OpenAI posted on X today (July 30), announcing the launch of the ChatGPT for Academic Researchers program, which will provide 100,000 researchers with free access to advanced ChatGPT features.
Scientists can join the ChatGPT for Academic Researchers program by filling out a form on OpenAI's official website. The program will initially be available to 10,000 users from select universities, with plans to gradually add 90,000 researchers in the future.
Participants will receive a version of ChatGPT with “higher usage limits and a larger context window,” equivalent to access to the Pro version of the GPT-5.6 Sol model, which is specifically optimized for complex queries and long-running tasks.
Scientists invited to join OpenAI's new program can invite four colleagues from the same academic institution. These researchers will be able to use the same feature set free of charge.
OpenAI also plans to provide an “extended version” of its chatbot's deep research feature, which was first introduced in February last year and can gather information from hundreds of websites to answer users' questions. Building on this, researchers will be able to configure it to obtain insights on research-related topics from specific resources, such as scientific journals.