Thread

1. firasd · 1786044353 · focus · HN ↗

   I think it’s a misread to think the default ChatGPT model switching to GPT 5.6 Luna is some sort of desperation move. Keep in mind that Claude .ai never had this extreme stratification between the frontier models and the free tier (Sonnet is available to free users with rate limits).

   So 5.6 Luna is just their next version of what they used to call 5.5 instant tier

   And 5.x instant models were never much to write home about anyway so the default ChatGPT free model hasn’t been particularly distinctive since 4o

   1. throwaway473825 · 1786110976 · focus · HN ↗

      I think the main competitor to OpenAI's free tier is Google Search's AI Overviews powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. OpenAI's free tier needs to be notably better than that for people to bother. There's also Gemini 3.6 Flash with a generous free tier.

      1. stephbook · 1786118632 · focus · HN ↗

         I'm getting all my questions (3-10 each evening) answered by "Gemini Pro Extended" in the free tier, sometimes with PDFs or photos attached. I wouldn't bother with anything "free" below that, unless I'm agentic coding or something.

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