All ChatGPT models available: Full Report on features, differences, and how to use them on web and mobile

Model Architectures and Capabilities

GPT-4o (Omni) is OpenAI’s natively multimodal GPT-4 model. It’s an “autoregressive omni model” that accepts any mix of text, image, audio, and video inputs and produces text, audio (voice), or image outputs. GPT-4o matches or exceeds GPT-4 Turbo on English text and code, with especially stronger vision and audio understanding. It responds very quickly to audio (∼232 ms min, 320 ms avg). In practice, GPT-4o is a generalist “all-round” model (writing, coding, image analysis, voice chat, etc.).

By contrast, OpenAI o3 is a reasoning model trained via large-scale reinforcement learning. It is designed to “think for longer” and to chain-of-thought using tools. O3 achieves state-of-the-art results on complex tasks (advanced coding, math, science, visual reasoning), making ∼20% fewer errors than the older o1 model on hard problems. Unlike GPT models, o3 explicitly plans and uses ChatGPT’s tools (web search, Python, file analysis, etc.) in multi-step workflows.

GPT-4.5 (Feb 2025 preview) is still a pretrained GPT-style model but scaled and aligned for richer conversation. It “doesn’t think before it responds” (i.e. it’s not a chain-of-thought reasoner), but it has improved nuance, “EQ”, and creativity. GPT-4.5 is a very large model with up-to-date knowledge (via built-in search) and strong performance on writing and design, excelling in natural dialogues and brainstorming.

GPT-4.1 (Apr 2025) is a GPT-style model family optimized for coding, instruction-following, and extremely long contexts. It supports up to ~1 million token contexts and outperforms GPT-4o on coding benchmarks and long-context tasks. GPT-4.1’s mini and nano variants trade off scale for speed: the mini is nearly as capable as GPT-4o at many tasks but ~2× faster (and ~83% cheaper), and the nano is a very fast, low-cost model for short tasks.

Key differences:

GPT-4o is a balanced multimodal model (text/image/audio/video), GPT-4.5 focuses on more human-like dialogue and creativity (with search and vision support), GPT-4.1 specializes in coding and long documents, and o3 is the deepest reasoning model (leveraging tools and reinforcement learning). GPT-4o and GPT-4.5 are pretrained on large corpora (with updated cutoffs), while o3 is trained with heavy RLHF and tool supervision. As a result, o3 can handle multi-step analytical tasks (e.g. multi-hop queries, complex code pipelines) better than GPT-4o or GPT-4.5, but at the cost of longer “thinking” time (often under a minute). GPT-4.1 models excel at straightforward instruction and coding tasks (e.g. writing functions, fixing bugs), with much larger context than GPT-4o.

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Features and Supported Modalities

• Vision input/analysis: Both GPT-4o and GPT-4.5 support image inputs. GPT-4o can interpret images and even video frames (trained end-to-end on vision); GPT-4.5 supports file/image uploads and Canvas editing for images and code. O3 also reasons over visual inputs (“think with images”) as part of its chain-of-thought. The GPT-4.1 models have image input/output support too, but the mini version lacks the advanced “vision” tools of GPT-4o.

• Audio/Voice: GPT-4o uniquely offers real-time speech I/O: it can understand spoken input and produce synthesized voice output (in selectable voices). Voice chat (advanced voice mode) in ChatGPT uses GPT-4o under the hood. GPT-4.5 and GPT-4.1 currently do not support voice or audio I/O in ChatGPT. OpenAI o3 is primarily text-and-image based; it does not focus on audio generation (voice mode on ChatGPT is tied to GPT-4o).

• Code interpretation: GPT-4o powers ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis (Python code interpreter) and Canvas code editing by default. GPT-4.5 supports code via the Canvas feature. The GPT-4.1 family is highly proficient at coding, but in ChatGPT the full GPT-4.1 isn’t yet available; its mini model (fallback for free users) does not have the full code execution tools (no code interpreter). O3 can use tools like the Python interpreter (it learned to call functions) to solve programming tasks, but it’s mainly invoked for conceptual reasoning rather than day-to-day code completion.

• Memory and Context: ChatGPT’s memory features (remembering user preferences or past chats) are independent of model. As of mid-2025, enhanced memory is available to Plus/Pro users globally. All models can utilize ChatGPT’s long context, but GPT-4.1 supports by far the longest (up to 1M tokens).

• Web Search / Up-to-date Knowledge: GPT-4o and GPT-4.5 both have built-in web browsing for up-to-date information in ChatGPT (the “internet” tool). GPT-4.5 explicitly has “access to the latest up-to-date information with search”. O3 also uses web search as one of its tools for reasoning tasks. GPT-4.1 (pretraining cutoff June 2024) in ChatGPT relies on browsing only via the underlying GPT-4o system, not natively.

• Tool Access: In ChatGPT, GPT-4o and o3 models have full access to the suite of ChatGPT tools (plugins, file uploads, etc.) subject to plan caps. GPT-4.5 (preview) supports all the major tools except the newest modalities (no voice mode, video, or screen sharing yet). GPT-4.1 mini has none of the advanced tools (no data analysis, no file/vision tools) – it is a “lean” model for basic Q&A.

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Availability and Platform Differences

ChatGPT (Web/Mobile App):  All these models appear (as allowed by plan) in the ChatGPT web interface, iOS, and Android apps. They are selectable via the model picker or tools menu. In both web and mobile, free users get fallback access to “mini” models (GPT-4.1 mini and o3-mini) once they hit GPT-4o limits. Mobile UI has a voice chat icon (soundwave) for GPT-4o voice mode, and a new slider for accessing skills/tools. Web UI offers the full ChatGPT desktop features (custom GPTs, code editing on macOS app, etc.). In practice, the model capabilities are the same on web and app, though mobile emphasizes voice/video features (e.g. live video/screen-share in voice chats rolling out on iOS/Android) and the new home screen widget. The recent ChatGPT updates unified the models across platforms: e.g. the GPT-4.5 preview is available “on web, mobile, and desktop” for Pro users, and GPT-4o is the default on all interfaces.

Free vs Plus vs Pro: Free-tier ChatGPT users have limited access to GPT-4o (capped on usage in rolling windows) but unlimited use of GPT-4.1 mini. Free users also have access to GPT-4o’s major tools only sparingly (e.g. they get some web search, file upload, and image analysis but with limits). Upgrading unlocks more. Paid tiers have tiered access: ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo) grants extended GPT-4o usage (roughly 5× the free cap), unlimited use of GPT-4.1 mini, and now allows selecting “deep research” reasoning models (o3-mini, o3-mini-high, o1). Plus users also get the research preview of GPT-4.5 and a preview of GPT-4.1 (for coding tasks). ChatGPT Pro ($200/mo) gives unlimited access to GPT-4o and all reasoning models (full o3, o1, etc.), plus advanced voice/video features. In summary: GPT-4o is on all plans (with caps), GPT-4.1 mini is on all plans, GPT-4.1 full and GPT-4.5 are previewed to paid users, and o3 reasoning is for paid tiers only.

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Performance and Use Cases

• GPT-4o: Fast, broadly capable. Matches GPT-4 Turbo on many tasks but at half the cost (API). Excellent for general queries, creative writing, image analysis, language translation (superior to GPT-4 Turbo on non-English). Notably it handles multi-turn voice conversations natively.

• GPT-4.5: Higher “EQ” and creativity. Human evaluators prefer it over GPT-4o ~56–63% of the time. It shines at empathetic, nuanced dialogue, writing help, brainstorming, and design tasks. It was trained to incorporate subtle user cues and is thus more likely to engage the user or produce aesthetically pleasing content. Because it lacks chain-of-thought, GPT-4o or o1/o3 might be better for very logic-heavy problems, but GPT-4.5 covers most general use cases.

• GPT-4.1 Family: Top choice for coding and technical work. On standard coding benchmarks (e.g. SWE-bench) GPT-4.1 outperforms GPT-4o by ~21% absolute. It is more reliable at following instructions and can handle million-token documents for summarization or QA. Mini/Nano versions trade raw power for speed: GPT-4.1 mini can often match GPT-4o on many tasks with much lower latency, and GPT-4.1 nano is extremely fast (ideal for classification or autocompletion).

• OpenAI o3: Deep thinker. It sets new state-of-the-art on complex benchmarks (e.g. Codeforces, MMMU, AIME math competitions when given tools). In testing, o3 makes fewer critical errors on hard, multi-step problems than any other model. It especially excels in STEM, data analysis, and reasoning tasks where chaining tools is needed. For everyday Q&A or short chats, its extra “thinking” may not be needed, but for data analysis projects, research, or tutoring, o3’s thoroughness is unmatched.

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Release Timeline and Improvements

• GPT-4o: Announced May 13, 2024 and rolled out to ChatGPT in mid-2024. It replaced GPT-4 Turbo in ChatGPT. In July 2024 GPT-4o mini (a smaller version) launched. OpenAI has iterated on GPT-4o with occasional updates (e.g. increasing max tokens to 16K in Nov 2024, fine-tuning for less sycophancy in April 2025). In April 2025 GPT‑4 was retired and GPT-4o became the sole GPT-4 model in ChatGPT.

• GPT-4.5: Unveiled as a research preview on February 27, 2025. Initially made available to ChatGPT Pro users (with Plus to follow). Intended to push GPT-4’s conversational quality further; it introduced novel training techniques for steerability. As of mid-2025 it remains in preview (OpenAI is even considering sunsetting its API due to cost).

• GPT-4.1: Announced April 14, 2025 as API-only with mini and nano variants. Its improvements (coding, context) were noted for developers, and OpenAI plans to fold these gains into ChatGPT’s GPT-4o over time. The ChatGPT interface now shows GPT-4.1 (via a preview) in the model chooser for coding tasks. A mini version was already visible as a fallback in 2024.

• OpenAI o3: Released April 16, 2025 as part of the new “o-series” (with o4-mini). O3 brought advanced tool-using agents to ChatGPT. On June 10, 2025, OpenAI added o3-pro (higher-precision mode) for Pro users. Future work will likely focus on even more capable reasoning models and extending o3’s techniques.

The table below summarizes these models across key criteria:

Feature	GPT-4o (Omni)	GPT-4.1 (mini/nano)	GPT-4.5 (Preview)	OpenAI o3 (Reasoning)
Release	Announced May 2024 (Spring Update); deployed in ChatGPT mid-2024	Launched Apr 14, 2025 (API only)	Preview began Feb 27, 2025	Released Apr 16, 2025 (ChatGPT) (o3-pro in Jun 2025)
Architecture / Training	Pre-trained GPT-4 “omni” model: end-to-end multimodal network	Pre-trained GPT-4-based models focused on code/instructions (mini/nano smaller)	Pre-trained GPT-4 variant scaled up for nuance and alignment	Reinforcement-learned GPT with chain-of-thought, trained to use tools
Modalities (In/Out)	Text, Image, Audio, Video in (same network); outputs text, image, or synthesized voice	Primarily text (code) I/O; mini can see images but lacks full vision tools; no audio I/O	Text and Image (file) I/O; no audio or video I/O	Text and Image I/O (visual reasoning); no native audio
Tools/Features	Full ChatGPT tools: web search, Python code execution (data analysis), file upload, image generation, voice chat, etc.	Limited: no advanced tools. Cannot browse or run code. (It serves as a fast fallback when GPT-4o is unavailable)	Search (real-time web), file uploads, image input, Canvas code editor; no voice, no video/screenshare in preview	Full tool access via agents: web search, Python, file analysis, custom GPTs, etc., chosen strategically
Strengths / Use Cases	General-purpose: writing, summarization, coding, research, vision tasks, and real-time voice conversation	Everyday tasks, coding, instructions: excels at fast coding help and simple queries. (Nano: classification/autocomplete)	Natural conversation, creative writing, design brainstorming, emotional support	Complex reasoning and planning: math/science problem solving, multi-step queries, consulting-style analysis
ChatGPT Access (Free/Plus/Pro)	Free users: limited GPT-4o usage; Plus: ~5× free quota; Pro/Team: unlimited	Free users: unlimited GPT-4.1 mini (fallback); Plus/Pro can select GPT-4.1 (coding mode)	Preview for Pro (rolled out Feb 2025) and Plus (soon). Not available to Free.	Plus: access to mini versions (o3-mini) via Deep Research; Pro/Team: unlimited o3
Web / Mobile	Default GPT-4 model on web and apps; mobile supports voice chats (soundwave icon) and new tools menu	Accessible in “More models” on web/app for paid users; functions identically on web and mobile	Available in ChatGPT model picker on web and mobile (Pro/Plus preview)	Available on web/app for paid users (invoked via special agent mode); can use on iOS/Android with voice/chat
Cost (ChatGPT API)	Included in ChatGPT plans; API pricing: ~½ of GPT-4 Turbo (2× speed, 50% cost)	Included in ChatGPT plans; API: GPT-4.1 mini costs $0.40/1K input, $1.60/1K output; nano cheaper	Included in ChatGPT plans; API preview available for paid tiers (expensive model)	Included in ChatGPT plans; API details TBD (currently not public)

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