In April, OpenAI announced a major upgrade to ChatGPT’s memory feature. The improved memory allows ChatGPT to look back at a user’s previous conversations to provide more personalized, relevant, and useful responses.
Until now, this improved memory was only available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users.
Today, OpenAI announced that this memory upgrade is now available to all logged-in ChatGPT Free users. This is big news, as it will impact the ChatGPT experience for hundreds of millions of users. For example, if a user previously mentioned that they like Chinese food, ChatGPT will remember that and suggest Chinese dishes the next time they ask, “What should I have for lunch?”
However, OpenAI will not have the same amount of memory as paid users. Free users will have a light version that provides short-term continuity across all conversations. ChatGPT Plus and Pro users will continue to have long-term memory and a deeper understanding of their preferences.
also, today we are making a lightweight version of memory available to the free tier of chatgpt!
memory has probably become my favorite feature in chatgpt? excited for us to improve this a lot over time.
— Sam Altman (@sama) June 3, 2025
To enable it in ChatGPT Free in the EEA (European Economic Area), go to Settings > Personalization > Memory > Reference chat history. From there, you can enable it. OpenAI will also prompt you to enable this setting. All ChatGPT Free users outside the EEA will have memory enabled by default.
Depending on your preferences, you will be able to manage memory using these two settings:
Reference saved memories: Details you have asked ChatGPT to remember, such as your name, your favorite color, or your dietary preferences.
Reference chat history: ChatGPT can use information from your past conversations to make your future conversations more useful.
The features of course differ between the free and paid tiers, but this latest improvement to ChatGPT will provide responses that seem more relevant and personalized to millions of users, since the company will essentially “build” and remember your profile.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
It doesn't work. Only "Saved memories for reference" is displayed, not "chat history"...