ChatGPT tiers compared: when Free, Plus or Pro make sense

ZDNET's Elyse Betters Picaro examines whether ChatGPT Plus, at $20 per month, is worth it compared with the Free tier and the $200-per-month Pro plan. The piece says Plus is valuable for users who frequently hit Free limits and want priority access, while Pro targets heavy users who need GPT-5.2 Pro and the highest quotas.

The article lists eight main Plus advantages: paid users can enable legacy models (such as GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o3 and o4-mini) that OpenAI restored for subscribers; Plus and Pro get earlier access to GPT-5.2 variants while Free users face tighter message quotas (ZDNET notes Free users can send about 10 GPT-5.2 messages every 5 hours, Plus up to 160 every 3 hours, and Pro has unlimited usage).

Plus also unlocks Sora video generation (Plus limits: videos up to 5 seconds at 720p or 10 seconds at 480p, two concurrent generations; Pro offers up to 20 seconds at 1080p and no watermark), higher image-generation quotas, integrated Codex for coding help (including Codex Max on Plus and Pro), Agent runs (around 40 per month for Plus, about 400 for Pro), and larger Deep Research allowances (Free ≈ five lightweight tasks per month, Plus ≈ 25 mixed tasks, Pro ≈ 250).

ZDNET emphasizes that the Free tier is still capable for casual use but comes with stricter caps across messaging, images, browsing, Deep Research and other tools.

Key Topics

Tech, Chatgpt, Openai, Chatgpt Plus, Sora