Productivity
Aug 16, 2025

GPT-4 vs GPT-5: The Truth No One at OpenAI Will Tell You

GPT-4 vs GPT-5: Honest user verdict

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GPT-4 vs GPT-5: The Truth No One at OpenAI Will Tell You
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GPT-4 vs GPT-5: The Truth No One at OpenAI Will Tell You

ChatGPT4 vs. ChatGPT 5

If you’ve been inside ChatGPT lately, you might have noticed something feels… off. Maybe your trusty GPT-4 partner was replaced overnight by GPT-5. Maybe you’ve been getting weird answers about “tether-quotes” in the middle of a research session. Or maybe, like a lot of Reddit, you’re just wondering where the warmth went.

We spent the past week digging into the differences between GPT-4 and GPT-5. We read the benchmarks, the launch notes, and hundreds of frustrated Reddit threads. We also talked to a handful of people who’ve been living with both models since launch. Here’s what we found.

1. GPT-4 still wins at being human
It writes with personality, nuance, and warmth. It remembers what you said five turns ago and stays in character. If you give it your style, it keeps your style. People describe it as more of a partner than a tool. For writers, marketers, or anyone who wants their output to actually sound human, GPT-4 is still the model to beat.

2. GPT-5 is a beast on paper
It can take in absurdly long documents, hallucinates far less in structured work, and is faster and cheaper at scale. In some cases, it’s exactly the right tool. One of our personal sources, who’s not a coder at all, used GPT-5 to walk them step-by-step through building a simple web app. They said it was like having a patient instructor who never judged their lack of technical background. If your task is well-defined and data-heavy, GPT-5 can be brilliant.

3. The day-to-day gap is real
Benchmarks tell one story, real life tells another. GPT-5 has a habit of forgetting instructions after just a few turns. Sometimes it responds with something totally unrelated. It’s noticeably flatter in tone. Try to use it like GPT-4 and you’ll likely end up frustrated. Reddit is full of people saying the same thing: GPT-5 might be smart, but it’s not fun.

4. The model router is a double-edged sword
GPT-5 uses this system to decide which sub-model you get for each prompt. In theory, it picks the perfect tool for the job. In practice, it can break context and produce odd behavior. Combined with a training focus on “safe completions” instead of spontaneous creativity, it can feel more like an IT helpdesk than a collaborator.

5. When to use which
If you need to process a massive legal contract, classify a thousand survey responses, or feed in an entire codebase for review, go GPT-5. If you’re writing an article, crafting an ad, or brainstorming something that needs to feel alive, stick with GPT-4 while you still can.

6. The sweet spot workflow
If you have access to both, start in GPT-4, run the heavy lifting in GPT-5, then return to GPT-4 for the final polish. You get scale and speed from GPT-5, tone and warmth from GPT-4, and the result is the best of both worlds.

What this all comes down to is judging by the job. GPT-5 is an incredibly capable system when the task is clear and structured. GPT-4 is still the better choice when the magic is in the delivery. And if you’re lucky enough to have access to both, the sweet spot might be starting in GPT-4, running the heavy lifting in GPT-5, then coming back to GPT-4 to give it life again.