OpenAI
Founded 2015
The company behind ChatGPT, the world's most widely used AI chatbot, and the creator of the GPT family of large language models.
Overview
OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, the world's most widely used AI chatbot, and the creator of the GPT family of large language models. They build products spanning text generation, image creation, video generation, voice, coding agents, and web browsing. With over 4,000 employees and a valuation exceeding $150 billion, OpenAI is the largest and most well known AI company in the world. They popularized AI for the mainstream, though they are no longer the clear innovation leader they once were. OpenAI's product lineup includes ChatGPT (AI assistant for conversation, writing, analysis, coding, and more), DALL-E / Image Generation (creates and edits images from text descriptions), Sora (generates videos from text prompts or images), Codex (cloud based agentic coding tool that writes, reviews, and ships code), ChatGPT Search (real time web search with source citations), Deep Research (autonomous research agent that creates comprehensive reports), Whisper (speech to text transcription and translation), the OpenAI API / Platform (developer platform for building AI applications), Operator / ChatGPT Agent (AI agent that browses the web and completes tasks on your behalf), Canvas (side by side writing and coding editor within ChatGPT), and ChatGPT Atlas (AI native web browser built on Chromium with ChatGPT integrated).
What makes them different
OpenAI has the most popular AI product (ChatGPT) and a wide ecosystem covering text, images, video, voice, coding agents, web browsing, and a developer API all under one subscription. However, Google arguably has the broadest overall product range when you count their full suite (Gemini, NotebookLM, Veo, Nano Banana, AI Studio, Android integration, and more). And in terms of pure innovation and model quality, Anthropic's Claude is currently leading, particularly with Claude Code for agentic coding and Claude's superior performance on long form writing, nuanced reasoning, and complex tasks. OpenAI's strength is ecosystem convenience: everything in one place, one subscription, one interface. Their weakness is that they are no longer clearly the best at any single thing. Claude writes better. Dedicated image models like Flux produce better images. Perplexity searches better. Google has broader integration. Pricing also adds up fast; the $200 Pro plan is expensive, and rate limits on Plus can feel restrictive for heavy users.
Their tools
ChatGPT
chatbotopenai
The most popular AI assistant in the world: text, images, video, voice, search, and code in one place.
OpenAI Codex
codingopenai
OpenAI's cloud based autonomous coding agent that runs tasks in a sandbox and delivers pull requests.
OpenAI API
apiopenai
The developer platform for accessing GPT-5, GPT-4.1, o3, o4-mini, image generation, real time voice, embeddings, and more. Pay per token with no subscriptions required.
OpenAI Whisper
voiceopenai
Open source speech recognition model supporting 98 languages, available both as a free local tool and through OpenAI's transcription API.
OpenAI Operator
otheropenai
AI agent that uses its own browser to navigate websites, complete tasks, and take actions on your behalf.
ChatGPT Image Generation
imageopenai
Native image generation inside ChatGPT powered by GPT-4o, with accurate text rendering, multi turn consistency, and in context learning from uploaded references.
ChatGPT Search
searchopenai
Web search built into ChatGPT with inline citations, available on all tiers including free, with special visual displays for weather, stocks, sports, and news.
ChatGPT Canvas
otheropenai
A collaborative two pane editing workspace inside ChatGPT for writing and coding projects that require iterative revision.
ChatGPT Deep Research
otheropenai
An agentic research capability that autonomously browses the web for 5 to 30 minutes, synthesizing hundreds of sources into comprehensive cited reports.
Subscription plans
Free
Access to GPT-5.2 with limited messages and basic features.
- Access to GPT-5.2
- Limited messages (approximately 30 to 50 per 3 hours)
- Basic image generation (2 to 3 per day)
- Search
- Canvas
- Projects
- Custom GPTs
- 5 lightweight Deep Research queries per month
Go
10x more messages than Free with unlimited GPT-5.2 Instant. No Sora or advanced reasoning models. May show ads.
- 10x more messages than Free
- Unlimited GPT-5.2 Instant
- Extended image generation
- File uploads
- Longer memory
- Projects
- Tasks
- Custom GPTs
- No Sora access
- No advanced reasoning models
- May show ads
Plus
The sweet spot for daily users and professionals. Access to best reasoning models, image generation, Sora, Deep Research, and Codex.
- 150 GPT-4o messages per 3 hours
- 100 o3 messages per week
- 300 o4-mini messages per day
- 50 images per 3 hours
- Advanced voice mode
- 1,000 Sora credits per month (720p, 5 sec max)
- 25 Deep Research queries per month
- Codex access
Pro
Unlimited messages on all models with maximum Sora output quality and priority access to new features.
- Unlimited messages on all models
- Unlimited GPT-4o
- o1 Pro mode
- 10,000 Sora credits per month (1080p, 20 sec, no watermarks)
- 250 Deep Research queries per month
- Priority access to new features
- Codex access
- Operator early access
Links
Last updated: 2026-02-15