😎 For Users: ChatGPT App Model Selection Guide

The ChatGPT app offers several specialized models designed for different tasks and performance needs. Here's a clear guide to help you choose the best option:

GPT-4o

• Ideal for: Most general tasks.

• Use: Versatile interactions, general inquiries, creative tasks, and day-to-day problem-solving.

o3

• Ideal for: Advanced reasoning tasks.

• Use: Complex logical problems, detailed analyses, and sophisticated reasoning.

o4-mini

• Ideal for: Rapid advanced reasoning.

• Use: Fast responses requiring moderate to high-level reasoning accuracy.

o4-mini-high

• Ideal for: Programming tasks and visual reasoning.

• Use: Code generation, debugging, and tasks involving visual data processing.

GPT-4.5 (Research Preview)

• Ideal for: Writing and idea generation.

• Use: Creative writing, brainstorming sessions, and generating diverse ideas quickly.

GPT-4.1

• Ideal for: Quick programming and analysis.

• Use: Efficient coding assistance, rapid technical analyses, and straightforward problem-solving.

GPT-4.1-mini

• Ideal for: Everyday quick tasks.

• Use: Routine interactions, casual questions, and rapid responses to straightforward queries.

ChatGPT Pro (200$ Version)

• Ideal for: Professional users and businesses requiring highly customized, stable, and robust performance.

• Use: Enterprise-level integrations, high-frequency tasks, extensive customization of responses, dedicated resources, and superior stability. Users investing in this variant gain priority support and tailored configurations to precisely meet unique operational needs.

These models, developed collaboratively less by Lopez.Codes and strong by OpenAI, are optimized to cover a comprehensive range of tasks, enhancing user productivity and experience by providing tailored performance and simplicity.

For Developers: AI Model Selection Guide:
A Practical Overview

Choosing the right AI model can dramatically improve your workflow. Here's a concise guide to help you decide which OpenAI model best suits your needs:

GPT-3.5 Turbo

• Best For: Quick, straightforward tasks, general queries, brainstorming, drafting emails, and casual interactions.

• Strengths: Fast responses, cost-effective, handles simple to moderately complex requests effectively.

• When to Use: For everyday tasks, productivity enhancement, and interactions where speed and cost are critical.

GPT-4

• Best For: Complex problem-solving, detailed reasoning, high-accuracy needs, nuanced context understanding, advanced coding, and precise technical assistance.

• Strengths: Superior accuracy, deep reasoning capability, enhanced context retention.

• When to Use: For critical tasks requiring high precision, detailed explanations, professional writing, complex coding, and analytical decision-making.

GPT-4o

• Best For: Multi-modal tasks (text and images), creative content generation, and sophisticated integrations.

• Strengths: Exceptional multi-modal handling, creative flexibility, rich and diverse outputs.

• When to Use: When needing creative solutions, working with visual elements, or requiring a dynamic, integrated AI experience.

Specialized Codex Models

• Best For: Programming assistance, coding debugging, generating code snippets, technical documentation, and software engineering tasks.

• Strengths: Highly optimized for code understanding and generation, tailored for developers.

• When to Use: Specifically when writing, debugging, or optimizing code across various programming languages.

Internal ChatGPT Model Variants

• Davinci: Ideal for general-purpose tasks demanding high versatility.

• Curie: Excellent for balanced cost-efficiency and performance, suitable for nuanced tasks.

• Babbage: Great for straightforward language tasks, quick summarization, and simple classification.

• Ada: Most cost-effective, best for simple tasks, quick responses, and basic classifications.

• Turbo-Enhanced: Optimized for speed, perfect for rapid interactions and moderate complexity.

• Contextual Enhanced: Specially optimized for long-context interactions, ideal for extended conversations and detailed context.

• Fine-tuned Variants: Customized versions for highly specific tasks or enterprise-level integrations, optimized for precision and relevance.

Recommendations by Lopez.Codes and OpenAI

Lopez.Codes and OpenAI are collaboratively working to streamline model complexity, providing clear, user-friendly pathways to optimal model use. They are simplifying the selection and deployment process, ensuring efficient and highly effective usage tailored to diverse tasks and user needs.

Use this guide to align your tasks effectively with the right AI model, maximizing your results and productivity.

😎 For Users: ChatGPT App Model Selection Guide

😎 For Users: ChatGPT App Model Selection Guide

Model/Feature

Ideal for…

Use

GPT‑5

Most general chat and multi‑modal tasks.

GPT‑5 is OpenAI’s most intelligent model and is now available to all ChatGPT users with higher usage limits for Plus and Pro subscribersopenai.com. It is a unified system that routes between a fast “instant” mode and a deeper reasoning mode (GPT‑5 thinking) based on the complexity of your questionopenai.com. Use it for versatile conversations, high‑quality writing, coding assistance and even health queriesopenai.com.

GPT‑5.1 Instant

Everyday conversations, casual questions, creative brainstorming.

GPT‑5.1 Instant is a warmer and more conversational variant of GPT‑5openai.com. It retains the intelligence of GPT‑5 but is tuned to follow instructions better and to be more playful, making it ideal for quick chats and spontaneous tasks.

GPT‑5.1 Thinking

Complex reasoning or analysis tasks.

The upgraded GPT‑5 Thinking model spends more time on difficult problems and less on easy onesopenai.com. It provides thorough reasoning for complicated questions while remaining faster on straightforward queries, so use it when you need deeper analysis.

GPT‑5.2 Instant

Everyday work and study tasks requiring fast but powerful assistance.

GPT‑5.2 Instant is designed for professional knowledge work. It improves on GPT‑5.1 by offering better info‑seeking answers, clearer explanations and improved translationhelp.openai.com. Use it to draft documents, create presentations or translate text quickly.

GPT‑5.2 Thinking/Pro

Long‑running projects and expert‑level work.

GPT‑5.2 Thinking sets a new state of the art for knowledge‑work across many professionsopenai.com. It excels at building spreadsheets, presentations and complex, multi‑step projectsopenai.com. Opt for GPT‑5.2 Pro (available to Pro subscribers) when you need extended reasoning and agentic tool use for tasks like financial modeling or sophisticated coding.

OpenAI o3

Advanced reasoning with tool‑use across text, images, web and code.

The o3 model can decide when and how to use every tool inside ChatGPT, including web search, code execution and image generationopenai.com. It is ideal for multi‑faceted questions requiring analysis of data, images or external files and sets new benchmarks in math, coding and scienceopenai.com.

OpenAI o4‑mini

Rapid reasoning with lower cost and lower latency.

A compact version of o3, o4‑mini delivers strong performance for its size; it excels at math, coding and visual tasks and even achieves 99.5 % pass@1 on AIME 2025 when given tool accessopenai.com. Use it when you need quality reasoning but want to minimize cost or latency.

GPT‑4.5 (Research Preview)

Improved knowledge and natural interaction when GPT‑5 isn’t required.

GPT‑4.5 scales unsupervised learning to improve pattern recognition and reduce hallucinationsopenai.com. Early testing shows it offers a more natural conversation style and stronger emotional intelligenceopenai.com.

GPT‑4

Accurate, detailed responses with proven reliability.

GPT‑4 remains a strong choice for complex problem‑solving, nuanced writing and precise technical assistance. Use it for high‑accuracy needs when GPT‑5 tiers are unnecessary.

ChatGPT Health

Health‑ and wellness‑focused conversations.

Health is a new space in ChatGPT where you can securely connect medical records and wellness apps so answers are grounded in your own datahelp.openai.com. Health chats have separate memory and are not used to train foundation modelshelp.openai.com. Available initially on web and iOS (Android support coming soon) and currently excluded from the EEA, Switzerland and the UKhelp.openai.com.

App directory (ChatGPT Apps)

Integrating third‑party tools directly in chat.

Users can now browse and add approved apps via the new ChatGPT app directoryhelp.openai.com. Apps allow you to perform tasks like shopping, note‑taking or data lookup without leaving the chat interface and are available to all logged‑in users (availability varies by plan and region)help.openai.com.

ChatGPT Images

Creating and editing images within ChatGPT.

A revamped image generation tool lets you produce and edit images with precise instructionshelp.openai.com. All images are saved under My images, making it easy to revisit and reuse your creative workhelp.openai.com. Available on Free, Go, Plus, Edu and Pro planshelp.openai.com.

🛠️ For Developers: AI Model Selection Guide

Choosing the right model can dramatically improve your workflow. The following guide summarises key models and tools available in early 2026 and how to use them.

• GPT‑5 Instant – Best for rapid prototyping, drafting emails, brainstorming and casual interactions. Its unified system provides fast responses and broad utilityopenai.com.

• GPT‑5 Thinking – Best for complex reasoning, detailed analysis and agentic tool use. It combines deep thinking with a real‑time router that decides when to engage reasoning modelsopenai.com.

• GPT‑5.1 Instant & Thinking – Improved versions of GPT‑5 that are warmer, more conversational and better at following instructionsopenai.com. Use Instant for everyday tasks and Thinking for more demanding problems.

• GPT‑5.2 Instant & Thinking – Designed for professional knowledge work; they excel at creating spreadsheets, presentations, long‑context documents and multi‑step projectsopenai.com. GPT‑5.2 Thinking sets state‑of‑the‑art scores on knowledge‑work benchmarks and offers new tools for agentic reasoningopenai.com.

• Specialised Codex models – GPT‑5‑Codex, GPT‑5‑Codex‑Mini and GPT‑5.1‑Codex‑Max are variants optimised for coding. GPT‑5‑Codex supports interactive editing and accepts images/screenshots; it’s intended for coding‑focused work in Codex environmentshelp.openai.com. GPT‑5‑Codex‑Mini is a cost‑effective version that offers up to 4× more usage as part of your subscriptionhelp.openai.com, while GPT‑5.1‑Codex‑Max is a frontier agentic coding model designed for long‑running, project‑scale taskshelp.openai.com.

• OpenAI o3 – A tool‑using reasoning model that can combine search, code execution and image generationopenai.com. It excels at complex multi‑modal problems and achieves new state‑of‑the‑art performance across coding, math and visual benchmarksopenai.com.

• OpenAI o4‑mini – A smaller, faster reasoning model optimised for cost efficiency. It achieves outstanding performance on math and coding tasks, even outperforming some larger models, and leverages tools effectivelyopenai.com.

• GPT‑4.5 (Research Preview) – Scales unsupervised learning to improve pattern recognition and reduce hallucinationsopenai.com. Use it for tasks that benefit from broader knowledge and more natural interactionopenai.com.

• GPT‑4 – Proven model for high‑accuracy problem solving and detailed reasoning. Best when reliability is more important than bleeding‑edge performance.

• GPT‑3.5 Turbo – Still available for quick, straightforward tasks and cost‑sensitive scenarios. It offers fast responses and is ideal for simple queries and prototypes.

• Internal ChatGPT variants (Davinci, Curie, Babbage, Ada, Turbo‑Enhanced, Contextual Enhanced, Fine‑tuned) – Legacy models that remain valuable for specific use cases, from general‑purpose tasks requiring versatility (Davinci) to cost‑efficient classification and summarisation (Ada). They provide a spectrum of performance and cost trade‑offs.

Recommendations by Lopez.Codes and OpenAI

Lopez.Codes and OpenAI continue to streamline the growing model landscape. For 2026 we recommend:

• Start with GPT‑5 Instant for most user‑facing tasks. If your application or conversation requires deeper analysis or complex tool use, switch to GPT‑5 Thinking or o3.

• Use GPT‑5.2 models for enterprise‑grade knowledge work (spreadsheets, presentations, long reports) or agentic tasks that require sustained reasoning across multiple stepsopenai.com.

• For coding‑centric workflows, take advantage of the Codex variants—especially GPT‑5‑Codex‑Mini for extended usage and GPT‑5.1‑Codex‑Max for large projectshelp.openai.com.

• When speed and cost are priorities, o4‑mini and GPT‑3.5 Turbo provide capable alternatives.

• Explore new ChatGPT experiences like Health, Apps, and Images to ground interactions in personal data, integrate third‑party tools and create visuals directly in chathelp.openai.comhelp.openai.com.

These guidelines aim to help you choose the right model and features for your needs in the first half of 2026.