Plainly vs ChatGPT: where each one wins

Plainly vs ChatGPT: which one should you use?

ChatGPT is the faster, smoother app, with a good free plan and features Plainly lacks: voice, image generation, memory, projects and phone apps. Plainly is $5 a month for unlimited chat, with no ads and no training on your chats. Pick by which of those you use.

Plainly here means the AI chat app at withplainly.com. I built Plainly and run it from Sydney, so weigh what follows with that in mind. I also use ChatGPT Go, which comes with my Revolut subscription.

Plainly and ChatGPT side by side

ChatGPT plan details, including the training row, from OpenAI's pricing page, read on 11 October 2026 (US prices checked 3 October 2026).

ChatGPT wins most rows. Plainly wins on price, ads and training, and ties on search and file reading.

Where ChatGPT wins

ChatGPT is very quick and very smooth. Answers stream fast and the app is polished on the web and on phones. On the feel of asking a question and watching the answer arrive, ChatGPT is the smoothest chat app I've used. It was also the first AI I used, and I've used it a fair bit since. It's pretty good, though I don't like its output style.

The free plan is good. It runs GPT-6 Luna (since late September 2026) with unlimited everyday text chats (subject to OpenAI's abuse guardrails), plus limited image generation, deep research and memory. For someone who asks a few short questions a week, that covers it.

The feature list is far longer. ChatGPT talks back in voice mode, makes images, remembers things about you between chats, keeps files and chats together in projects, and runs scheduled tasks from the $8 Go plan up. It has polished iPhone and Android apps. Plainly does none of those.

In my writing test on 2 September 2026, ChatGPT on the Go plan and Plainly each scored 61 of 75 across five short tasks (Fable 5 scored 59). ChatGPT won the text message and the restaurant review. On the review, Plainly made up a dish to sound real, while ChatGPT stayed within the prompt, which impressed me. Plainly won the email and the $5 question, and the condense task tied. I scored it myself and the order wasn't randomized, so treat it as one data point. The outputs are in the best AI for writing.

Where ChatGPT falls short

Ads come with the two cheapest plans. OpenAI's pricing page says the Go plan "may include ads", and free users can see them too. In the writing test, ads appeared under three of the five Go answers captured.

ChatGPT trains on your chats unless you turn it off in settings. OpenAI's pricing page lists that default, with the opt-out, on every consumer plan, Pro included.

The default model forgets sooner on the cheaper plans. The default Instant model on Free reads about 27,000 tokens of a chat (roughly 12 pages), and Go and Plus about 54,000. On Go, using the default Instant model, I've had a chat lose things I told it earlier in the same conversation, mid-task. Switching to a Thinking model on Go or Plus raises that to 256,000 tokens.

The paid plans are expensive for everyday use. Go is $8 and keeps the ads. To me it's a bad tier: ads, the small Instant window, and the smaller model. Plus at $20 drops the ads and adds the stronger models. For questions, emails and plans, that's $240 a year for capability most people won't use. Is ChatGPT Go worth it and is ChatGPT Plus worth it go through each plan.

Where Plainly wins

Price. Plainly is $5 a month for unlimited chat, $60 a year against $96 for Go and $240 for Plus.

No ads on any plan, and your chats are never used to train AI. Nobody at Plainly reads your chats unless you ask or the law requires it. Plainly's provider account excludes model hosts that train on prompts. Some hosts keep prompts for a period, and does Plainly train on your chats sets out the detail.

Fewer decisions. Plainly runs one capable open-source model and switches when a better one comes out. You never pick. It searches the web when a question needs current information and links the sources it used, reads documents and photos you attach, and long chats keep working.

What Plainly leaves out

Plainly has no voice mode, no image or video generation, no projects, no model picker and no API. It keeps no memory across chats: each chat starts fresh, and nothing you said last week follows you into today's question. It runs in a browser on your phone or computer, with no app to install, and your chats sync across devices. Sign-in is Google only.

OpenAI also sells API access, billed per use and separate from any ChatGPT plan. Plainly has nothing like it.

Who should stay on ChatGPT

Stay on ChatGPT if any of these describe your week:

• You talk to it out loud, in the car or on a walk.
• You make images with it: invitations, mock-ups, pictures for a presentation.
• You like that it remembers your job, your family's names or your writing style between chats.
• You keep work organized in projects, with files and chats grouped together.
• You want a proper app on your phone's home screen.
• You ask a few short questions a week. The free plan covers that, if the ads don't bother you.
• You program, your employer pays, or you use AI professionally every day. Then Plus is worth it, and for very heavy use the $100 tier from OpenAI or Anthropic is the one I'd look at.

Who Plainly suits

Plainly suits someone who uses AI a lot for everyday work (questions, emails, plans, explanations, second opinions) and wants it for a flat $5 without ads or training. If you're moving over, switching from ChatGPT covers what to expect, memory included.

The easiest test is to run both for a month. Keep ChatGPT's free plan and try Plainly beside it. If you never reach for voice, images or memory, the cheaper app does the job.