ChatGPT

What it does

ChatGPT is OpenAI's chat assistant. You type, speak or upload files, and it answers, drafts text, summarizes documents, searches the web, runs longer "deep research" tasks and creates images. Paid tiers add reasoning ("Thinking") models, an agent mode for multi-step tasks, projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs and access to Codex, OpenAI's coding agent. It runs in the browser, in mobile apps for iOS and Android, in desktop apps for macOS and Windows, and through a Chrome extension; OpenAI also lists its Atlas browser for Apple Silicon Macs.

Pricing and plans

OpenAI lists a Free plan, a low-cost Go plan, Plus, Pro, Business (minimum two users) and Enterprise (custom pricing, annual contracts). OpenAI's help center states that Plus costs $20/month. The pricing page we opened did not display figures for Go, Pro or Business, so those amounts are not given here; check OpenAI's site. OpenAI says purchases are billed in USD, with local-currency billing in a limited set of countries, and that prices may change; taxes and regional pricing can affect what you pay. Go may show ads in the future, according to OpenAI's help center.

Strengths and limits

• Broad feature set in one app: chat, file analysis, web search, image generation, agent mode and coding tools.
• Usage on every plan is capped; OpenAI describes the Free tier as limited and paid tiers as offering more messages, uploads and research runs, without fixed numbers on the pricing page.
• Privacy: OpenAI says consumer conversations may be used to train its models unless you opt out in data controls; content from Business, Enterprise and the API is not used for training by default.
• No Linux desktop app is listed on the download page.