If you’re thinking of buying into a bot, you might be wondering if ChatGPT Plus is worth it and what the differences generally are between the free version and a paid subscription.
ChatGPT is course regarded as one of the most popular bot apps out there and for good reason: its 2022 launch redefined the standards of what artificial intelligence is capable of, provoking multiple ethical discussions around the good, the bad and the ugly in the process.
While some controversies remain around the technology, including how ChatGPT uses saved data, the platform is widely used, with over 100 million users according to recent data.
With new features, such as ChatGPT plugins, now having joined the platform, here’s what to expect from ChatGPT Paid vs Free.
See: ChatGPT reviews - Pros and cons
What is ChatGPT Plus and is it GPT-4?
ChatGPT is a subscription plan offered by OpenAI for enhanced access to the ChatGPT language model. Subscribing to ChatGPT Plus provides several benefits, including general access to ChatGPT during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements.
ChatGPT Plus includes GPT-4 access. Up until July 6 2023, you could only access ChatGPT-4 through a paid ChatGPT Plus subscription. From early July, OpenAI offered GPT-4 general availability to all paying API customers. ChatGPT Plus, however, remains the best way for general users to access the more advanced model.
Open AI
What is the difference between ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Free?
ChatGPT Free is a basic version of the ChatGPT platform with limited access to features, while ChatGPT Plus is the subscription plan that provides users with enhanced access.
ChatGPT Plus provides access to GPT-4, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements. Additionally, ChatGPT Plus includes access to plugins, which provide users with new capabilities and functions.
With ChatGPT Plus, users also have access to more data and can create more complex projects with the platform. ChatGPT Plus also includes additional features, such as priority customer service. Ultimately, ChatGPT Plus offers a greater range of features and options for users looking to get the most out of the ChatGPT platform.
How much is ChatGPT Plus?
A ChatGPT Plus membership currently costs $20 per month, which is around half the amount early access users initially paid for the service at $42 per month.
How to get ChatGPT Plus
The easiest way to get ChatGPT Plus is to upgrade using the option within the ChatGPT Free platform itself.
Visit the login page to sign in with your credentials or sign up for an account using a Google or Microsoft account.
Once you have logged into the chatbot, navigate to the bottom of the left menu and you should see a message that says ‘Upgrade to Plus.’
Writer's own
Click on this option to bring up the subscription options, then click on the green ‘Upgrade Plan’ to go to the next screen if you are happy with your choice.
You will then be taken to a checkout page which details payment information, and requires you to enter typical payment information including email address and payment method.
Now hit the green ‘Subscribe’ button once you have entered your details. You have now changed over to ChatGPT Plus.
What features do you get with ChatGPT Free?
GPT-3.5 model
ChatGPT Free is based on GPT-3.5 architecture, which is the predecessor to the current GPT-4 model available for Plus subscribers.
GPT-3.5 can understand as well as generate natural language or code, and is able to sufficiently engage in conversations about a wide range of topics, but it lacks the ability to solve more complicated puzzles or answer more complex queries. GPT-3.5 can best be described as a text-to-text model, while GPT-4 is more data–to-text. For example, GPT-4 is able to accept images as part of a prompt.
One key drawback of both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 is that they were trained on text and code that was published before September 2021, meaning they’re both unable to access or process more recent data or events after this cut-off date.
OpenAI
Full access to the chatbot - with some limitations
There are no specific usage limits to the free version of ChatGPT so users can try out multiple prompts and converse with the chatbot with relatively few restrictions.
The key difference between ChatGPT Plus and Free is that users using the free version of ChatGPT don’t get access to GPT-4, the most recent version of the model, and may not be able to access the bot during periods of high demand.
What features do you get with ChatGPT Plus?
GPT-4 model
While ChatGPT-3.5 can sufficiently provide answers to text-based user queries, GPT-4 offers advanced capabilities with a greater ability to understand much more complex problems and its context than its predecessor.
For example, GPT-4 can understand dialects, respond to emotions expressed in the text and has multilingual capabilities. It can work with over 25 languages other than English, including French and Spanish.
GPT-4 can also process both text and image data so can accept images as part of a prompt, whereas GPT-3.5 is only able to understand and generate natural language or code. While ChatGPT-4 is still limited to training data up to September 2021, you can instruct it to search the Internet with Bing which gives it a better advantage than GPT-3.5.
GPT-4 can be used for more complex tasks in conjunction with the plugins feature, as detailed below.
OpenAI
ChatGPT plugins
One of the key features of ChatGPT-4 are plugins, which were added in March 2023 offering Plus subscribers the ability to extend the capabilities of the platform whenever they added a new plugin to the chatbot.
Available from multiple providers including Expedia, Zapier, Slack, and Instacart, these are generally free and easy to apply via an in-platform store, offering users the option to tap into specific expert knowledge, from where best to book a vacation to answering complex mathematical formulas.
While ChatGPT’s free version can answer queries using its own knowledge base, such as itinerary planning, plugins unlock much more specific expertise to the answer and can even perform a wider range of tasks, including reading from multiple sources such as web links or PDFs and can display real-time visualization data within the platform.
Code Interpreter
One of the newer plugins to hit the platform is Code Interpreter, which is one of OpenAI’s own in-house add-ons that uses Python to handle uploads and downloads. It allows ChatGPT Plus users to “run code, optionally with access to files you've uploaded. You can ask ChatGPT to analyze data, create charts, edit files, perform math, etc.”
According to OpenAI, Code Interpreter excels at solving mathematical problems, both quantitative and qualitative, performing data analysis and visualization and can convert files between formats.
OpenAI
Available even when demand is high
There’s a strong chance you’ve gone to use ChatGPT only for it to display the message “ChatGPT is at capacity right now”. With ChatGPT Plus, users are able to access the platform at peak times, regardless of demand.
Faster response speed
If you’re looking to bypass wait times and want quicker response rates, ChatGPT Plus generally offers faster response speed, but it has been noted that GPT-4 can be slower than GPT-3.5 due to the increase in its parameters.
In saying that, you can choose which model you want to use with ChatGPT Plus simply by using the toggle tab that’s located at the top of the platform window. This allows you to switch between GPT-3.5 and 4 anytime.
Priority access to new features
One of the advantages of ChatGPT Plus is you’re always guaranteed to receive access to new features first that aren’t available on the free tier.
What are the limitations of ChatGPT Plus?
While GPT-4 is regarded as much more advanced than GPT-3.5, it still has many known limitations such as social biases, hallucinations, and adversarial prompts.
You can’t guarantee your query won’t be prone to “hallucinations,” whereby the platform claims inaccurate information as fact, which is a common problem of AI.
While GPT-4 does represent a significant improvement over its predecessor with its advanced capability to understand and generate queries, it still lacks up-to-date information beyond September 2021 which can be a frustrating problem if you don’t want to turn to Bing for newer information.
Writer's own
It’s worth noting too that, although you can access GPT-4 during periods of high demand, it is currently limited to 25 messages every three hours, even for ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
Is ChatGPT Plus worth it?
ChatGPT Plus can be worth it, depending on your usage and level of interest in the platform’s key features.
If you’re looking to process more complex information beyond simplistic text prompts, ChatGPT Plus’s access to GPT-4 and plugins allows for the handling of much more complex queries and greater processing and visualization of data. Plugins, in particular, open up a whole new world of possibilities when using the platform and is arguably its strongest feature.
For instance, if you wanted to summarize a page from the web, you could simply install a plugin to handle web links or search through complex PDFs using the appropriate add-on. In short, taking out a ChatGPT Plus subscription vastly widens the platform’s capabilities.
That’s not to say that ChatGPT Free does not offer a sufficient service in its own right. While all the benefits of ChatGPT Plus are attractive, the free version is likely good enough to tackle basic queries for many users.
