Now That GPT-4o Is Free For Everyone, Do You Really Need To Pay for ChatGPT Plus?

Here's my experience using the free and paid version of ChatGPT.

I’ve been using ChatGPT every day for many months, and it has been a tremendous help to me. It assists me with everyday tasks, learning a foreign language, and with work. I find it incredibly useful!

But here’s the thing — I think the ChatGPT Plus subscription might not be worth it for some of us. Especially now that OpenAI has just made GPT-4o and premium ChatGPT features available to everyone for free.

Source: X

It’s worth mentioning that the free version of GPT-4o has a 5-10 message limitation every 5-6 hours. That said, that might be enough for some users, so, in this article, I’ll review the features that are now available for free and whether the limits will be a problem for you.

1. Limitations of ChatGPT for Plus and free subscribers

Free users have GPT-4o by default with a limit on the number of messages they can send, which is based on current usage and demand (around 5-10 messages every 5-6 hours). When GPT-4o is unavailable, free users are switched back to GPT-3.5 (in a new chat).

Who can benefit from free GPT-4o? Casual ChatGPT users who rarely need to upload files, do data analysis or use vision.

In my case, “Too many requests … try again later”  is not what I would like to see when I have to finish my work, so that’s the main reason I pay for a subscription.

Here are the limitations of ChatGPT Plus according to OpenAI.

As of May 13th 2024, Plus users will be able to send up to 80 messages every 3 hours on GPT-4o and up to 40 messages every 3 hours on GPT-4. We may reduce the limit during peak hours to keep GPT-4 and GPT-4o accessible to the widest number of people.

Again, I need ChatGPT for work/studies but as soon as I’m done with that I would think twice about keeping my subscription as 5-10 messages per day on GPT-4o would be enough for me.

2. GPT-4o vs GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5

Here’s the difference between these 3 models in plain English.

When subscribing to ChatGPT Plus, I was expecting GPT-4 to be better than GPT-3.5 in all areas, but only reasoning and conciseness were improved. GPT-3.5 is still good for everyday tasks!

I didn’t really notice much of a speed difference when generating short texts with GPT-4. On average, it was only about 10–15 seconds faster. But when it came to really long texts, there was a difference. However, it wasn’t enough to make me want to pay $20 for it.

And do I even have to mention the error below that I sometimes get when using GPT-4?

Screenshot

And guess what? It happens every single time during those crazy busy “Peak hours.” So frustrating!

3. Do you actually need the code interpreter?

Besides GPTs, an exclusive feature of ChatGPT Plus is the code interpreter (aka data analysis). ChatGPT code interpreter can help not only coders or analysts but other professionals.

All you have to do is upload an image or dataset to ChatGPT and do some of the tasks below.

1. Turn images into videos.

2. Extract text from images.

3. Create a palette.png by grabbing colors from an image.

4. Optimize images.

5. Get insights from datasets.

6. Make QR codes.

If doing some of these tasks are part of your everyday routine, paying $20 for ChatGPT Plus might be worth it for you.

4. Do you actually need GPTs?

ChatGPT Plus has become extremely popular because of its wide range of GPTs that offer more capabilities than the free version of ChatGPT. All you have to do is install the GPT you want and start using it. However, what if I told you that you can achieve similar results without using them?

In some cases, you only need to do prompt engineering.

For example, one of my favorite GPTs can help you learn a foreign language by providing further explanations and examples to your questions.

However, if you do some prompting and tell ChatGPT to act as a language tutor you can get similar results.

Act as a language tutor. I’ll ask you different questions and in every response, you should provide clear explanations and examples.

You can also tell ChatGPT to act as a language partner.

Act as a language partner. You’ll start a conversation with me about [topic] in [language]. In every response, you should provide your opinion and then ask me a question to keep the conversation going.

Now, not all GPTs can be replaced by using prompt engineering techniques. That said, you can still get the same features outside of ChatGPT.

Let’s consider Photorealistic, a GPT that generates better Midjourney prompts. Guess what? You can get that functionality outside of ChatGPT with tools like PromptPerfect.

To sum it up, if the GPTs you use often can be replaced using prompt engineering techniques or are available for free outside of ChatGPT, then ChatGPT Plus might not be worth it for you.

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In a nutshell, if you use ChatGPT for simple tasks, rarely need the code interpreter/vision, think your favorite GPT can be replaced with external tools or extra prompting, and if the free GPT-4o cap isn’t an issue for you, probably paying $20 for ChatGPT Plus isn’t worth it.