OpenAI splits chat and API access
- OpenAI’s Help Center says ChatGPT retired GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, o4-mini, and GPT-5 Instant and Thinking on February 13, 2026. - The same OpenAI docs say those removals apply to ChatGPT only, while API access remains unchanged, with some business customers keeping GPT-4o briefly. - OpenAI is separating product access from developer access across plans and interfaces. (help.openai.com)
OpenAI has split model availability in ChatGPT from model availability in its application programming interface, or API. ChatGPT retired several older models on February 13, 2026, while those models remained available to developers through the API. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) The retired ChatGPT models listed by OpenAI are GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, OpenAI o4-mini, and GPT-5 Instant and GPT-5 Thinking. OpenAI says those models are “no longer available” in ChatGPT as of February 13, 2026. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) OpenAI’s Help Center draws a bright line between the two products. The retirement notice says the affected models “will continue to be available in the API,” while business, enterprise, and education customers got limited exceptions inside ChatGPT tools. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) One of those exceptions had an end date. OpenAI said ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, and Edu customers would retain access to GPT-4o inside Custom GPTs until April 3, 2026. (help.openai.com) (help.openai.com) That means “what model does OpenAI offer?” no longer has one answer. The answer now depends on whether a customer is using ChatGPT or the API, and on which plan that customer pays for. (help.openai.com) (help.openai.com) For developers, that changes the practical job of integrating OpenAI models. A model that disappears from the ChatGPT picker may still be callable in code, while a model available to one paid workspace may be blocked in another. (help.openai.com) (help.openai.com) OpenAI’s own release notes show how fast the lineup is moving. The same Help Center page says GPT-5.1 models were removed from ChatGPT on March 11, 2026, and GPT-5.4 mini became a fallback model in ChatGPT on March 18, 2026. (help.openai.com) The result is a more fragmented map of access: one set of rules for ChatGPT, another for the API, and extra carve-outs for business and education accounts. For anyone building on OpenAI, model names now matter less than the exact interface, plan, and cutoff date attached to them. (help.openai.com) (help.openai.com)
