ChatGPT
OpenAI's flagship AI assistant for chat, coding, image and video generation, and agentic tasks.
Overview
ChatGPT is OpenAI's flagship AI assistant for work, code, and creativity
ChatGPT is the most widely used AI assistant in the world, built on OpenAI's GPT-5 family of models. Originally launched in November 2022 as a research preview, ChatGPT has grown into a multi-modal product that handles writing, coding, analysis, agentic tasks, image generation, and video generation across web, desktop, and mobile. As of April 2026, the default model is GPT-5.5 (launched April 23, 2026), with GPT-5.5 Pro reserved for Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers.
Key Features (April 2026)
- GPT-5 model family — GPT-5.5 default, GPT-5.5 Pro on higher tiers; lighter GPT-5.3 variants for free use.
- Codex Agent — autonomous coding agent that writes, reviews, and ships code from inside ChatGPT or via CLI.
- Agent Mode — multi-step task automation (browse, click, fill forms, execute workflows).
- Deep Research — long-running, citation-backed research reports (10/mo on Plus).
- Canvas — dedicated long-form workspace for writing and code (Plus and above).
- Sora video — text-to-video and image-to-video generation; 50 videos/mo on Plus (note: the standalone Sora app and API are being deprecated in 2026; in-ChatGPT video gen continues).
- Image generation — native image creation with strong prompt adherence and editing.
- Advanced Voice Mode — natural conversational voice with translation; available to free users with time limits.
- Projects, Tasks, Memory — persistent context, scheduled jobs, and per-project organization.
- Custom GPTs / GPT Store — build and publish task-specific assistants.
Pricing (April 2026)
- Free — $0. GPT-5.3 with tight limits, ads (in US).
- Go — $8/mo. Higher message volume, no advanced reasoning, no Sora/Codex/Agent Mode/Deep Research.
- Plus — $20/mo. Full GPT-5.5 + Codex, Agent Mode, Deep Research (10 runs/mo), Sora video, Canvas.
- Pro — $100/mo or $200/mo. Heavy use limits, GPT-5.5 Pro, expanded tool access.
- Business — $25/user/mo. Shared workspaces, SSO, admin tools, usage visibility.
- Enterprise — custom. Compliance, data residency, virtually unlimited messages.
Best For
- Knowledge workers — drafting, research, summarization, and analysis at scale.
- Software developers — Codex Agent for writing, reviewing, and shipping code from chat or CLI.
- Marketers and content teams — long-form drafts, campaign briefs, and image/video assets in one tool.
- Operators and analysts — Agent Mode for multi-step workflows; Tasks for scheduled automations.
- Solo founders and consultants — Plus at $20/mo unlocks the full toolbelt for daily work.
ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini
- ChatGPT — broadest product surface (Codex, Sora, Agent Mode, voice, image, custom GPTs); largest user base; deepest plugin ecosystem.
- Claude — strongest at long-context reasoning and coding judgment; safety-first; 1M-token context on Opus 4.7.
- Gemini — tightest Google Workspace integration; competitive free tier with large context.
FAQ
Is ChatGPT free? Yes. The Free tier runs GPT-5.3 with tight message and upload limits and (in the US) ads. Go ($8/mo) lifts limits but excludes advanced reasoning and Sora/Codex/Agent Mode.
What's GPT-5.5? The default flagship model from April 23, 2026, replacing GPT-5.4. GPT-5.5 Pro is a higher-accuracy variant restricted to Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers.
Can ChatGPT write code for me? Yes. Codex Agent is included on Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. It runs inside ChatGPT or as a CLI tool that can read your repo, run tests, and ship pull requests.
Can ChatGPT generate video? Yes. Plus users get 50 Sora videos per month inside ChatGPT. Note: the standalone Sora app shut down April 26, 2026, and the public Sora API is being discontinued September 24, 2026 — but video generation inside ChatGPT continues.
What is Agent Mode? A built-in agent that completes multi-step tasks for you — opens a browser, clicks, fills forms, and executes workflows on your behalf. Available on Plus and higher.
Does ChatGPT remember me between sessions? Yes. Memory is on by default and stores facts across conversations. You can clear or disable it in settings.
Related
Looking for more options? Browse the Productivity directory or read our best AI productivity tools listicle. ChatGPT has a Wikipedia entry and is tracked on Crunchbase.
Why Use ChatGPT
FAQ
Editorial Review
Our take on ChatGPT.
Still the default AI subscription for one reason: it is the most-shipped model with the widest tool surface. Anthropic and Google have closed the quality gap, but no competitor matches ChatGPT for breadth — voice, image, video, code, and memory on one $20 bill.
What works
- Widest mode coverage in one app — Voice, Vision, Image (4o), Sora video, Code Interpreter, custom GPTs, and cross-session memory all behind a single Plus tier.
- The GPT-4o + o1 + o3 model lineup keeps the competitive ceiling on math, code, and reasoning at the top of public benchmarks.
- $20 / month covers a stack you would otherwise stitch together from three vendors. Quality per dollar at the consumer tier is unmatched.
- ChatGPT Search (2024) gives you sourced answers and follow-ups without leaving the chat — Perplexity-style behavior baked into the most-used AI surface on earth.
- Cross-session memory meaningfully reduces re-priming for daily users; once it knows your team, your codebase, and your style, the leverage compounds.
What doesn't
- Sycophancy has been the most-cited model regression of the past year. OpenAI has partially rolled it back, but you will still catch the model agreeing with bad ideas.
- Plus tier hits soft rate limits on o1 and o3 — the very models people pay for — without telegraphing the ceiling clearly. Heavy reasoning days end with quiet downshifts to GPT-4o.
- Image generation lags Midjourney aesthetically; Sora video is gated, slow, and frequently queued.
- GPT-5 timeline keeps slipping. If you are betting on the next jump, you are waiting in public.
- API pricing on o1-pro is the highest in the market for the quality delta over Claude Opus 4.7 or Gemini 2.5 Pro.
ChatGPT entered 2026 as the default AI subscription for the second year running, and the reasons have not changed much. It is the most-shipped product in the category, the one your non-technical colleagues already have a login for, and the one with the broadest "and it also does this" list. The model is not always the best — Claude Opus 4.7 wins on long-form reasoning, Gemini 2.5 Pro wins on context length, Midjourney still wins on image aesthetics — but the bundle remains the strongest single buy for a generalist.
What you actually pay for
The product is not the model anymore; it is the surface. A single $20 Plus subscription gives you voice mode (now natural enough that we use it for hands-free brainstorming), vision input that handles screenshots and whiteboard photos competently, image generation through 4o, Sora for video (still throttled), Code Interpreter for spreadsheet work, custom GPTs that you can build in fifteen minutes, and cross-session memory that learns your team, codebase, and style. The competitive answer to that list is not "Claude or Gemini" — it is "Claude, Gemini, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and Perplexity, all on separate bills."
ChatGPT Search, shipped in late 2024 and steadily improved, has quietly absorbed most of the daily Perplexity use case for casual users. Sources appear inline. Follow-up questions work. The freshness lag versus Google has narrowed to hours rather than days. For a Plus subscriber, this is the most underrated 2024 feature shipped.
Where it falls behind
Two complaints have stuck. The first is sycophancy: the model's tendency to agree with whatever framing the user provides. OpenAI rolled back a 2024 fine-tune that made this worse, but the underlying behavior still appears, and it matters more in high-stakes contexts (legal drafts, technical decisions, financial advice) than it does in casual chat. We instruct users to actively prompt against it ("Argue the opposite case, then compare") rather than trust the default response.
The second is rate-limit opacity on the reasoning models. o1 and o3 are the reason most people upgraded to Plus, but the per-message ceiling is not surfaced clearly. A heavy research day ends with the model quietly downshifting to GPT-4o, and the user does not always notice the swap until output quality dips.
On the modality side: image generation through 4o is competent but visibly behind Midjourney v7 on aesthetic decisions (composition, lighting, color palette). Sora is gated to specific use cases and produces shorter clips than the marketing implies. If image or video is your primary need, ChatGPT is not where you should spend.
Who should buy
ChatGPT Plus is the right answer for a generalist who wants one subscription to cover most knowledge-work AI needs. It is the right answer for a non-technical team adopting AI for the first time, where the breadth and brand recognition lower the change-management cost. It is the right answer for individual creators who use voice, image, and chat in the same week.
It is not the right answer for serious coders (Cursor or Claude Code wins), for serious image work (Midjourney), or for long-document research workflows that need source-grounded answers (NotebookLM and Claude with Projects both pull ahead).
The honest comparison
For most readers asking "should I pay for ChatGPT or Claude," the answer is both, eventually — they overlap more than the discourse suggests, and the right model is task-by-task. If you only buy one this quarter, ChatGPT covers more surface area; Claude wins on the work you actually care about being right. See /compare/chatgpt-vs-claude for the head-to-head we maintain quarterly.
Re-check triggers
We will re-rate when GPT-5 ships (latency, reasoning, pricing all reset), when memory gets a corresponding privacy-controls rev, or when the Sora rollout closes the modality gap that currently keeps the score at 4.7 instead of higher.
User Reviews
Flávia Morais
9/9/2023
Amazing tool!
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