ChatGPT

ChatGPT is where most people start with AI, and for good reason. You type a question, you get an answer. But in 2026, it's become much more than a chatbot. It's a full platform with image generation, coding tools, voice conversations, research agent and over 3 million specialized GPTs built by other users.

What you're actually paying for

The free version gives you GPT-5.5 Instant with limits (10 messages per 5 hours), and after that a less capable model (Mini). Ads are shown on Free and Go in the US, but not elsewhere yet. In short, the free version gives access to much of ChatGPT's functionality, but in very limited amounts. One useful thing the free version lacks is connecting ChatGPT to external tools.