OpenAI has officially launched GPT-4.1, including three versions: GPT-4.1 (full), GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano, to ChatGPT users on paid plans (Plus, Pro, and Team). This rollout follows an earlier API launch a month ago.
Key Improvements:
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Better coding and instruction following: GPT-4.1 shows a 21% improvement in software engineering tasks and a 10.5% boost in instruction following over GPT-4o.
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Larger context window: It supports up to 1 million tokens (massively larger than before), enabling it to process and remember much more information in one go.
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Updated knowledge cutoff: June 2024 (GPT-4o’s was October 2023).
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Improved conversational coherence: Handles multi-turn conversations more effectively, improving use cases like writing assistance, software dev, and customer support.
The Variants:
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GPT-4.1 full: The flagship model with maximum capability.
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GPT-4.1 mini: A scaled-down model with almost 50% less latency and costing 83% less than GPT-4o.
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GPT-4.1 nano: The smallest, fastest, and cheapest model, great for simpler tasks like autocomplete or text classification.
Who Can Access It?
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Only paid ChatGPT users (Plus, Pro, Team) get GPT-4.1.
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Free users continue using GPT-4o for now, but improvements from GPT-4.1 will gradually be integrated into GPT-4o.
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GPT-4.1 is also available via OpenAI’s API for developers, with significantly reduced pricing (e.g., $2 per million tokens for input, $0.10 per million tokens for nano).
Additional Notes:
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OpenAI has started phasing out older models: GPT-4.5 Preview was deprecated in API on April 14, 2025, and GPT-4 has been discontinued.
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While GPT-4.1 isn’t fully replacing GPT-4o inside ChatGPT, many of its improvements are being incorporated into the GPT-4o experience.
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For cutting-edge tasks, direct access to GPT-4.1 (via API or subscription) is now the best option.
If you want to leverage faster, cheaper, and more powerful AI with improved coding, instruction, and long-context abilities, upgrading to a paid ChatGPT plan or using the API with GPT-4.1 is the way forward.
