OpenAI says GPT-4.1 model is now available in ChatGPT

Exactly one month after launching its latest large language model, OpenAI is making GPT-4.1 available as an option in ChatGPT.

The company posted on X today that it’s bringing GPT-4.1 to ChatGPT “by popular request” and making it available from today. It will be available to ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Team users, accessible via the “more models” dropdown menu in the model picker section. The company said that Enterprise and Edu users will also be able to use the new model in the coming weeks.

In addition, OpenAI said GPT-4.1 mini will replace the older GPT-4o mini model in ChatGPT. In this case, it will be available to all users, including those who use the service for free.

The company said GPT-4o will remain the default model for all free users of ChatGPT. GPT-4o is OpenAI’s original reasoning model, which is designed to consider its responses more carefully and provide an explanation of its thought processes, so users can understand how it came to its conclusions.

OpenAI said free users will still have daily usage limits, but once they hit the maximum number of queries using GPT-4o, they’ll fall back to GPT-4.1 mini instead of GPT-4o mini, as before.

By popular request, GPT-4.1 will be available directly in ChatGPT starting today.

GPT-4.1 is a specialized model that excels at coding tasks & instruction following. Because it’s faster, it’s a great alternative to OpenAI o3 & o4-mini for everyday coding needs.

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 14, 2025

OpenAI announced GPT-4.1 in April, alongside two smaller models, GPT-4.1 mini and GPT-4.1 nano, which trade performance and response quality for lower pricing. The company said at the time that GPT-4.1 is “significantly better” than its predecessor at coding tasks. It had several other enhancements aimed at coders too. For instance, it’s said to be better at generating user interfaces, and is less likely to produce redundant code, which means developers will have to waste less time filtering its outputs.

GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini and GPT-4.1 nano all support prompts with up to 1 million tokens, which means they’re capable of analyzing extremely large file uploads, such as entire GitHub code repositories.

Early adopters of GPT-4.1 say the model is noticeably less “chatty” than its predecessors, providing more direct responses to most kinds of queries. However, the general consensus is that its actual performance is only slightly better than GPT-4o. Those who are hoping for more dramatic and notable performance improvements will likely have to wait for the arrival of OpenAI’s next major upgrade, GPT-5, but there’s no indication as to when it might be released.

OpenAI said in GPT-4.1’s release notes that it represents a “significant step forward” in the practical application of AI.

“By focusing closely on real-world developer needs — ranging from coding to instruction-following and long context understanding — these models unlock new possibilities for building intelligent systems and sophisticated agentic applications,” the company said.

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