OpenAI’s ChatGPT Projects is now available at no cost to anyone with a free ChatGPT account.
This feature lets users group the various ChatGPT chats that they’ve had in the past, for faster future reference. This system of folders makes it easier to give the generative AI tool a set of custom instructions, and lets them upload project-specific files to reference.
Previously, the tool had only been available as a perk for those on paid plans.
What’s Changing for ChatGPT Users
Users can opt for three different ChatGPT pricing plans: The free plan, the ChatGPT Plus plan for $20 per month, and the ChatGPT Pro plan for $200 per month.
With the latest change, all three plans include the Projects feature, so conversations can be grouped and used together.
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However, there’s still one difference between the three plans, Engadget reports: Free users will be able to upload up to five files per project for the Projects function. In contrast, Plus users can upload up to 25 and Pro users can upload up to 40.
OpenAI’s Evolving Approach to Free Features
OpenAI has been steadily increasing the premium features and model access that it offers for free users.
For example, this time two years ago, you needed to shell out for the $20 per month paid plan in order to access what was at the time OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4. Today, you can get access to GPT-5 entirely for free (although the number of times you can use it will be limited).
Similarly, OpenAI has rolled out its Deep Research and ChatGPT Voice tools to all users, even though both of them started out as free.
Generative AI has so fully saturated culture at this point that OpenAI arguably needs to keep offering more new free abilities to keep earning headlines like the one at the top of this page.
Using ChatGPT in 2025
Granted, not all news has been good news for OpenAI.
Take one feature that they recently removed, for example: A check box that would make a users’ conversations discoverable in search engines. Many people had already accidentally enabled all their private conversations to be seen by anyone who searched for them, creating a crisis of privacy violations.
We’ve previously covered all the types of information that we strongly recommend not sharing with ChatGPT. The stuff to avoid ranges from sensitive company data to IP to financial information and passwords.
Needless to say, you should still avoid entering this data when using Projects: The newly available ability to upload and work on files might even make it easier than ever to accidentally overshare on the platform.
