ChatGPT free

Yes. ChatGPT has a free version: you sign up with an email address and you can chat, ask it to write or summarise something for you and upload the odd file. The difference with the paid plan is how much you can use it and with which model: once you use up your allowance, it switches you to a more limited one or you have to wait. That's how it worked in September 2026, and OpenAI changes it often. For trying out AI and solving everyday questions, it's more than enough.

What confuses beginners most is that "ChatGPT" isn't just one thing. Underneath there are several models (the "brain" that generates the answers), and the free version doesn't always give you the same one; that's why one day it answers brilliantly and the next it seems to have got out of bed on the wrong side. It's also worth knowing that what you write may be used to train their models unless you turn that off in the settings, so be careful about pasting in client data. And watch out for apps advertised as "free ChatGPT" that aren't made by OpenAI: the real one lives at chatgpt.com.

ChatGPT was my way in, like almost everyone's; today I work mainly with Claude, although I still use OpenAI for a few things. Why I made the switch, what I miss and what I still open ChatGPT for, I explain in "Why I switched from ChatGPT to Claude". And how far its free version goes compared with the other AIs I use, I go through in "Can you work professionally with free AI tools?".