When Did ChatGPT Come Out? The Full Release Timeline
ChatGPT came out on November 30, 2022. OpenAI released it as a free research preview, and it became the fastest-adopted consumer product in history: one million users in five days, and an estimated 100 million monthly users within two months. Everything that followed, from paid plans to GPT-4 to today's agentic versions, built on that launch.
What Was ChatGPT Like at Launch?
The November 2022 version was text-only, free, and ran on GPT-3.5. It could not browse the web, see images, run code, or remember anything between sessions, and its knowledge stopped in 2021. What made it remarkable was the interface: for the first time, a powerful language model was wrapped in a simple chat box anyone could use. OpenAI itself called it a "research preview" and reportedly expected modest interest.
The growth said otherwise. One million sign-ups in five days became a hundred million users within two months, a record at the time for any consumer application. That surge triggered the wave of competition that defines the market today: Google fast-tracked what became Gemini, Anthropic launched Claude publicly in 2023, and Microsoft wired OpenAI's models into Bing and Office.
ChatGPT Release Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| November 30, 2022 | ChatGPT launches as a free "research preview" powered by GPT-3.5. One million users sign up in five days. |
| January 2023 | ChatGPT reaches an estimated 100 million monthly users, the fastest-growing consumer application in history at the time. |
| February 2023 | ChatGPT Plus launches at US$20 per month, the first paid tier. |
| March 2023 | GPT-4 releases, bringing dramatically better reasoning and the first image-understanding capability to Plus subscribers. |
| November 2023 | Custom GPTs and the GPT Store arrive, letting anyone build a tailored version of ChatGPT without code. |
| May 2024 | GPT-4o ("omni") launches with real-time voice conversation and free-tier access to a frontier model for the first time. |
| 2025 | The GPT-5 generation rolls out, web search with citations becomes standard, and ChatGPT passes roughly 800 million weekly users. Team and Business tiers mature into the default for companies. |
| 2026 | Current lineup spans Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers, with GPT-5.2 class models, agentic features that complete multi-step tasks, and connectors into Gmail, Outlook, Drive, and SharePoint. |
How Has ChatGPT Changed Since Launch?
In short, the 2022 product and the 2026 product share a name and a chat box, and little else. Three changes matter most. First, accuracy: launch-era ChatGPT worked from frozen training data and invented facts freely, while current versions search the web and cite sources. Second, modality: it now sees images, holds spoken conversations, generates pictures, and reads uploaded files. Third, agency: modern versions complete multi-step tasks, connect to email and document systems, and run work in the background rather than just answering one message at a time.
The pricing structure grew with it. What started as one free tier is now six: Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Our ChatGPT pricing guide breaks down every current plan in Canadian dollars, and the free vs paid comparison covers when the free tier is genuinely enough.
Why Does the Release Date Matter?
Because the product's age explains the market around it. Every major AI assistant in use today (Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity) either launched or pivoted in direct response to ChatGPT's November 2022 debut, which is why their capabilities and pricing cluster so tightly. It also explains why opinions formed early are unreliable: someone who tried ChatGPT in 2023, hit a hallucinated answer, and wrote it off is judging a product three generations out of date. For an up-to-date view of what it does well today, see our plain-language guide to what ChatGPT is.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did ChatGPT come out exactly?
ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022. OpenAI released it as a free research preview built on a model called GPT-3.5. It reached one million users within five days of launch and an estimated 100 million monthly users by January 2023.
How old is ChatGPT?
As of June 2026, ChatGPT is three and a half years old. It launched on November 30, 2022. The underlying GPT model family is older: the first GPT paper was published by OpenAI in 2018, and GPT-3, the direct ancestor of the launch-era model, arrived in 2020.
What model did ChatGPT use at launch?
At launch, ChatGPT ran on GPT-3.5, a fine-tuned version of GPT-3 trained to follow instructions and hold conversations. GPT-4 replaced it for paid users in March 2023, and successive generations (GPT-4o in 2024, the GPT-5 family from 2025 onward) have powered it since.
When did ChatGPT Plus come out?
ChatGPT Plus, the first paid subscription, launched in February 2023 at US$20 per month, about three months after ChatGPT itself. The price of Plus has stayed at US$20 since launch, though the models included have been upgraded many times.
Who created ChatGPT?
ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company founded in San Francisco in 2015 by a group including Sam Altman, who leads the company today. OpenAI had been publishing GPT language models since 2018; ChatGPT was the first version packaged as a consumer chat product.
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