Can you turn off ads in ChatGPT?
No, not on Free or Go while keeping the plan as it is. As of September 2026 OpenAI shows ads to logged-in adults on the Free and Go plans in what it calls "select regions", and the help center gives you exactly three exits. In the app:
- Open Settings, then Ad Controls.
- Pick the paid route: Plus at $20 a month. Go at $8 does not count; its plan card says "This plan may include ads."
- Or pick the free route: the no-ads Free option, which OpenAI describes as "fewer messages per day and no access to tools like images."
- For one conversation only, start a Temporary Chat. OpenAI says "Temporary Chats will not show ads."
The dated rollouts, from OpenAI's own release notes and the trade press: the United States on 9 February 2026, Australia, New Zealand and Canada on 16 April, the United Kingdom on 4 June, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea by 11 August, and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan on 23 September. Those are announcements, not a vendor map. OpenAI publishes no user-facing country list; its help page says only "We're gradually rolling out ads to eligible users on the Free and Go plans in select regions." Its advertiser-side Ads Manager Availability page lists 63 countries as available, Germany, France, Italy and Spain among them, and the same help page puts the EEA on the map with one limit: "Personalized ads are not initially available in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland." So a reader in Berlin can see ads too, picked from the current chat rather than their history. The reliable test is your own Settings: Ad Controls appears only "in regions where ads are available or will soon be available".
The ads sit below the reply, labelled sponsored. OpenAI's rules for them, in its own words from the 9 February announcement: "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you." They are also kept away from some conversations regardless of plan: "Ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics, including personal health, mental health, or politics," and accounts OpenAI identifies as under 18 see none.
Which AI assistants show ads on the free tier?
Two of the nine assistants we checked on 27 September 2026 show ads on the free tier today, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Grok has announced them. The other six show none inside the chat, and ChatGPT is the only one of the nine whose own plan card says a paid plan may include ads. Every row below comes from the vendor's help page, policy or plan card on that date; prices are US consumer prices.
| Assistant | Ads on the free tier, September 2026 | Cheapest plan with no ads | In the vendor's words |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes, on Free and Go, in "select regions" with no published country list; the EEA gets them without personalization | Plus, $20 a month | "Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads." |
| Microsoft Copilot | Yes | None named in Microsoft's ads documentation | "Microsoft Advertising serves ads in varying formats which are displayed in Copilot's responses." |
| Grok | Announced 7 August 2025; xAI has not said which plans see them | Not stated | Musk to advertisers: "we'll turn our attention to how do we pay for those expensive GPUs" |
| Meta AI | No ads inside the chat; since 16 December 2025 your chats target ads on Facebook and Instagram | No paid plan exists | "We'll start to use your AI interactions to personalize content and ads recommendations" |
| Gemini | No | The free tier has none | "Your Gemini Apps chats are not being used to show you ads. If this changes, we will clearly communicate it to you." |
| Claude | No | The free tier has none | "Claude will remain ad-free." |
| Perplexity | No; sponsored follow-up questions ran from November 2024 and were dropped in 2025 | The free tier has none | An executive, via the Financial Times: "A user needs to believe this is the best possible answer" |
| DeepSeek | No | Free; there is no paid plan | The Google Play listing carries neither a Contains ads nor an In-app purchases label |
| Whizi | No ads on any plan; the free tier is 3 messages a day on the house model | Starter, $10.99 a month billed yearly | "We do not use personal information to serve third-party advertisements." |
Three rows deserve a second look. Meta AI is ad-free on the screen and not in the business model: Meta's newsroom post of 1 October 2025 says your Meta AI conversations personalise the ads you see across its apps, with no opt-out, though it excludes topics like health, religion and politics. Copilot has carried ads since it was Bing Chat, and the Microsoft Learn page dated 18 June 2026 describes them as automatic: eligible campaigns are opted in and "Advertisers cannot opt out of serving ads". Perplexity is the one company that ran ads and walked away; its sponsored questions launched in November 2024 and, per the Financial Times in February 2026, were phased out because labelled ads still made people doubt the answer.
The Whizi row is the one we can vouch for from the inside, and it loses on the thing this page is about: there is no real free plan to be ad-free on. A free account gets 7 messages on its first day and 3 a day after that, on the house model only, so the honest comparison is Whizi Starter at $10.99 a month billed yearly against ChatGPT Plus at $20, not against ChatGPT Free.
How do I turn off ads in ChatGPT permanently?
Permanently means one of two account changes: a Plus, Pro or Business plan, or the no-ads Free option under Settings, then Ad Controls. Everything else in that settings panel changes which ads you see, not whether you see them.
The no-ads Free option is the route most guides bury, and it has a price in features rather than dollars. OpenAI's wording is "Choose a free, no-ads option with additional limits (fewer messages per day and no access to tools like images)". OpenAI has not published the exact message cap for that mode as of September 2026, so treat it as a smaller Free plan and test it for a week before deciding. If you generate images or upload files, this mode removes those tools along with the ads.
Turning off ad personalisation does not remove ads. OpenAI's help page lists the controls as dismissing an ad, seeing why you got it, deleting your ad data and managing personalisation; with personalisation off, the ad is picked from the current conversation rather than your history, and it is still there. Temporary Chats are the exception, at the cost of no history and no memory for that thread.
One more permanent route is accidental: age. OpenAI does "not show ads to accounts identified as belonging to users under 18, based on account-level age information and age prediction". If you are an adult being asked to verify your age, that is the same system, and ChatGPT asking for ID covers what it wants and why.
Do ad blockers work on ChatGPT ads?
Yes on chatgpt.com in a browser, no in the ChatGPT desktop and phone apps. The ads are rendered as separate cards under the reply, which is the format blockers handle well, and Ghostery says the limit plainly: browser extensions "cannot generally modify content displayed inside separate desktop or mobile applications".
The filter lists are keeping up, not ahead. uBlock Origin's maintainers opened issue #32224 for chatgpt.com ads on 16 March 2026, tagged it "geo specific" and "ongoing issue", and it was still open on 27 September 2026 with five more reports closed as duplicates between 23 August and 18 September. That is what a moving target looks like: the ads change, the filter follows, and for a few days in between you see them again. AdGuard predicted this in May 2025, writing that separate product cards would be "relatively straightforward" to block, and that ads blended into the answer text would not be. OpenAI's ads are still cards, as of September 2026.
What OpenAI says about ad blockers is nothing. Its ads help pages do not mention them, and its Terms of Use effective 1 January 2026 contain only the general clause against attempts to "bypass any protective measures or safety mitigations we put on our Services", which was written for rate limits and safety filters, not sponsored cards. So a blocker on the website is neither endorsed nor banned. Our read is that OpenAI would rather sell you the no-ads Free option than argue about uBlock, because that option exists precisely for the people who would otherwise install one.
Pay $20, take fewer messages, or switch?
Pay for Plus if you already use ChatGPT daily and want the ads gone without losing anything; $20 a month also buys the better model and the tools, and is ChatGPT Plus worth it runs that maths. Do not pay for Go to escape ads. Go is $8 and its plan card says it may include them, which is the trap in this whole topic: the cheap upgrade is the one that keeps the ads. ChatGPT Go vs Plus has the full feature split.
Take the no-ads Free option if you send a handful of messages a day and never generate images. You lose tools you were not using, and the ads go. If the reduced cap bites, that is a sign you are the kind of user every free tier is built to convert, which why free AI keeps asking you to upgrade explains from the cost side.
Switch if you want a free assistant with no ads and no strings: Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek all fit on 27 September 2026, with Google and Anthropic both on record about it. Skip Meta AI for this purpose; the chat is clean, the targeting is not. Whizi is the paid version of switching: GPT, Claude, Gemini and 280+ other models behind one login with no ads on any plan and web search on by default, from $10.99 a month billed yearly, but with no free plan worth the name beyond 3 house-model messages a day, and Gemini only from the Pro tier. The plans and limits page has the exact caps.
The rule, then. Ads are a price. Pay it in dollars (Plus), pay it in features (the no-ads Free option), or refuse it by leaving. The one thing not on offer is ChatGPT Free as it is today, without the ads, for nothing.
- Check your Settings first: OpenAI publishes no country list, and Ad Controls appears only where ads run or are about to, so a Free account without that panel has nothing to remove yet
- Open Settings, then Ad Controls, and pick the no-ads Free option if you can live with fewer messages a day and no image tools
- Pay for Plus at $20 if you want the ads gone with nothing lost; never buy Go at $8 for this, its plan card says it may include ads
- Use a Temporary Chat for a single ad-free conversation when you do not need it saved
- Run uBlock Origin or Ghostery on chatgpt.com if you only use the website; the apps are out of reach and the filter lags the ads by days
- Turn off ad personalisation only to limit targeting; it does not remove the ads
Frequently asked questions
Does ChatGPT Go have ads?
Yes, it can. OpenAI's pricing page says of the $8 Go plan "This plan may include ads," and its help center lists Free and Go as the plans where ads appear. Plus at $20 is the cheapest ChatGPT plan with no ads as of September 2026.
How do I get rid of all of the ads in ChatGPT?
Upgrade to Plus, Pro or Business, or choose the no-ads Free option under Settings, then Ad Controls, which OpenAI describes as "fewer messages per day and no access to tools like images". Those are the only two routes that remove every ad on every device. A browser ad blocker removes them on chatgpt.com only, not in the apps.
Does ChatGPT Plus have ads?
No. OpenAI's help center says "We do not show ads to users on Plus, Pro, or any Business plan," and its 9 February 2026 announcement named Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education as ad-free tiers. Only Free and Go carry ads as of September 2026.
Why am I not seeing ads in ChatGPT?
Because one of five things is true: you are in a region where OpenAI has not switched ads on yet (it publishes no country list, and Ad Controls appears only where ads run or are about to), you are on Plus, Pro or a Business plan, OpenAI has identified your account as under 18, you are in a Temporary Chat, or the conversation touches a topic OpenAI excludes from ads, such as personal health, mental health or politics.
