Female Betta Tankmates: Snails Or Ghost Shrimp?

so my parents have allowed me to get a betta. before I hopped onto this forum, I did countless hours of research. the kind of live plants, the substrate, and even some (possible) tankmates. the tank size I'm going for is around 3 to 5 gallons.

I plan on getting a female betta and want some tankmates, mainly algae eater. my two ideas were either ghost shrimp or snails. the problem: which one?

 

I vote snails, either a nerite or two or a single mystery snail.
With ghost shrimp, you have the potential of getting a whisker shrimp, which are dangerous for bettas

 

I vote snails, either a nerite or two or a single mystery snail.
With ghost shrimp, you have the potential of getting a whisker shrimp, which are dangerous for bettas

ok then. snails it is!!

 

Nerite snails all the way! I like them better than mysterys as with mystery snails you need to feed them veggies once in a while and that seems like an extra hassle to me they also have longer antenna that the betta might think is food and nibble on. And they have pretty colors here's my guy HoudinI

 

Both could work, but snails are a safer bet. They're hardier, less aggressive & nerites are better algae cleaners than ghost shrimp

 

Snails! I just added a nerite snail to my female betta's tank yesterday to help with algae (I keep scrubbing it off and it reappears - my room gets a lot of light and I can't do much about that, so I'll keep scrubbing and hope the snail takes care of some of it as well).

She's not thrilled with her roommate, but she'll adjust.

 

I recently added snails to my 5 gallon with a Betta in it to help with algae and turned out to really enjoy having it. Just watching it to see where it ended up was entertaining haha. Now I have 2 Nerites in each of my tanks but the 30. Plus my lfs has red onion Nerites which I like more than the zebras.