ChatGPT 4 vs 5: What’s New and What’s Better?

The evolution of generative AI has been nothing short of extraordinary. OpenAI’s successive releases—GPT-4, GPT-4o, and the latest GPT-5—have dramatically reshaped the landscape of natural language understanding and generation. As we stand in August 2025, the question on everyone’s mind is clear: What’s new, and what’s truly better in GPT-5 compared to GPT-4? This deep dive explores the advancements, strengths, and differences between these two powerhouse models.

GPT-4: The Versatile Multimodal Trailblazer

When GPT-4 launched in early 2023, it broke new ground in AI capabilities:

• Multimodal inputs: GPT-4 could process both text and images, enabling users to ask complex questions about screenshots, diagrams, or visual data.wikipedia
• Advanced context: With up to 32,768 tokens (and up to 128,000 tokens in GPT-4 Turbo), it could maintain highly coherent conversations and analyze lengthy documents.techtarget
• Reliability and creativity: GPT-4 boasted improved reliability, interpretability, and the ability to handle nuanced instructions. Its responses were more coherent and creative than GPT-3.5 or prior models. techrepublic
• Flexible tone and tasks: By introducing “system messages,” users could dictate GPT-4’s tone or instruct it to output responses in specific formats, like rhyming prose or structured JSON.wikipedia
• High performance across tasks: It excelled in standardized tests, ranking in the top percentiles for major exams, and was celebrated for its mathematical, coding, and problem-solving abilities. techrepublic
• Enhanced multilingual support: GPT-4 improved language understanding and translation for a broader range of languages, better capturing idioms and cultural nuances.rapidops

In 2024, GPT-4o (Omni) further enhanced real-time processing and multimodality, unifying text, voice, and vision for faster, more natural interactions. openai

GPT-5: The Unified Architecture Revolution

On August 7, 2025, OpenAI released GPT-5, and the AI world hasn’t been the same since. Here’s where GPT-5 takes a quantum leap:botpress

• Unified model architecture: Unlike GPT-4, which sometimes required switching models or relying on specialized subsystems, GPT-5 integrates advanced reasoning, multimodal input, and real-time adaptation in a single, seamless system. No need to toggle between “fast” or “deep” modes—GPT-5 dynamically handles both, thanks to model unification.simonwillison
• Structured reasoning: GPT-5’s biggest breakthrough is in multi-step logic and chain-of-thought reasoning. It can revise and justify outputs, adapt to changing contexts, and perform complex, evolving tasks that previously required multiple tools or models. openai
• Expanded multimodal capabilities: GPT-5 builds on GPT-4’s strengths but adds more advanced transitions across text, image, and audio—and is structurally prepared to support full video processing and integrations with tools like SORA (OpenAI’s text-to-video engine).botpress
• Unprecedented context windows: GPT-5 supports an input limit of 272,000 tokens and an output window (including invisible reasoning tokens) of 128,000—doubling the possible context depth over GPT-4 and Turbo variants. simonwillison
• Superior agentic tool use: It’s better at following instructions and coordinating multi-step tasks across various tools, giving it a “co-pilot” feel for work in coding, research, and document creation .news.microsoft
• Benchmarked performance: GPT-5 now sets the state of the art in coding (74.9% on SWE-bench Verified, 88% on Aider Polyglot), scientific reasoning (89.4% on GPQA Diamond), visual reasoning, and economically valuable tasks.vellum
• Multilingual and application diversity: Its multilingual capabilities are more comprehensive, opening doors for enhanced cross-cultural communication in business, healthcare, and education.folio3+1
• Reduced bias and improved safety: GPT-5 takes further strides in safe and unbiased outputs, minimizing misinformation and ensuring ethical AI responses.hindustantimes
• Energy efficiency and speed: GPT-5 responds faster in conversational mode and consumes less computational resources for most tasks, making it more cost-effective for cloud environments and large-scale deployments.getpassionfruit

GPT 4 vs 5: Key Feature Comparison

GPT 4 vs 5: Practical Improvements

1. Performance in Real-World Tasks

Autonomous agents built on GPT-5 outperform those leveraging GPT-4 for complex coding, research, and workflow automation. GPT-5 handles multi-step requests and adapts to new information, while GPT-4 may require re-prompting or manual adjustments.openai+2

2. Accuracy and Benchmarks

GPT-5 leads industry benchmarks for math (AIME 2025: 94.6%), coding (SWE-bench Verified: 74.9%), and scientific reasoning (GPQA Diamond: 89.4%), surpassing GPT-4o and turbo variants by a significant margin. vellum

3. Multimodality and User Experience

GPT-4 introduced multimodal input, but GPT-5 expands this with more seamless and intuitive switches between modes and improved accuracy, particularly in image and audio analysis. Soon, full video reasoning will be a reality. botpress

4. Tool Integration and Agentic Functionality

GPT-4 could fetch and summarize data or analyze code, but its ability to perform multi-step chaining was limited. GPT-5 excels at chaining tools together (e.g., search, summarization, code generation), handling entire workflows autonomously and reliably. openai

5. Safety, Bias, and Ethics

Bias reduction and safer outputs are key upgrades. GPT-5 utilizes refined frameworks that more effectively mitigate the propagation of harmful content and misinformation, making it a superior choice for enterprises and regulated industries. folio

Pricing and Accessibility

GPT-4 and GPT-5 both offer a mix of free and paid tiers, but GPT-5’s advanced features—like high reasoning modes, expanded context, or agentic chains—may come at a premium, at least for early users. However, efficiency gains could make powerful AI more broadly accessible in the long run. Hindustantimes

What’s Next? The Future After GPT-5

GPT-5 is less about a dramatic “leap” and more about becoming a robust default for everything you want to do with AI. It rarely falters, often surprises users with competence, and can serve as a foundation for agentic workflows, knowledge assistants, and creative applications. Its “it just does stuff” feel will likely influence how future systems are designed: intelligent, adaptive, multi-modal, and practical. oneusefulthing.

Conclusion: GPT 4 vs 5—Who Wins?

In the battle of GPT-4 vs 5, the edge goes squarely to GPT-5 for enterprise, research, agentic automation, and users demanding adaptive, workflow-centric AI. For individuals needing simpler chat, content, or code, GPT-4, especially the GPT-4o variant, remains a dependable option.

Ultimately, GPT-5’s major advances—structured reasoning, unified multimodal architecture, and tool-chaining—set a new gold standard for generative AI, moving us closer to versatile, reliable digital agents that not only converse but truly “think,” solve complex problems, and act with real-world impact.