Get Free ChatGPT Pro Features With DeepSeek-R1, Kimi k & More!

ChatGPT has recently launched its Pro subscription model offering advanced features, enhanced capabilities, and greater usage limits. While these features are undoubtedly impressive, the Pro plan comes with a hefty price tag of $200/month! Sounds expensive? Don’t worry. There are numerous open-source AI models and tools that offer many of these features for free. Sounds interesting? Keep reading to learn about these free alternatives to ChatGPT’s Pro subscription features!

Key Features of ChatGPT’s Pro Subscription Plan

Here’s what ChatGT offers you for $200/month in its Pro subscription plan:

• Unlimited access to all available models, including the o1 family.
• Exclusive access to the o1 pro mode, which utilizes additional computational resources to provide more accurate and reliable responses, especially for complex tasks in mathematics, science, and programming.
• Unlimited use of Advanced Voice Mode features.

Free Alternatives to ChatGPT’s Paid Features

Now I will share with you the different freely available models and tools you can use instead of the features offered by ChatGPT’s paid subscription. Let’s begin.

1. Access to o1

ChatGPT’s paid tiers give users access to their most advanced models including GPT-4o and the o1 family. While these models may have been the best during their launch, we now have other models which perform better, and are available for free.

Free alternatives:

• DeepSeek-R1: DeepSeek’s latest model, R1, offers better performance than o1 across coding, reasoning, mathematical, and analytical tasks, making it a great alternative.
  
• Claude 3.5: Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet is another good alternative which offers a 200k input context window, matching that of o1 Pro.
• Kimi k1.5: Moonshot AI’s new model Kimi k1.5, which is available for free, offers better capabilities than o1 in many aspects.
  

Also Read: DeepSeek R1 vs OpenAI o1 vs Sonnet 3.5: Battle of the Best LLMs

2. Multiple File Upload and Analysis

ChatGPT Pro subscription allows users to upload and analyze multiple files in the same prompt. This greatly helps users working on research papers, financial reports, etc.

Free alternatives:

• NotebookLM: This AI tool from Google can read and analyze multiple files simultaneously. It allows users to upload several documents, create summaries, and ask cross-document questions. The free version supports multi-file analysis with a typical limit of around 10-15 documents at a time.
• Kimi k1.5: This new AI chatbot is capable of handing and analyzing up to 50 different files at once – and it’s absolutely free to use.

3. AI-powered Image Generation

ChatGPT’s integration with DALL.E enables it to generate images directly within the chat interface. With the paid subscriptions, users get unlimited access to image generation on ChatGPT, including inpainting/editing capabilities.

Free alternatives:

• Imagen 3 on Gemini: Google’s Gemini chatbot is now powered by Imagen 3 for high quality Image generation. It too offers inpainting, outpainting, and editing capabilities, which are comparatively better than ChatGPT.
• Meta AI: The Mata AI chatbot available on web and Meta apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, also comes with free image generation features. You simply put in a prompt asking it to generate an image and you’ll get it done within the chat interface or WhatsApp chat window.
• Claude Sonnet 3.5: Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 also offers AI-powered image generation for free.
• DeepSeek Janus Pro: DeepSeek’s new image generation model, Janus Pro, is a freely available image generation tool competing with ChatGPT.
• Qwen2.5-Max: Chinese AI model Qwen also has image generation capabilities in its latest Quen2.5-Max version.

Explore More: Top 10 Alternatives of DALL-E and Midjourney Image Generators

4. Web Search

ChatGPT’s paid tiers offer real-time web search, allowing users to use it as a search engine. It shows Google Maps, YouTube videos, and more, directly in its chat interface. However, there are other AI-powered search engines and chatbots that offer web search for free.

Free alternatives:

• Perplexity AI: One of the first web browsers to be powered by AI was Perplexity. This AI chatbot gives users up-to-date responses from real-time web searches.
  
• Google Gemini: Gemini 1.5 uses Google Search to find relevant information from the internet to answer queries.
• DeepSeek-R1: Deepseek’s most advanced model R1 has web search features which gives you up-to-date information in real-time.
  
• Kimi k1.5: The latest Chinese AI model, Kimi k1.5, also supports real-time web queries and advanced search.
• Qwen2.5: This new model also features real-time web search, letting users browse the internet through the Quen2.5 chat interface.

5. Scheduling and Task Automation

Scheduled Tasks and Operator are the two latest features ChatGPT offers its paid users. Scheduled Tasks allow users to schedule prompts or tasks to be executed at a future time, while Operator enables basic task automation. Although these are new features on ChatGPT, agentic AI platforms let you build task-specific agents for free.

Free alternatives:

• Perplexity AI Mobile Assistant: Perplexity’s new AI mobile assistant can book cabs, make restaurant reservations, add reminders, etc. through prompts and voice commands. This app is currently available to android users for free.
• Pre-built Agents: Agent building platforms like CrewAI and AutoGen Studio, offer pre-built agents for task automation, which you can directly deploy for free. You may also build task-specific agents using the tools on these platforms.

Also Read: LangGraph vs CrewAI vs AutoGen to Build a Data Analysis Agent

6. Voice Mode

One of the most useful features of ChatGPT Plus and Pro is the Advanced Voice Mode – an AI chatbot that actually talks to you! Its recent upgrade with vision capabilities has further enhanced its applications.

Free alternatives:

• Gemini Live: Google’s Gemini chatbot offers a voice feature called Gemini Live that allows Android users to have natural, two-way conversations with Gemini using their voice.
  
• Microsoft’s Copilot: Microsoft also offers a voice chat feature on its AI-powered copilot, for free. However, it is currently only available in  (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
• Perplexity AI: Perplexity AI’s mobile app features a voice search feature that let’s you have a conversation with the search engine. Its new mobile assistant further expands the applications of this voice feature.

7. Custom GPTs

ChatGPT Pro allows subscribers to create customized GPT models to align with their specific applications, on an interactive, visual platform. It also gives them access to various GPT embeddings which they can use for search, recommendation systems, categorization tasks, etc.

Free alternatives:

• Google Studio: Google’s AI building platform, offers tools for building and fine-tuning custom models, including the Gemini series. It is available for free with some limitations.
• HuggingChat: This open-source conversational AI platform by Hugging Face, allows users to create and customize their own AI chatbots. It features real-time interaction, multi-language support, and a user-friendly interface.
• Amazon Q: Amazon’s customizable AI chatbot service integrates with Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing businesses to create tailored conversational agents that can handle customer inquiries and automate interactions.

8. ChatGPT with Canvas

The canvas feature on ChatGPT, which includes a Code Interpreter and document editing tools, is yet another advantage of getting a paid subscription. These tools allow users to generate, translate, and edit code as well as documents directly in a designated part, within the chat interface.

Free alternative:

• Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 offers a similar, if not better, interface that has a designated space for coding. Even here, you can make the edits directly and switch between different versions of the same document or code. Moreover, it offers an ‘artifacts’ feature that generates dynamic and interactive outputs such as charts and presentations.
  
  

Conclusion

While ChatGPT’s Plus and Pro subscription plans have a lot to offer, they come at a significant cost. Fortunately, there are free alternatives for most of ChatGPT’s paid features, that provide comparable, and in some cases, superior capabilities. From powerful open-source models like DeepSeek-R1, Kimi k1.5, and Claude 3.5 to innovative tools like NotebookLM and Perplexity AI, you have plenty of options to explore. So go ahead, give these alternatives a try, and unlock the potential of AI without breaking the bank!

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K.C. Sabreena Basheer

Sabreena Basheer is an architect-turned-writer who's passionate about documenting anything that interests her. She's currently exploring the world of AI and Data Science as a Content Manager at Analytics Vidhya.