ChatGPT review, pricing and verdict

Last updated: 2026-10-22

ChatGPT is OpenAI's AI assistant, which OpenAI says is used by more than a billion people weekly. It combines chat, the Codex coding agent, ChatGPT Work, image generation, voice and always-on dots agents, running on the GPT-6 model family released through September 2026.

About ChatGPT

ChatGPT is OpenAI's conversational AI assistant, launched in November 2022. OpenAI says 1.2 billion people use it each week (DevDay recap, 29 September 2026), up from the 900 million it reported in February. The model line moved fast in September: GPT-6 Astra on 3 September, GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna on 22 September, and GPT-6.1 Sol on 29 September. OpenAI's 7 October release brought GPT-6 with Intelligent UI to the Chat tab: Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise run GPT-6 Sol there, Free and Go run GPT-6 Luna, and the Pro reasoning option still uses GPT-6 Astra.

The plan ladder has six individual rungs. Free gives unlimited everyday text chats on GPT-6 Luna under OpenAI's abuse guardrails. Go adds more messages, uploads, image creation and memory. Plus adds projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs and wider access to Codex and ChatGPT Work. Pro comes in three usage tiers and adds Astra Pro and dots, the always-on agent covered in our guide to what OpenAI's dots do. Only the highest Pro tier includes Ultrafast speed, which OpenAI says speeds up generation in Codex severalfold.

DevDay 2026 pushed ChatGPT further toward shared work. ChatGPT Space and Pages give teams a common place to build with the assistant, team tasks run on a schedule or on an event such as a new email, and @ChatGPT now works inside Slack and Microsoft Teams for Business and Enterprise. Plugin extensions and MCP Events open the platform to outside developers. Codex Security scans GitHub repositories on demand or on a schedule. Collaborative slides shipped on 16 October for eligible Pro, Business and Enterprise users with Space access.

Browser work has moved from a product to an extension. OpenAI retired its Atlas browser, which stopped working on 9 August 2026, and now points users to the ChatGPT desktop app for deeper browser agent work and to the ChatGPT browser extension, which lets Work and Codex use open tabs as context and finish browser tasks. The extension also supports Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi, and OpenAI lists site tools through WebMCP as a desktop-browser feature rather than an extension one.

The other side of the case is real. ChatGPT is a generalist, so a team that lives in an editor will often do better with Cursor, while a buyer who mainly needs cited research may prefer the answer engine at Perplexity. Among chat-first rivals, the nearest in spirit is Claude, which competes head-on for the same budget, as do Gemini for Google shops and Grok for X users; the full field sits in the AI chatbots directory. Plan gating is also hard to follow: the same feature can sit on Pro, Business and Enterprise but not Plus, and new subscribers to the middle Pro tier get a smaller allowance than existing ones. For a side-by-side with another agent product, see Manus vs ChatGPT Agent, or let Smart Match pick from your own requirements. Company background lives on the OpenAI page.

Pricing

Free is $0 with unlimited everyday text chats under abuse guardrails; ads appear for some US users. Go is listed at $8 a month in the US as of the July check, and OpenAI bills it in local currency in many countries (IDR 75,000 in Indonesia on 1 October 2026). Plus is $20 a month.

Pro has three plans: Pro 100 at $100, Pro 200 at $200 and Pro 500 at $500 a month. Pro 500 carries 25 times the Plus allowance and is the only Pro plan with Ultrafast; new Pro 200 subscribers get a lower allowance than existing ones, who keep theirs until 29 October 2026. Business has a Standard seat at $25 a month ($20 on annual billing) and a Premium seat at $125 a month ($100 annual), with a 2-seat minimum.

Enterprise is custom-quoted. Pro is billed monthly only. API prices per million input and output tokens: GPT-6 Astra $10 and $50, GPT-6 Sol $2 and $10, GPT-6.1 Sol $2 and $10 ($0.10 cached input), GPT-6 Luna $0.10 and $0.50.

Key Features

• GPT-6 Model Family: GPT-6 Astra (3 September) is OpenAI's top model, reporting 96.0% on GPQA Diamond and priced at $10 and $50 per million tokens in the API. GPT-6 Sol and Luna followed later in September at half the price of their predecessors, and a further Sol release came days after at $2 and $10. In Chat, Plus and above get GPT-6 Sol while Free and Go get GPT-6 Luna, per OpenAI release notes dated 7 October.
• Dots (Always-On Agents): Dots are always-on agents that work in the background on a user's behalf. OpenAI lists them for Pro and Business Premium in eligible markets, and as an admin-enabled beta for Enterprise, Edu and Healthcare.
• ChatGPT Work (Autonomous Agentic Mode): ChatGPT Work, launched in July 2026, gathers information across connected apps and files, breaks a job into steps and returns finished outputs such as spreadsheets, documents and web apps. Since DevDay 2026 it also offers Agents API computer use on the top Pro tier and Enterprise, plus Ultrafast speed on that Pro tier.
• Codex (Agentic Coding): Codex runs in the terminal, IDE, web and mobile apps, and since DevDay 2026 in the cloud with reusable environments on Plus and above. The refreshed CLI adds voice steering and an /agents view, Code Review runs automatic cloud reviews of GitHub pull requests and GitLab merge requests, and Codex Security Cloud scans whole repositories for Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu.
• ChatGPT Space and Pages: A Space is a shared home where teammates, ChatGPT and a dot build on common knowledge, and Pages are documents built for people and agents to edit together. Both are available on Pro, Business and Enterprise; mobile creation and editing are listed as coming soon.
• Team Tasks and Workplace Chat: Business and Enterprise teams can share pages, slides and plugins, and delegate recurring work as team tasks that run on a schedule or on events such as a new email or Slack message. @ChatGPT also works in Slack and Microsoft Teams without an individual license for each teammate.
• Plugins, MCP Events and Sites: Plugin extensions give outside developers a sidebar home and interactive panels inside ChatGPT on all plans. MCP Events let plugins start automations when something happens in a connected app, and supported plugins can now be hosted in Sites on Business, Enterprise, Healthcare and Edu.
• Sign in with ChatGPT: Plus and Pro subscribers can let 16 partner tools, including Cognition's Devin, Notion and Vercel, draw on their plan allowance, with a cap per tool. Account sign-in without allowance sharing is available globally.
• Image Generation (ChatGPT Images 2.0): Generates, edits and remixes images from text prompts natively within ChatGPT using the Images 2.0 model, successor to DALL-E. Go adds more image creation than Free, and Pro lists unlimited, faster creation subject to abuse guardrails.
• Scheduled Tasks: The Scheduled page (June 2026) lets users create reminders, recurring work and monitoring tasks set for specific times or broad windows such as morning or evening. It is listed from the Plus plan upward.
• Memory Controls: Memory retains context across conversations for paid users. Users can delete individual memories, edit summaries by text or highlighting, turn memory off, or use Temporary Chat to avoid creating any.
• Voice Mode (GPT-Live-1): ChatGPT Voice runs on GPT-Live-1 for paid users and GPT-Live-1 mini for free users (upgrade of July 8, 2026), with simultaneous listening and speaking, web search inside voice sessions and memory recall on iOS, Android and web. 1-800-CHATGPT offers phone access in the US without an account.
• ChatGPT Health: Health in ChatGPT rolled out to logged-in US users aged 18 and over on web and iOS on July 23, 2026. It connects Apple Health and medical-record providers to compare lab results over time and summarize changes, and is not designed to diagnose or replace a clinician.
• 60-Plus Application Connectors: Business and Enterprise users get native integrations with Slack, Google Drive, GitHub, OneDrive and more than 60 other apps, so ChatGPT can reference live organizational data in its answers.
• OpenAI Presence (Enterprise Agent Platform): Presence, launched July 22, 2026, lets enterprises deploy voice and chat agents for customer and internal workflows with guardrails, simulations and approved-action controls. OpenAI reports it resolves 75% of inbound calls on its own English-language support line.

Pros

• One subscription covers chat, Codex, ChatGPT Work, image generation and voice, so a buyer does not need separate tools for each job.
• OpenAI halved API prices for Sol and Luna in September, and prices its newest Sol release at a fifth of Astra, which lowers the cost of building on the same models.
• The plan ladder runs from a free tier through Plus to three Pro tiers, so usage can scale without changing product.
• Team features such as Space, Pages, team tasks and @ChatGPT in Slack and Teams are among the broadest on the market for Business and Enterprise buyers.

Cons

• Heavy use of Deep Research, Codex or ChatGPT Work on Plus can hit allowance limits, which pushes power users toward a Pro tier.
• Trustpilot showed 1.6 out of 5 from more than 2,800 reviews at the July 2026 check, driven by billing, support access and free-tier limits.
• The newest Sol and Luna models sit in ChatGPT Work and Codex for now, with OpenAI saying they are absent from the Chat tab.
• Feature gating is hard to follow: Space, Pages, dots and Codex Security Cloud sit on different plan combinations, and new middle-tier Pro subscribers receive a lower allowance than before.
• Top-end API pricing is steep for Astra, and smaller jobs are better served by Sol or Luna.

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