GPT 3 vs. GPT 4: Differences Between ChatGPT Models

Ever wondered how different ChatGPT models stack up against each other? With a variety of versions available, each adding more strengths and improvements, it’s essential to understand their differences clearly.

After GPT-3, OpenAI has brought many new changes and improved the model. GPT-4 comes with those changes and improvements. So, GPT-4 is built with different strengths, capabilities, improved performance, and efficiency.

By measuring the performance of the old and the latest language models, you can choose the right model for a specific task.

In this blog post, you will learn the significant characteristics and advancement of the two major models of the GPT series.

GPT model comparison

GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an AI language model that uses deep neural networks to generate human-like text. GPT helps in writing, translation, question-answering, image generation, coding, etc. OpenAI has developed and trained this popular model with a large dataset of text and code.

Please note that, the first GPT model, GPT-1, was introduced by OpenAI in June 2018. It marked a significant step forward in natural language processing (NLP) by using transformer-based neural networks capable of generating coherent, contextually relevant text. GPT – 2 followed suit in February 2019, offering more realistic text outputs. But the real game was about to change with the arrival of GPT – 3.

What is GPT-3?

GPT-3, released May 28, 2020, was trained on a dataset of 500 TB of text and code. So, GPT-3 became very powerful and could generate text that resembled human-written text. The tool has amazed people with creative content and informative answers.

Later, developers presented GPT-3.5, an improved version of GPT-3. ChatGPT’s emergence is the result of GPT-3.5. Following this advancement, GPT-3.5 Turbo enhanced ChatGPT further.

What is GPT-4?

GPT-4 is the fourth model of OpenAI’s GPT series. GPT-4 was released in March 14, 2023. This model is a multimodal large language model, unlike GPT-3, which is unimodal. GPT-4 is more advanced and reliable than ever.

OpenAI has now made GPT-4 the main model for ChatGPT and is available with the free version.

GPT 3 vs. GPT 4: The Differences

Though GPT-4 has already been released, it continues to evolve through updates and improvements. It has significantly transformed how we interact with computers, offering more accurate, nuanced, and context-aware responses than previous models. There are several core differences between GPT-3 and the latest GPT-4, including reasoning ability, language understanding, and multi-modal capabilities.

GPT-3 vs. GPT-4: Model Size

If you look at the GPT model sizes, you can see that OpenAI has trained them with really large datasets. But, How big is GPT-3? As per OpenAI, it has around 175 billion parameters. It was the largest language model available before GPT-4.

What about the number of parameters in GPT-4? It is estimated to be roughly around 1.80 trillion! This estimate first came from AI experts like George Hotz, who is also known for being the first person to crack the iPhone.

In case you are wondering what “parameters” actually represent, they are the internal weights the model learns during training. Think of them as the “knobs” or “settings” that the model adjusts to improve its ability to predict the next word in a sentence, understand meaning, follow instructions, etc. These are sometimes compared to neurons in the brain.

So, if you are asking the model size of GPT-4 as compared to GPT-3, GPT-4 model is over 10 times larger than GPT-3! Making it the smartest LLM to exist till date.

GPT-3 vs. GPT-4: What it Takes & What it Gives

GPT-3 takes text input and you can give textual input in any language. You can give text prompts, instructions, code, long content, etc., and ask for outputs accordingly.

Differently, as per OpenAI, GPT-4 can handle about 24,000 words of text. However, the system understands inputs in multiple modalities and takes images besides textual input. For some users, it can provide codes to build a simple website by taking only a hand-drawn mockup. Also, it can help you to recreate small games.

Users of ChatGPT Plus or Pro versions can develop their own GPTs or explore a myriad of GPTs integrated with other AI apps for various purposes. Examples would be Canva for image creation or Capcut for AI video generation.

GPT-3 vs. GPT-4: Information Limit

GPT-3 has information that has data up to September 2021. Any events, developments, or information after that date are not part of GPT-3’s training data. If you use the updated GPT-3.5 Turbo version, it has updated information up to December 2023.

GPT-4 “legacy version” has a knowledge cutoff up to September 2021. However, GPT-4 Turbo and and the newer GPT-4o (Omni) has broader general knowledge up to December 2023.

As per New York Post, GPT-4.5 is less prone to so-called “hallucinations” – a phenomenon where AI models fabricate false responses to user prompts. OpenAI said the upgraded model has a hallucination rate of just 37.1%, down from 61.8% from the last version. It’s built-in info is updated up to February 2025, the month of its preview release.

GPT-3 vs. GPT-4: Output Quality

GPT-3 is a conversational tool and is good at generating content. The tool can create copies, long content, and answer questions. However, it lacks common sense and cannot think critically compared to GPT-4. Its “hallucination rate” is also much higher, providing inaccurate answers to simple tasks.

The output quality of GPT-4 is more accurate, collaborative, and advanced than the previous versions. It helps you to generate content, edit, and do repeated writing tasks smartly to lessen your pressure. GPT-4 can craft stories, lyrics, social media copies, long-form content, etc. based on the prompts. Also, the tool creates captions for images, does classifications, and analyses smoothly.

GPT-4o can also make summaries from audio files and read texts on images.

GPT-3 vs. GPT-4: User Comparison

Many modern companies use GPT-3 to develop new and innovative products and services. OpenAI uses GPT-3 to boost its own products and services, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E.2. Google uses GPT-3 to upgrade the accuracy of its search results. Moreover, many popular AI writing tools are also powered by GPT-3. For example- Microsoft’s Bing chat service, the excellent SEO-optimized content generator GetGenie AI, Grammarly, and so on.

On the contrary, the list of GPT-4 users is still unknown. As the development process is still running, people cannot widely use the tool yet. However, OpenAI is utilizing GPT-4 to fuel the new ChatGPT plus service. Hopefully, DALL-E.3 will be also available to GPT-4 in the future and people can convert ideas into images easily.

Pricing System

GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 are free. You can use free ChatGPT online to generate content. It will give you all regular model updates without purchasing any plan.

GPT-4 costs $20 per person per month. This plan will provide you with advanced data analysis, plugins, early access to beta features, along the benefits of the free version.

A Quick Comparison Table

Features	GPT-3	GPT-4
Modality	Unimodal (text only)	Multimodal (text and images)
Accuracy	Less accurate	More accurate
Applications	Over 300 apps	Unknown, API available
GPT training data size	175 billion parameters	1.80 trillion parameters
Size	17 gigabytes	45 gigabytes
Prompt length	4,096 tokens (max)	8,192 tokens (max)
Speed	10 billion tokens per second	100 billion tokens per second

FAQs

Wrapping up

So, we broke down the key details of GPT 3 vs. GPT 4. Hope you have now clear ideas about these GPT models.

Among modern businesses, writers, researchers, artists, and others, GPT has gained much popularity. Developers have already designed several writing assistants, chatbots, and other AI tools using GPT-3 and GPT-3.5. Now you can also look forward to seeing the magic of GPT-4.

Important to note that GetGenie generates content for your writing tasks by leveraging the GPT language model of Open AI.