ChatGPT: What's free in 2026 and what isn't?
As of August 2026, you can send unlimited texts to ChatGPT. On August 6, OpenAI announced it was making a major change to rate limits for free and Go accounts. Starting the week of August 10, users …
On August 6, OpenAI announced it was making a major change to rate limits for free and Go accounts. Starting the week of August 10, users on those tiers will be able to have unlimited text chats with ChatGPT . The company said it would continue to enforce separate limits for other forms of usage, including image generation and file uploads. Given that change, you might be wondering what limits now apply to free accounts. This article details what's changing.
As of August 2026, OpenAI limits free accounts to using just one of its models: GPT-5.6 Luna. Luna is the smallest of the company's recently released GPT-5.6 family of large language models . Access to the company's other models, including GPT-5.6 Terra and Sol, requires a subscription or paying for API pricing.
Free accounts are also limited to just a single reasoning mode. Tapping the Think button will prompt ChatGPT to take additional time to generate a response; there's no slider like you'll find if you pay for a subscription.
At the free tier, users get access to a handful of other features to round out the ChatGPT experience, including web search and image generation . OpenAI handles file uploads differently than other AI labs. Any documents and images you upload are added to your Library , allowing you to reuse those files at a later date. For free accounts, the Library has a 500MB limit.
ChatGPT's recently updated voice mode is available to free accounts, but it defaults to the smaller Live-1 mini model. Lastly, free accounts can use OpenAI's Codex and Work tools, but usage is limited and in the case of the latter, the only way to access it is through the ChatGPT desktop app .
As mentioned, OpenAI will allow free tier users to send as many text messages to ChatGPT as they want starting the week of August 10. Using the chatbot's thinking mode does not count against a separate limit, provided you're not asking it to process files and use other tools at the same time.
Unfortunately, like Anthropic , OpenAI doesn't share exact limits publicly. The company used to structure its limits around a rolling five-hour window, but it appears to have stopped doing that sometime in July . Now, users just have a single weekly limit. You can check what's left of your limit from the Settings menu, under the Usage section.
Here are the features that have limits when using ChatGPT for free:
Read Full Story at Engadget →
