OpenAI Launches 'Unlimited Free' Plan Amid Token Cost War... Can It Retain the Individual User Market?

Unlimited Text Conversations with "Luna"

OpenAI is now offering unlimited access to a version of its latest artificial intelligence (AI) model to free ChatGPT users.

According to the IT industry on August 10, OpenAI has begun offering unlimited text conversations with "Luna," a lightweight version of its latest GPT-5.6 model, to both free users and subscribers of its low-cost "Go" plan starting this week. However, features such as image generation, voice conversations, and file attachments will still be subject to usage limits, as before.

GPT-5.6 consists of three sub-models: Sol, Terra, and Luna. Of these, Luna has the lowest performance but is the fastest in terms of speed. Luna was evaluated to be on par with Google's latest lightweight model, Gemini 3.6 Flash, based on Artificial Analysis' AI intelligence index.

This move stands in contrast to the recent trend among major AI companies, which, facing the challenge of monetization, have placed usage restrictions on free plans in order to encourage users to switch to paid subscriptions. Leading companies such as Google (Gemini) and Anthropic (Claude) have restricted access to their latest or reasoning-type models for free-tier users.

In the enterprise (B2B) services sector as well, OpenAI cut developer API usage fees by 20% to 80% at the end of last month, initiating a round of price reductions. This is contrary to the moves by other companies, which have started limiting usage as the API token costs of major AI models have continued to rise.

These efforts are seen as a strategy to expose more free and low-tier subscribers—who see ads—to the latest models, thereby increasing ad impressions. OpenAI began trial operations of its ChatGPT advertising program in the United States earlier this year, and in Korea since June. At a time when processing costs for tokens—the unit of data used for AI—are increasing, this can also be interpreted as an attempt to solidify ChatGPT's dominance among individual users.

Unlike its competitors such as Anthropic, which focus on B2B services, OpenAI still has a large proportion of individual users. However, its dominance, which used to be overwhelming at 80–90%, has recently weakened somewhat. According to market research firm First Page Sage, as of last month, ChatGPT held a 51.3% share of the global AI chatbot market, followed by Gemini at 27.7%, and Claude at 10.3%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.