Usage Limits Guide
Since August 6, 2026, plain text chat is unlimited on every ChatGPT plan, Plus included. What still caps on Plus: Medium and High thinking effort on GPT-5.6 Sol (metered, falls back to lighter reasoning when exhausted), file uploads (80 per rolling 3 hours, 512MB per file, 2M tokens per document), image generation, voice, and Deep Research (a monthly allowance). "Unlimited" applies to the text box, not the expensive features around it.
Figures marked derived are our arithmetic on official statements, not published numbers.
| What | Limit | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Text messages | Unlimited on all plans since August 6, 2026official | official |
| Thinking effort (GPT-5.6 Sol) | Instant unrestricted; Medium and High metered with automatic fallback when exhausted — counts unpublishedofficial | official |
| File uploads | 80 uploads per rolling 3 hours; 512MB/file; ~50MB spreadsheets; 20MB images; 2M tokens per document; 20 files per project; 25GB storageofficial | official |
| Deep Research | Monthly allowance, resets 30 days after first use; count unpublishedofficial | official |
| Images & voice | Capped above Free-tier levels; numbers unpublished, resets shown in-appofficial | official |
| Codex | Included but token-metered, with less headroom than Proofficial | official |
GPT-5.6 Sol
Plus and Pro — with the thinking-effort slider (Instant / Medium / High)
GPT-5.6 Luna
What Free and Go run, with a Think button — the fallback comparison point
Legacy models
Available via the model picker, subject to the same reasoning meters
July 9, 2026
GPT-5.6 family reaches general availability; Plus and Pro move to GPT-5.6 Sol with the thinking-effort slider.
August 6, 2026
OpenAI removes text-message caps on every plan — Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise. Metering shifts to reasoning effort, uploads, images, voice, and Deep Research.
Not for plain text. Since August 6, 2026, text chat is unlimited on every plan including Plus. The caps moved to the expensive features: Medium/High thinking effort, file uploads (80 per rolling 3 hours), image generation, voice, and Deep Research.
ChatGPT keeps answering — it silently continues with a lighter reasoning tier instead of stopping. You lose answer depth, not access. The Medium and High allowances reset on rolling windows, with exact counts unpublished.
80 uploads per rolling 3-hour window, 512MB per file (about 50MB for spreadsheets, 20MB for images), 2 million tokens per document, 20 files per project, and 25GB total storage.
OpenAI describes it as a monthly allowance that resets 30 days after your first use, without publishing a count. Pro carries a substantially higher allowance — it's one of the main reasons the $200 tier exists.
Different bottlenecks. Plus has unlimited text but meters reasoning depth and uploads; Claude Pro caps messages (~45 per 5-hour session plus weekly limits) but includes Claude Code within them. High-volume chat favours Plus; included agentic coding favours Claude Pro.
Providers change these limits without notice, and several are deliberately unpublished compute budgets rather than fixed counts. Everything above was checked against the linked sources on September 2, 2026; if you spot something outdated, email hello@userightai.com.
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