ChatGPT Search Is Now Free to Use Without an Account

Too many accounts. Every website seems to want an account these days. Last I counted, I was nearing a thousand. Let that sink in. Even with a password manager, it becomes overwhelming to juggle, so I try to resist making any new accounts if I can help it.

Good news for anyone who feels similarly suffocated, gasping under a mountain of passwords and forgotten usernames. OpenAI won’t require you to create an account to use ChatGPT search anymore.

it’s ChatGPT search, specifically

ChatGPT has been free since it was released to the public on November 30, 2022, but you’ve had to sign up for an OpenAI account in order to start asking ChatGPT what you should eat for lunch.

“ChatGPT search”—search is part of the name and not capitalized—differs from what we refer to simply as ChatGPT in that ChatGPT search is an extension of ChatGPT designed to pull real-time, up-to-date information from the web, rather than just answering questions based on the data on which it’s been most recently trained.

“Now, chat can get you to a better answer: Ask a question in a more natural, conversational way, and ChatGPT can choose to respond with information from the web,” OpenAI says. “Go deeper with follow-up questions, and ChatGPT will consider the full context of your chat to get a better answer for you.”

OpenAI goes on to state, “We also partnered with news and data providers to add up-to-date information and new visual designs for categories like weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps.”

Media companies partnered with OpenAI include Associated Press, Reuters, Vox Media, The Atlantic, Hearst, Dotdash Meredith, Time, and more. “Any website or publisher can choose to appear in ChatGPT search,” OpenAI added, pointing potentially interested parties to review this explainer.

ChatGPT search began to roll out for users on October 31, 2024, and by December 16 was available to any OpenAI account holder wherever ChatGPT was allowed to be used. You still needed the account, though.

As of February 5, 2025, you can ditch the account and just click the link and type your queries, or download the Google Chrome extension and type them there.

There are a number of countries that ban ChatGPT usage, although some people use a VPN to get around restrictions, even defeating some VPN blockers.

Just don’t ask ChatGPT itself how to get around a ban if you foresee yourself traveling to such a place in the near future. As you can see below, it’s less than helpful.