Yup. The difference is particularly apparent with o3, which does bursts of web searches on its own whenever it feels it'll be helpful in solving a problem, and uses the results to inform its own next steps (as opposed to just picking out parts to quote in a reply).
(It works surprisingly well, and feels mid-way between Perplexity's search and OpenAI's Deep Research.)
I asked "What version/model are you running, atm" (I have a for-free account on OpenAI, what I have seen so far will not justify a 20$ monthly fee - IN MY CASE).
Answer: "gpt-4-turbo".
HTH.
Don't ask the model, just look at the model selection drop-down (wherever that may be in your UI)
>I have a for-free account on OpenAI, what I have seen so far will not justify a 20$ monthly fee - IN MY CASE
4.1o-mini definitely is not worth $20/month. o3 probably is (and is available in the $20/month plan) for many people.
People often say "I asked ChatGPT something and it was wrong", and then you ask them the model and they say "huh?"
The default model is 4.1o-mini, which is much worse than 4.1o and much much worse than o3 at many tasks.