OpenAI removes chat limits for free ChatGPT users

Free ChatGPT users are about to lose one of the platform's most persistent annoyances: the message cap. Starting the week of August 10, OpenAI is lifting rate limits on text-based conversations for both Free and Go tier users, ending a restriction that had capped heavy users at roughly 10 messages every five hours.

The change arrives alongside a swap under the hood. GPT-5.6 Luna becomes the new default model for Free and Go users, replacing GPT-5.5. OpenAI says internal testing found Luna produces 62% fewer factual errors than GPT-5.5 Instant, a meaningful jump for a tier that had previously been steered toward the company's lighter, less capable models.

Paying subscribers get their own upgrade. Plus and Pro users will receive a refreshed GPT-5.6 Sol model on Thursday, tuned for faster research, writing, and planning tasks with tighter, more direct formatting. OpenAI reports a 68% drop in factual errors for Sol versus GPT-5.5 Instant, particularly on questions involving dates, numbers, sources, and rule-based logic. Notably, Sol stays unchanged inside ChatGPT Work and Codex, so enterprise and coding workflows won't see the same behavioral shift.

Two new controls are rolling out across tiers. A "Think" button will let Free and Go users tap into deeper reasoning for harder questions on demand, rather than relying on whichever model is generating replies by default. Plus and Pro subscribers get a more granular version of that idea: a slider that lets them dial the amount of reasoning ChatGPT applies before it answers.

Not everything opens up. File uploads, image generation, and other tool-based interactions remain capped for free users even as text chat goes unlimited, so the change is specifically about conversational volume rather than a blanket removal of usage restrictions.

Why now

The timing lines up with scale. OpenAI says ChatGPT recently crossed 1 billion weekly users, and removing friction from the free tier's core chat experience is a straightforward way to keep that base engaged while nudging power users toward paid plans for everything text can't cover.

There's also a hardware signal buried in the same wave of reporting. Details are emerging about an OpenAI device built in partnership with Jony Ive's design firm LoveFrom, described as a portable, metal-bodied unit meant to move around a user's home. No launch date or pricing has surfaced, but its appearance alongside this software update suggests OpenAI is treating ChatGPT's access model and its physical product ambitions as parts of the same push to widen how, and how often, people reach for it.

Sourcing on a couple of details diverges slightly. Some outlets frame Luna's rollout as already completed, while others describe it as forthcoming, and the two headline error-reduction figures (62% for Luna, 68% for Sol) apply to different models, not the same one measured twice, though a few reports conflate them.