ChatGPT Switches Default Model to GPT-4.1 Mini for All Users, Subscribers Get GPT-4.1

OpenAI has officially integrated its flagship GPT-4.1 model into ChatGPT, making it available to Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers starting today. The company announced the rollout on X (Twitter), highlighting the model's strengths in coding tasks and instruction following.

chatgpt logo
Enterprise and Education users won't be left behind for long, with access promised "in the coming weeks," according to OpenAI.

Alongside the premium-only upgrades, the company is also replacing GPT-4o mini with GPT-4.1 mini as the default model for all users, including those on free accounts. If you've enabled the ChatGPT extension for Apple Intelligence on your devices, Siri will presumably now default to GPT-4.1 mini going forward.

Both models support a one million context token window (the amount of text/media in a prompt that an AI model can process), far surpassing GPT-4o's 128,000-token limit. OpenAI claims that speed improvements make GPT-4.1 "more appealing for everyday coding tasks" compared to their recently introduced reasoning models.

The deployment comes a few weeks after the new models were released to developers. OpenAI said that both new models have undergone standard safety evaluations before being released to the public.

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Top Rated Comments

AgeOfSpiracles Avatar
27 weeks ago

Soon, they will need a GPT model just to analyse your query and tell you which GPY model you should use!
Seriously. It feels like they need to do a hard reset on the naming/versioning. I have a plus subscription, and it's still defaulting to 4o, with o3, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high as the main alternate choices. You have to go under "More Models" to find 4.1, 4.1-mini, and 4.5. I would love to assume that 4.5 is the latest greatest new hotness, but honestly I wouldn't put $100 on that bet. Is 4o better than o3? is o less than 1? or is it 15, since it's the letter "o"? why would I choose 4.1-mini over 4.1? Why would I use anything except 4.5? Does 4.5 have the same "advanced reasoning" as o3? 4.1 is for "quick coding", but o4-mini-high is "great at coding"... so I need to choose between quick and great code? Is there a model that does great quick code?

And biggest question of all, does any of this matter? If the latest version is more or less all the improvements of the previous versions all wrapped up in one, then why give all this choice? Conversely, if all these choices are all meaningful, then why is there virtually no guidance on when to use which one?
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kiranmk2 Avatar
27 weeks ago
Soon, they will need a GPT model just to analyse your query and tell you which GPY model you should use!
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
flybass Avatar
27 weeks ago
For those who haven’t been using them - the latest models are fantastic.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
contacos Avatar
27 weeks ago

I'm on Plus and I still have 4o as default. These are my options:

Same. I just switched it to 4.1 manually
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
atownguy Avatar
27 weeks ago
I thought the default model has been 4o (not 4o mini)? And I think the default is still 4o- it just downgrades free users to mini once they hit their limits.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bobbyjack Avatar
27 weeks ago
I’m so surprised by the number of people who are happy with ChatGPT. These past few weeks, I don’t think I’ve had a single correct answer from it, even for the simplest questions. It doesn’t take my settings into account, it hallucinates answers, it makes completely false statements, and it’s been totally unusable to the point that I cancelled my subscription. I had to ask it to check its answers every time, and every time I would get “You’re right, I made a mistake,” literally every single time. Even the translations were completely off (I’m French, I understand English perfectly but I’m not very good with grammar). Once it even translated into German....
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)