Old Mode to New Control: The Mapping
| What you used to do | What to do now (Plus and Pro) | What to do now (Free and Go) |
|---|
| Pick Instant for a fast answer | Just send. Leave the effort slider low. Sol answers quickly by default. | Just send. Leave the Think button off. |
| Pick Thinking for step-by-step work | Raise the thinking effort slider before sending. | Turn the Think button on for that message. |
| Pick Pro for the hardest problems | Push the slider to its highest setting. On the Pro plan this runs GPT-5.6 Sol Pro. | Not available. The Think button gives Luna more time, it does not switch you to Sol. |
The Thinking Effort Slider (Plus and Pro)
Plus and Pro subscribers get a slider in the ChatGPT composer, on web, mobile, and desktop, that sets how much thought the model puts into a response. It replaced the binary mode toggle with a continuous dial.
The practical rule is the same one that used to govern mode choice, just expressed differently:
- Leave it low for factual lookups, rewrites, summarising text you pasted, and ordinary conversation. Raising effort on these mostly buys you latency.
- Nudge it up for planning, writing that has to hold a structure, and code review. This is the range that used to be called Thinking.
- Push it high when being wrong is expensive: multi-step maths, research synthesis across long sources, code that has to satisfy a specification, documents with hard compliance constraints.
Higher effort costs you time rather than quota, now that text chats are unlimited. The tradeoff is latency and nothing else for most users, which is a genuine change from the old model where Pro turns drew on a separate weekly allowance.
The Think Button (Free and Go)
The Think button is a per-message toggle, not a setting you turn on once. You tap it before sending a message that needs more care, and it applies to that message only.
The detail most guides get wrong: the Think button gives GPT-5.6 Luna more time to reason. It does not switch you to Sol. You are getting more deliberation from the same model, not access to the flagship. If you need Sol itself, that requires a paid plan.
OpenAI shipped it alongside unlimited text chats for Free and Go, subject to anti-abuse guardrails.
Plan Availability
| Plan | Default model | Reasoning control | Text chats |
|---|
| Free | GPT-5.6 Luna | Think button, per message | Unlimited |
| Go | GPT-5.6 Luna | Think button, per message | Unlimited |
| Plus | GPT-5.6 Sol | Thinking effort slider | Unlimited |
| Pro | GPT-5.6 Sol, with GPT-5.6 Sol Pro where available | Thinking effort slider | Unlimited |
| Business and Enterprise | GPT-5.6 Sol | Thinking effort slider | Set by workspace admin |
Rollout was staged rather than instant, so a given account may have seen these controls appear over the days following August 6.
The API Equivalent: reasoning.effort
If you are building on the API rather than using ChatGPT, the same idea is exposed as a parameter. The reasoning.effort parameter accepts seven settings:
none, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, max
This is the more precise version of what the consumer slider exposes, and it is the right place to look if you need reproducible behaviour across runs rather than a UI control someone might have nudged.
The GPT-5.6 Family
| Model | Position | Where you meet it |
|---|
| GPT-5.6 Sol | Flagship, highest capability. | ChatGPT on Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Sol Pro on the Pro plan. |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | Balanced capability, speed, and cost. | Mainly the API and work surfaces rather than a ChatGPT default. |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | Fastest and lowest cost. | Default on ChatGPT Free and Go. |
Deliberately no price column here. OpenAI cut GPT-5.6 API prices twice in under a month, on July 30 and again on August 21, 2026, and published figures went stale between those dates. Read the current numbers from OpenAI's pricing page rather than from any article, including this one.
The same caution applies to context windows. OpenAI does not publish one fixed context-window figure per GPT-5.6 tier that can be cited from a primary source, so any specific number you see quoted for Sol, Terra, or Luna is worth checking against the model documentation before you rely on it.
If You Still See the Old Labels
A few things explain a composer that does not match this page:
- Staged rollout. The changes reached accounts over a period rather than all at once.
- Older documentation. A large amount of third-party writing, including tutorials published well after August 2026, still describes the three-mode picker. The screenshots are the giveaway.
- The model picker moved. Some users reported losing the quick in-composer way to switch models and having to go into settings instead. If you are hunting for a control you remember being in the composer, check settings first.
Legacy Naming, For Reference
These labels appear in older documentation and community posts. All of them predate the August 2026 change:
- Quick Response became Instant, which is now simply low reasoning effort.
- Think Deeper became Thinking, which is now raised reasoning effort.
- Pro mode in the composer is gone. Pro survives as a plan name, not a per-message mode.
How AI Toolbox fits alongside the new controls
The reasoning control is OpenAI's, and it works well. What ChatGPT still does not show you is any history of your own usage: how many messages you sent, how many of them used reasoning, and when. OpenAI documents its models and how they are developed in the OpenAI Help Center.
AI Toolbox (formerly ChatGPT Toolbox) keeps a local usage record: a daily count of messages sent, how many used reasoning versus a plain reply, and a dashboard to review it over time. It sits alongside the native controls rather than replacing them. The same unified install adds:
- Prompt library: save prompts and trigger them with the
// shortcut in the composer. - Folders, search, bookmarks, and pin: organise and find past conversations, including the long high-effort threads worth revisiting.
- Export, bulk archive, and bulk delete: keep history tidy after heavy research sessions.
One caveat worth stating plainly: the usage tracker was built against the Instant, Thinking, and Pro labels, so its per-mode breakdown is less reliable on accounts that have moved to the effort slider. The message and reasoning counts still record, the mode labels are the part that is catching up.
AI Toolbox is one unified Chromium install (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Arc). It does not run on Firefox.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does ChatGPT still have Instant, Thinking, and Pro modes?
No. OpenAI retired the three-mode picker on August 6, 2026. On Plus and Pro, one model (GPT-5.6 Sol) handles both quick replies and extended reasoning, with a thinking effort slider controlling how much reasoning it spends. On Free and Go, GPT-5.6 Luna is the default and a Think button enables deeper reasoning per message. Pro remains a plan name, powered by GPT-5.6 Sol Pro, but it is no longer a mode you select in the composer.
What replaced the Thinking mode?
The thinking effort slider on Plus and Pro, and the Think button on Free and Go. Raising the slider before you send is the direct equivalent of picking Thinking. The Think button is the Free and Go equivalent, applied one message at a time.
Does the Think button give me GPT-5.6 Sol?
No. The Think button gives GPT-5.6 Luna more time to reason on that message. It does not switch you to Sol. Access to Sol requires a paid plan. This is the most common misunderstanding about the Free tier control.
Do reasoning modes still count against a message limit?
Text chats became unlimited on every ChatGPT plan, including Free, in the same August 6, 2026 update. Raising reasoning effort costs you waiting time rather than quota for most users. Free and Go usage remains subject to anti-abuse guardrails, and workspace admins can set their own limits on Business and Enterprise.
Which model does each ChatGPT plan use now?
Free and Go default to GPT-5.6 Luna. Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise use GPT-5.6 Sol, with GPT-5.6 Sol Pro on the Pro plan where available. GPT-5.6 Terra sits between Sol and Luna and is aimed at API and work use rather than being a ChatGPT default.
What is the API equivalent of the reasoning slider?
The reasoning.effort parameter, which accepts none, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, and max. Use it instead of the consumer slider when you need behaviour that is reproducible across runs.
Why does my ChatGPT still show the old mode picker?
The change rolled out over a period rather than all at once, so accounts saw it at different times. Note also that some users found the model picker moved out of the composer and into settings, so a control you remember may have relocated rather than disappeared.
Related Reading
Bottom Line
The question "Instant, Thinking, or Pro?" no longer has an answer, because the picker that asked it was retired on August 6, 2026. What replaced it is simpler: one model per plan, and one control for how hard it thinks. Plus and Pro slide it. Free and Go tap Think. Text chats are unlimited either way, so the old habit of rationing your good messages is no longer necessary. If a guide still tells you to choose a mode in the composer, check its date.
References
Sources and documentation referenced in this article:
- Improving GPT-5.6 Sol in ChatGPT and expanding access to GPT-5.6 Luna for free users, OpenAI, August 6, 2026
- GPT-5.6: Frontier intelligence that scales with your ambition, OpenAI
- ChatGPT Release Notes, OpenAI Help Center
- Model Release Notes, OpenAI Help Center
- OpenAI Models, Platform documentation
- OpenAI brings unlimited ChatGPT text chats to free users, TechCrunch, August 6, 2026
- OpenAI drops ChatGPT text chat limits for free users, Help Net Security, August 7, 2026
- AI Toolbox (formerly ChatGPT Toolbox), Chrome Web Store listing
Retrieved August 2026. Last updated: August 26, 2026.
Adi Leviim