ChatGPT Guides
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See also: Guides, ChatGPT and Prompt engineering
ChatGPT Guides is the AI Wiki gateway to how-to material for ChatGPT, the conversational assistant built by OpenAI. The article links every walkthrough, tutorial, and reference page that explains how to sign up, write prompts, build Custom GPTs, use voice and vision, work with files, run code, browse the web, and connect ChatGPT to other tools. It also collects context on pricing tiers, privacy controls, and common pitfalls. ChatGPT was first released on 30 November 2022 and has since grown into a multimodal product that runs on the web, on iOS and Android phones, on macOS and Windows desktop apps, and through the OpenAI API. The guides on this hub cover the consumer product (ChatGPT) rather than direct API integration, which has its own gateway at OpenAI API.
The pages indexed here treat ChatGPT as a working tool. Guidance focuses on tasks an end user can actually perform: opening an account, choosing a plan, writing a prompt that returns useful output, attaching files, calling a Custom GPT, turning on memory, switching to voice, and so on. Theory pages such as Large Language Model, Transformers, and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) are linked from this hub but live in their own articles.
A new user can create a free ChatGPT account at chatgpt.com using an email address, a Google account, an Apple ID, or a Microsoft account. OpenAI requires a phone number to verify the account on first sign-in, which is used to deter abuse. After verification the user lands on the chat interface and can start a conversation immediately. The account also unlocks access to the iOS app, the Android app, and the desktop apps for macOS and Windows, all of which sync conversation history across devices when signed in.
OpenAI offers a tiered set of consumer and business plans. Pricing and quotas have changed several times since 2023, so the table below lists each plan and the model access OpenAI has publicly described.
| Plan | Monthly price (USD) | Who it is for | Notable features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | New users and casual use | Access to a default model with limited usage, basic data analysis, image uploads, voice chat, and access to Custom GPTs created by others |
| Plus | $20 | Individuals who use ChatGPT often | Higher message caps, faster response times during peak hours, advanced voice mode, image generation, deep research, and access to higher-end models |
| Pro | $200 | Power users and researchers | Near-unlimited access to the most capable models, including extended reasoning models in the OpenAI o-series, longer context, and priority access to new features |
| Team | $25 per seat (annual) or $30 per seat (monthly) | Small teams and businesses | Higher message caps than Plus, a shared workspace, admin console, and a commitment that team data is not used to train OpenAI models by default |
| Enterprise | Custom | Large organizations | Single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, longer context windows, advanced data privacy, and a custom data retention policy |
| Edu | Custom | Universities | Enterprise-grade features for accredited institutions, with admin tools tailored to campus rollouts |
| API | Pay as you go | Developers | Token-priced access to models through the OpenAI API, the OpenAI Responses API, and the OpenAI Realtime API |
Message caps and model availability shift over time as OpenAI rolls out new models. The official source of truth is the OpenAI pricing page and the in-product model picker.
ChatGPT runs in any modern browser at chatgpt.com. OpenAI also publishes:
All clients share the same account, the same conversation history, and the same memory store. Users can start a conversation on the phone and finish it on the desktop.
The quality of any ChatGPT answer depends on the prompt. The hub links to long-form material on writing better prompts:
A few practical habits cover most everyday prompts. State the role you want the model to take. State the task in a single clear sentence. Provide context, examples, and constraints. Ask for the format of the answer (a bulleted list, a JSON object, a table). For complex tasks, ask the model to think step by step or to draft an outline before writing the final answer. When an answer is wrong, push back with a follow-up message instead of starting a new chat: ChatGPT can revise inside the same context.
A Custom GPT is a packaged version of ChatGPT with a name, an icon, a system prompt, optional knowledge files, optional tools (web browsing, code interpreter, image generation), and optional API actions. OpenAI launched the feature in November 2023 at DevDay and opened a public catalog called the GPT Store in January 2024.
A Plus, Pro, Team, or Enterprise subscriber can build a Custom GPT in a guided UI:
At the time of writing, the GPT Store hosts hundreds of thousands of Custom GPTs across categories such as writing, productivity, research, programming, lifestyle, and education. Notable examples include GPT-4 (Custom GPT), ChatGPT Classic, and many third-party tools for specific workflows.
Before Custom GPTs, OpenAI shipped a plugin system that let third parties expose tools to ChatGPT through manifests and OpenAPI specs. The flagship example was the ChatGPT Retrieval Plugin, which let a user point ChatGPT at a private vector store of documents.
OpenAI deprecated the plugin store on 9 April 2024 and removed plugin features from ChatGPT during 2024. Existing functionality moved into Custom GPTs (for tool-style integrations) and Connectors (for managed enterprise data sources). The plugin pages on this wiki are kept for historical reference.
ChatGPT is multimodal: it accepts and produces text, images, audio, and (in some clients) live video.
Vision and voice work together with the rest of the system. A user can speak a question, attach a photo, and receive a written or spoken answer that references both inputs.
ChatGPT has a memory feature that stores small pieces of information across conversations. When the user mentions a fact about themselves (their name, their job, an ongoing project, a writing style), ChatGPT can save it and use it later without being told again. Memory can be inspected, edited, and cleared from Settings under Personalization. A temporary chat starts with no memory access and is not saved.
Custom Instructions are a related feature. The user fills in two text boxes that describe themselves and how they want ChatGPT to respond. Those instructions are added to every new chat as a hidden system message. Users often combine Custom Instructions with memory to lock in tone, formatting, and recurring constraints.
ChatGPT can execute Python in a sandboxed virtual machine. The feature was announced in March 2023 as Code Interpreter, renamed Advanced Data Analysis later in 2023, and rolled into the default toolset of capable models in 2024. Inside the sandbox the model can:
For straightforward data work, this is often faster than writing a notebook from scratch. The OpenAI Codex line and the Codex (OpenAI) coding agent share lineage with this feature; the related Programming with ChatGPT guide is linked from this hub.
ChatGPT Search lets the assistant fetch live information from the web. The feature was launched as SearchGPT in July 2024, opened to ChatGPT Plus and Team in October 2024, and rolled out to free users during 2025. Search returns linked citations alongside the model's answer, so a user can click through to the source. Typical use cases include checking news, researching products, finding recent papers, and pulling specific facts that postdate the model's training cutoff. ChatGPT chooses when to search automatically, but the user can also force a search with a button or a slash command.
OpenAI Operator is a research preview agent that controls a remote web browser to perform tasks on the user's behalf. Operator launched as a Pro-tier feature on 23 January 2025 and extended ChatGPT's reach from a chat box to a system that can fill in forms, click buttons, and complete checkouts. Through 2025 OpenAI folded Operator into a broader Agent Mode in ChatGPT, which combines browsing, code execution, and tool use to plan and complete multi-step jobs.
Agent Mode and Operator share infrastructure with the OpenAI Agents SDK, which gives developers a programmatic way to build similar agents on top of the OpenAI API.
OpenAI documents data handling in its Privacy Policy and in the in-product Data Controls page. Key points for individual users:
For research on adversarial attacks against this kind of system, see Prompt injection and How to Steal ChatGPT-4, GPT-4 and other Proprietary LLMs.
The model picker shows different model names depending on the plan. The list below sketches the main families that have appeared inside the chat product. Detailed history lives in the linked articles.
| Family | Notable models | What they are good at |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-3.5 | gpt-3.5-turbo | The default in the original Free tier; cheap and fast. |
| GPT-4 | gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo | The first model in ChatGPT with strong reasoning and long context. |
| GPT-4o | gpt-4o, gpt-4o mini | Multimodal model (text, vision, audio). Default for Free and Plus through 2024 and 2025. |
| GPT-5 | gpt-5 family | Successor flagship released in 2025, used for general chat on paid plans. |
| o-series | o1, o3, o4-mini | Reasoning models that think before they answer; covered at OpenAI o-series. |
Reasoning models from the OpenAI o-series tend to take longer to answer and are better at math, code, and multi-step problems. Standard chat models tend to be faster and more conversational. Most users mix the two depending on the task.
ChatGPT connects to other software in several ways:
For server-to-server integration without the chat UI, developers usually go straight to the OpenAI API, OpenAI Responses API, or Azure OpenAI Service.
A short list of issues that come up in the day-to-day use of ChatGPT: