workplace chat apps to see how they compare. Read on to see which one you like best: