Last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT search, an intuitive search tool designed to compete with Bing and Google. ChatGPT search is "a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview."
However, the tool's accessibility was buried behind the $20 subscription to OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus or Team plan. The limitation has since been scrapped following OpenAI's announcement that ChatGPT search will be accessible to everyone beyond its $20 subscription plans.
You can find the search engine here on OpenAi's website.
ChatGPT search is now available to everyone on https://t.co/nYW5KO1aIg — no sign up required. pic.twitter.com/VElT7cxxjZFebruary 5, 2025
Moreover, users won't need to sign up to access the AI-powered search experience. As you may know, the search experience has been available for free to all users since December, but with one critical requirement — you must sign up or log in to access the feature.
Related: Google has bigger fish to fry with AI-powered search experiences
As highlighted by our sister site, Tom's Guide, OpenAI is still making subtle attempts to get users to sign up or log in to access the search experience. Per the outlet's deductions, asking the chatbot a similar question multiple times to try and a different output can be flagged as "suspicious activity," prompting the tool to request the user to log in.
To make accessing ChatGPT search easier, there is now an official Chrome extension that simply changes your browser's default search engine to ChatGPT search. Those using Microsoft Edge can use it, too; however, the browser warns about security first, so you must manually enable it.
