OpenAI has walked back a controversial decision from last week that removed user access to older ChatGPT models when GPT-5 became the new default. Following a surge of complaints across forums and social media, legacy models like GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o3, and o4-mini are once again available—but only for paid users who know where to look.

GPT-5 was touted as a major upgrade to ChatGPT, but not everyone thinks that’s the case: “Kill 4o isn’t innovation, it’s erasure.”