ChatGPT Plus free for four months if you are a US student

Four months of a 20 dollar plan is 80 dollars, and for a student that is not a rounding error. The offer is real, the deadline is real, and there are two details that decide whether you can take it.

Who qualifies

• Current college and graduate students, full time or part time.
• Enrolled at an eligible degree granting institution in the United States.
• Able to verify enrolment through SheerID, which is the service OpenAI uses to check.

Your ChatGPT account does not have to use your school email address. You verify with the school issued email through SheerID, then claim the offer while signed in to whichever account you actually want it on. Those are two different things and people lose the offer by assuming they are one.

The catch for people who already pay

Existing ChatGPT Plus subscribers can qualify, which is unusual and generous. The condition is how you are billed. If ChatGPT bills you directly, you are fine. If you subscribed through Apple or Google, the offer cannot be applied to that subscription.

What four free months gets you

Plus is the middle tier: more usage than free, access to the better models, and the features that arrive there first. The offer covers four monthly billing periods, including ChatGPT Work and the other Plus features.

Be realistic about what that changes. If you already hit the free plan limits every day, four months of Plus is a genuine upgrade to your term. If you use ChatGPT twice a week to rewrite emails, the free plan was already enough and the offer mainly buys you the habit of checking whether it is.

How to claim, in order

1. Open OpenAI's student offer page while signed in to the account you want the offer on.
2. Verify your student status through SheerID with your school issued email.
3. Claim the offer. Check your billing page shows the free periods before you close the tab.
4. Set a calendar reminder for the day the fourth month ends, because it renews at 20 dollars a month unless you cancel.

If you are not a US student

This offer is limited to eligible US institutions, and no amount of wanting it changes that. What does exist elsewhere is the free tier, which is not a trial and does not run out, and the various student offers from other companies that do reach outside the US.

Student offers we have checked

One honest warning about deadlines

Offers like this get written about for months after they end. If you are reading this after 31 October 2026, check the OpenAI page before you spend an evening on it. We keep expired offers on this site and mark them expired rather than deleting them, because knowing an offer is over is also useful.

What to do in the four months

Free periods have a way of being noticed in month one and forgotten by month three. A plan helps, and it does not need to be elaborate.

1. Month one: move your recurring work onto it. Reading and summarising course material, drafting, turning lecture notes into questions you can test yourself with.
2. Month two: try the things you would not pay to try. Voice, images, longer documents, whatever the plan includes that the free tier limits.
3. Month three: decide honestly whether it saved you time, and write the answer down.
4. Month four: set the cancellation reminder for two days before renewal, then keep using it until then.

Why offers like this exist

Not charity. Students are the cheapest users to win and the most expensive to lose: you are forming a habit now that you will carry into a job where someone else pays. Four months is roughly how long a habit takes to set, which is not a coincidence.

Knowing that is useful rather than cynical. It tells you what to do with the four months: find out whether the tool is genuinely better for your work, or whether you are just getting used to it.

Questions students ask

Does it work if I already pay? Yes, as long as OpenAI bills you directly. Subscriptions bought through Apple or Google cannot take it.

Does my account have to use my university email? No. You verify with the school email through SheerID, then claim on whichever account you use.

What if my university is not listed? SheerID checks against eligible degree granting institutions in the United States. If yours does not appear, the offer is not available to you, and no support ticket changes that.

What happens to my chats if I cancel later? They stay. You drop back to the free tier rather than losing the account.