ChatGPT's free tier goes unlimited — running on OpenAI's smallest model
OpenAI retuned GPT-5.6 Sol for paying users on Wednesday: more direct answers, tighter formatting, a new reasoning-effort slider, and — in internal tests on fact-heavy prompts — responses with factual errors 68% less common than GPT-5.5 Instant. Free and Go users get GPT-5.6 Luna as their default this week, with unlimited text chats and a 'Think' button arriving next week; file, image and tool limits stay.
Why it mattersUnlimited free ChatGPT resets the bar for every competitor, but there's a catch critics quickly flagged: the free tier now defaults to OpenAI's lightest model. It's a growth play priced in compute — and a reminder that 'free and unlimited' says nothing about which brain answers you.
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