OpenAI is giving ChatGPT free users unlimited text chats
The Verge Jay Peters ● Covered by 9 sources
OpenAI is dropping text-chat limits for ChatGPT's free and Go users starting next week. File and image messages still get capped, but plain text chatting becomes unlimited.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Jay Peters — read the original for the full story.
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OpenAI just told free and Go tier ChatGPT users something they've probably been waiting on for a while: the rate limits on text chats are going away. Starting next week, according to OpenAI, you can chat with the bot in plain text as much as you want on those tiers. No more hitting a wall mid-conversation because you asked too many questions in one sitting.
There's a catch, though it's a small one. The unlimited part only covers text. If you're uploading files or images, those messages still count against limits. So the change is real, but it's not a blanket removal of every restriction — just the text-only ones.
Alongside that, OpenAI is rolling out a new "Think" button for free and Go users next week, letting them tap into higher reasoning when a question actually needs it. And this week, those same users are getting bumped up to GPT-5.6 Luna as the default model, a model OpenAI only recently released.
Paying users aren't left out. Plus and Pro subscribers are getting an updated version of GPT-5.6 Sol, which OpenAI says is built to make fewer mistakes on things like dates, numbers, sources, and rules by leaning more effectively on whatever sources it pulls up. OpenAI is also promising more direct answers with tighter formatting, and says the model will skip extra detail when it doesn't actually help the response.
On top of the model update, Plus and Pro users get a new slider that lets them dial up or down how much thought ChatGPT puts into any given answer. Both that slider and the updated Sol model land Thursday, so the paid tiers get their upgrade a few days ahead of the free-tier changes.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Killing text rate limits for free users is a smart move if the goal is keeping people inside ChatGPT instead of bouncing to a competitor's free tier, and it costs OpenAI relatively little since file and image caps stay intact to manage the expensive stuff. The real story here is the accuracy pitch for GPT-5.6 Sol — everyone's chasing fewer hallucinations on dates and numbers right now, and whoever actually nails that reliably, rather than just claiming it, wins the trust war that matters more than any leaderboard score.
Read more about this at: The Verge