OpenAI has announced that the "Projects" feature of its AI chatbot service, ChatGPT, is now available to free users. Previously only available to paid subscribers, Projects is now available to all web and Android app users, with iOS users to follow in the coming days.
Projects are advanced folders optimized for conversation-based work. You can organize conversations with your AI assistant by topic or task, and give each project its own instructions or memory settings. For example, you could create a project called "Create a marketing strategy" to store relevant conversations and tell the AI how to respond based on that project. You can also limit the scope of information or files the AI can reference on a per-project basis, giving you precise contextual control.
With this update, we've also expanded the number of files you can upload per project. Free users can attach up to 5 files, Plus plan users can attach up to 25 files, and Pro and Enterprise users can attach up to 40 files. We've also introduced the ability to set icons and colors per project, making visual categorization and personalization even easier.
In recent years, OpenAI has gradually opened up some of its premium features to free users, such as voice conversations and deep research, which were initially only available to paid subscribers but have since been made fully available to the public. However, free users are subject to more severe usage and feature restrictions, and this strategy is also a way to drive free users to become paying users. In fact, even the latest GPT-5 model is accessible to anyone, but free accounts are subject to significant usage restrictions.
