OpenAI is greatly expanding the free plan for ChatGPT. Users on Free and the low-cost Go plan will get unlimited text chat, and the default model moves up to GPT-5.6 Luna. OpenAI used to cap free users' messages per hour to push them toward paid plans. That strategy is being dropped.
Unlimited Free Chat: 3 Things Change
1. Unlimited text chat on the free plan: the hourly limit goes away
2. Default model moves from GPT-5.5 Instant to GPT-5.6 Luna: free gets smarter
3. Paid plans move up too: Plus and Pro upgrade to GPT-5.6 Sol and gain a reasoning-effort control
What Free Users Get First: Luna and Unlimited Chat
1. Unlimited text chat
The standard text chat cap goes away for Free and Go users. Until now, free accounts had a limit on messages per hour. Soon you can keep chatting without it. But file uploads, image generation, voice, and similar features still have limits. Unlimited applies only to standard text chat.
2. GPT-5.6 Luna as the default model
The default model for Free and Go users changes to GPT-5.6 Luna. Luna is a lightweight (nano) model in the GPT-5.6 family. It is light, yet a big improvement over the previous default, GPT-5.5 Instant.
Key Luna specs (per OpenAI):
- Context window: 1,050,000 tokens, enough to handle long documents and codebases in one pass
- Knowledge cutoff: February 16, 2026
- Multimodal: accepts text and image input (no audio or video)
- Accuracy: 62% fewer factual errors than GPT-5.5 Instant
3. The "Think" button
Free and Go users also get a Think button for deeper reasoning on hard problems. When you press it, the model thinks longer before it answers, which helps with complex questions.
What Plus and Pro Still Offer
| Plan | Monthly price (USD) | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited text chat, Luna as default model, Think button |
| Go | $8 | Same as Free, plus existing extras stay |
| Plus | $20 | GPT-5.6 Sol upgrade, reasoning-effort control |
| Pro | $200 | GPT-5.6 Sol plus maximum reasoning option |
GPT-5.6 Sol: the higher-tier model coming to Plus and Pro only. It makes 68% fewer factual errors than GPT-5.5 Instant, uses less unnecessary formatting, and gives more direct, focused answers.
Reasoning-effort slider: paid users can control how deeply the model thinks on each answer, from quick everyday questions to complex tasks.
Note: the Sol upgrade applies only to ChatGPT chat. The Work and Codex versions are unchanged.
OpenAI Widens the Free Tier and Shakes Up the Subscription Race
1. The gap between free and paid narrows. Free users can now use a fairly strong model without limits, which breaks the old formula that free means you can't get anything good. Some read this as OpenAI, with its 1 billion weekly users, shifting from pushing paid conversion to growing its user base and winning on ecosystem.
2. Lower burden for small-scale work. For developers and business owners who want to try AI agents and automation, unlimited free text greatly lowers testing costs. Keep in mind, though, that API pricing is separate. Unlimited chat applies only to the ChatGPT app. The API you call from your own programs follows existing pricing.
3. Pressure on competitors grows. As free models get better, rivals that keep their strongest models behind paid subscriptions will be forced to rethink their strategy. It will be worth watching how this announcement affects pricing across the AI subscription market.
Unlimited Chat, API Priced Separately
OpenAI has overturned the idea that free is just a teaser and is giving even free users unlimited access to a frontier-class model. Removing the chat cap looks less like a simple perk and more like a strategic move to protect market share.
This week, the default model switches to Luna. Next week, unlimited chat, the Think button, and the Sol reasoning slider roll out in stages (on web, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS).
Related: OpenAI announcement · The Verge · CNET