ChatGPT
OpenAI's flagship assistant, now with always-on agents
- Overview
- OpenAI's ChatGPT runs on GPT-6 Astra and spans chat, autonomous agents (Dots), coding (Codex), and long-horizon research in a single desktop and web application. Free users get unlimited text conversations supported by ads; paid tiers unlock agentic workflows, Deep Research, voice, and higher model access. At DevDay 2026, OpenAI added Dots — always-on agents with their own cloud computers — alongside ChatGPT Space for shared team-and-agent workspaces.
- Why it matters
- ChatGPT is the default starting point for AI adoption in most organizations, which gives OpenAI a distribution advantage that purpose-built tools struggle to match. The DevDay 2026 shift toward always-on Dots agents moves the product from a query-response tool toward persistent background labor — a direct challenge to RPA and workflow-automation vendors. Practitioners should watch the pricing trajectory: the Pro tier has tripled in structure within 12 months, and Business Premium at $100–125 per seat puts it in enterprise software territory. Geographic restrictions on Dots (currently blocked in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland) also create compliance surface area worth tracking.
- In practice
- Revenue and ops teams use ChatGPT Work for recurring deliverables — weekly pipeline summaries, draft SOWs, competitive briefs — with Dots handling the scheduled retrieval and drafting overnight. Developers lean on Codex for PR review and multi-repo refactors via the integrated desktop app. The main honest limitation: Dots and the most capable agentic features require Pro 100 or higher, so teams on Plus or Business Standard still hit the older, less autonomous feature set — the value cliff between $20 and $100/month is steep.
- Best for
- Power users and small teams who need a single platform for writing, coding, research, and autonomous agent tasks without managing separate AI tools
- Pricing
- Free (ad-supported, unlimited text on a lighter model); Go $8/mo; Plus $20/mo; Pro $100/mo (Pro 100), $200/mo (Pro 200), or $500/mo (Pro 500, includes Ultrafast); Business Standard $20/seat/mo (annual) or $25/seat/mo (monthly), Business Premium $100/seat/mo (annual) or $125/seat/mo (monthly); Enterprise custom
Key features
- Dots: always-on GPT-6 Astra agents with their own cloud computer (Pro/Business Premium)
- Deep Research for long-horizon, sourced research reports with cited outputs
- Codex for agentic coding with inline diff editing and multi-repo support
- ChatGPT Space: shared workspace for human-agent collaboration on documents and projects
- Multimodal input and output across text, image (GPT Image 2.5), and voice
Quick answers
- What is ChatGPT?
- OpenAI's ChatGPT runs on GPT-6 Astra and spans chat, autonomous agents (Dots), coding (Codex), and long-horizon research in a single desktop and web application. Free users get unlimited text conversations supported by ads; paid tiers unlock agentic workflows, Deep Research, voice, and higher model access. At DevDay 2026, OpenAI added Dots — always-on agents with their own cloud computers — alongside ChatGPT Space for shared team-and-agent workspaces.
- Why does ChatGPT matter?
- ChatGPT is the default starting point for AI adoption in most organizations, which gives OpenAI a distribution advantage that purpose-built tools struggle to match. The DevDay 2026 shift toward always-on Dots agents moves the product from a query-response tool toward persistent background labor — a direct challenge to RPA and workflow-automation vendors. Practitioners should watch the pricing trajectory: the Pro tier has tripled in structure within 12 months, and Business Premium at $100–125 per seat puts it in enterprise software territory. Geographic restrictions on Dots (currently blocked in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland) also create compliance surface area worth tracking.
- What is ChatGPT best for?
- Power users and small teams who need a single platform for writing, coding, research, and autonomous agent tasks without managing separate AI tools
- How much does ChatGPT cost?
- Free (ad-supported, unlimited text on a lighter model); Go $8/mo; Plus $20/mo; Pro $100/mo (Pro 100), $200/mo (Pro 200), or $500/mo (Pro 500, includes Ultrafast); Business Standard $20/seat/mo (annual) or $25/seat/mo (monthly), Business Premium $100/seat/mo (annual) or $125/seat/mo (monthly); Enterprise custom
Seen in recent stories
Where ChatGPT showed up in the last 90 days of KeyNews editions.
Know the terms
Glossary entries that explain what ChatGPT is built on.
Agent
An AI system that can autonomously plan, use tools, and execute multi-step tasks on behalf of a user. Agents are the next major product paradigm after chatbots, with every major lab shipping agent frameworks.
Agentic workflow
A multi-step process where an AI agent plans, executes, evaluates, and iterates on tasks with minimal human intervention. Unlike single-turn prompts, agentic workflows involve loops, branching logic, and tool calls that unfold over minutes or hours.
Multi-modal
An AI model that can process and generate multiple data types, such as text, images, audio, and video in a single system. Multi-modal models like GPT-4o and Gemini are converging previously separate AI capabilities.
Frontier model
The most capable AI model available at any given time, representing the current state of the art. Frontier models push the boundaries of what AI can do and are typically the most expensive to train and run.
Models behind it
The models ChatGPT runs on, offers, or competes with.
New tools drop every week.
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