Every pinnable ChatGPT model has now been switched off in OpenAI's API — what is left costs four times more

OpenAI has always sold two different things under similar names: the models in its API, and the model that actually answers inside ChatGPT. The second kind was reachable through a small family of aliases — chatgpt-4o-latest, then gpt-5-chat-latest and its successors. As of 10 August 2026, every one of them that carried a version number has been switched off. The sequence is short. chatgpt-4o-latest was removed on 17 February 2026. gpt-5-chat-latest and gpt-5.1-chat-latest were shut down together on 23 July 2026, under an announcement made on 22 April. gpt-5.2-chat-latest and gpt-5.3-chat-latest followed on 10 August 2026, deprecated on 8 May. In each case OpenAI named GPT-5.6 Sol — an API model, not a chat one — as the replacement. What remains is a single entry called chat-latest, and the wording on its card is the point: it "points to the latest Instant model currently used in ChatGPT" and "the underlying model snapshot will be regularly updated". There is no version number to pin. A developer who wants the behaviour of the ChatGPT model can still have it, but not frozen, and not with a guarantee that today's answers will resemble next month's. The price moved in the same direction. gpt-5-chat-latest and gpt-5.1-chat-latest cost USD 1.25 per million input tokens and USD 10 per million output. The 5.2 and 5.3 snapshots raised that to USD 1.75 and USD 14. chat-latest is listed at USD 5 and USD 30 — four times the input price of the first two, and precisely the price of the GPT-5.6 Sol flagship. Part of that buys real capability: the window grew from 128,000 tokens to 400,000, and the output ceiling from 16,384 tokens to 128,000, an eightfold increase. But the pinnable versions were the cheap ones, and they are the ones that are gone. There is also a rule behind the timing, and OpenAI publishes it. Its deprecation policy promises generally available models at least six months of notice, and specialised variants at least three — with "chat variants such as gpt-5.1-chat-latest" given as the first example of the latter. The line closest to the consumer product carries the shortest guarantee in the catalogue. One footnote for anyone reading the documentation directly: the card for GPT-5.1 Chat still describes it as the snapshot currently used in ChatGPT and invites developers to test chat improvements on it. The deprecation table has overtaken that sentence. And a distinction worth keeping straight — what ended was the API alias, not the model's presence in ChatGPT itself.