The Final Countdown: OpenAI to Retire GPT-4o—But There’s a Catch for Enterprise Users

OpenAI has announced that GPT-4o will be retired for most users, with the retirement slated for 13 February 2026, a move that has sparked considerable debate among customers who still favour GPT-4o for specific needs. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT Enterprise and Education subscribers will retain access to these legacy models, while by default the older iterations will be hidden from the model selector unless legacy support is activated within a workspace.

The process for activation is: open the profile icon in ChatGPT, choose Workspace Settings, go to the Models tab, and enable legacy versions; access is restricted to IT Administrators.

The legacy models available to Enterprise and Education accounts include GPT-4o, OpenAI o3 & o3 Pro, and GPT-4.1 & GPT-4.5, whereas Free and standard Plus subscribers will lose access to these models on 13 February 2026, with GPT-4o and other variants such as GPT-4.1, 4.1 mini, OpenAI o4-mini, and GPT-5 Instant and Thinking slated for retirement. The article published on 3 February 2026 notes the ongoing public response to the retirement plan.