OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5, has barely been out a week, yet it’s already stirred up a storm among ChatGPT Plus subscribers. While the company billed GPT-5 as a smarter, more capable AI, many users feel it’s a step back from previous offerings — both in personality and in how much they can use it.

One of the most common complaints? GPT-5’s tone. Users say the new model’s answers are shorter, less nuanced, and come across as “emotionally distant.” For many, it feels like a cost-cutting shift rather than a meaningful upgrade.

The criticism intensified when OpenAI quietly removed access to older models such as GPT-4o, o3, o3 Pro, and o4-mini for Free and Plus subscribers. While Pro and Team plan users could still reach these models through legacy settings, Plus users — who make up a large part of ChatGPT’s paying base — were left without the variety they had grown used to.

Adding to the frustration were the new message limits. Under GPT-5, Plus users receive 80 messages every three hours for the standard model and just 200 per week for the GPT-5 Thinking model. By comparison, before GPT-5’s release, subscribers enjoyed far more flexibility:

• o3: 100 messages per week
• o4-mini high: 700 messages per week
• o4-mini: 2,100 messages per week
• GPT-4o: 80 messages per three hours

On top of that, the context window — which determines how much past conversation the model can “remember” — remains at 32,000 tokens (around 24,000 words) for Plus users, far smaller than the 128,000-token window offered to higher-tier subscribers. For users handling large or complex projects, that’s a meaningful limitation.

Unsurprisingly, online forums such as the ChatGPT and OpenAI subreddits lit up with complaints, and some users openly threatened to cancel their subscriptions. The backlash was loud enough that OpenAI moved quickly to respond.

As a first step, the company doubled the GPT-5 rate limit for Plus users to 160 messages per three hours. It also restored access to GPT-4o through the same legacy settings that Pro subscribers use.

But perhaps the most attention-grabbing promise came from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who posted on Monday that the company is working to raise the GPT-5 Thinking model limit to 1,000 messages per week.

Whether these changes will be enough to win back disillusioned subscribers remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: GPT-5’s launch has been a reminder that for AI companies, technical upgrades aren’t the only measure of success — user trust and experience matter just as much.