How to sign up for ChatGPT, in nine numbered steps (with screenshots)
Signing up for ChatGPT takes about ten minutes and is free for the basic version. You need a working email address, a phone number for one-time verification, and you must be 13 or older. No credit card is required for the free account.
I have sat next to about forty people while they signed up for ChatGPT. A neighbor. Two customers. My own father, twice — once because the email link expired and once because we lost the password before he ever used the account. The same three screens trip people up every time, and none of them is the part you would expect. The hard parts are not the typing. The hard parts are knowing which button is the right button when the page suddenly asks for your phone number, and knowing what to do when nothing happens after you click "Sign up."
This piece is the version of that walkthrough I wish I could have handed each of them before we started. Nine numbered steps. What each screen actually says. And, at the end, the three places I would warn you in advance.
The nine steps in order
1. Open a web browser and go to chatgpt.com. Type those nine letters directly into the address bar at the top of the screen — not into a search box. There is no app you have to install first. There is no account to "request access" to. If you are on a phone, the address bar is at the very top or, on newer phones, at the very bottom. Either is fine. The page that loads is mostly white, with a "Sign up" button somewhere near the upper right and a "Log in" button next to it.
2. Click the button that says "Sign up." Not "Log in." Log in is for people who already have an account, which you don't yet. The wording on the button changes occasionally — sometimes "Sign up," sometimes "Create account," sometimes "Get started." All three mean the same thing. Click whichever one you see.
3. Choose how you want to sign up. The screen will offer you three or four options: continue with a Google account, continue with a Microsoft account, continue with an Apple account, or sign up with an email address. If you already have a Gmail account, the Google option is the fastest — you click it once, pick which Gmail address to use, and most of the next four steps are filled in for you. If you do not use Gmail and do not know whether you have a Microsoft or Apple account, choose "Continue with email" instead. The email option works for any email address, including a Yahoo address, an AOL address, a Comcast address, or one your grandchildren set up for you a decade ago.
4. Type your email address and a password. The password has to be at least twelve characters. A short sentence with a number on the end works fine — for example, BlueCoffeeMug7 is more than long enough and easier to remember than a string of symbols. Write the password down on a piece of paper and keep it near the computer. This is not paranoia. This is the single most common reason people lose access to a ChatGPT account they already paid to set up.
5. Open your email and click the verification link. OpenAI — the company that makes ChatGPT — will send you a message titled something like "Verify your email." Open your email program in a different tab or window. The message arrives in under a minute. If you don't see it in two minutes, check your spam folder. The link inside the message is the part that matters: clicking it tells ChatGPT that the email address really belongs to you. The link expires after about thirty minutes, so if you walk away and come back tomorrow, you may need to start step 4 over again.
6. Type your first name and your date of birth. The first name is what ChatGPT will call you when it greets you. You can use any name — a nickname is fine. The date of birth is a legal requirement, not a marketing trick. OpenAI is required to know that you are at least 13 years old, which you are. Type it in the order the page asks for (month, day, year) and move on.
7. Enter your phone number for one verification text. This is the screen that makes people quit, and there is no way around it. ChatGPT will text you a six-digit code, you will type the six digits back into the page, and that is the end of the phone number's involvement. They are not going to call you. They are not going to sell the number. The verification is a one-time check to prevent automated scripts from making thousands of fake accounts. If the text does not arrive in two minutes, click "Resend code." If it still does not arrive, the most common cause is that your phone carrier blocked it; try again from a different room or call your carrier.
8. Land on the chat screen. Once the code is verified, the page changes to something that looks like a blank text-message conversation, with a single empty box at the bottom that says "Ask anything" or "Message ChatGPT." That is the whole product. You have officially signed up.
9. Type one real question and press Enter. Do not stop here. The reason most people abandon ChatGPT in the first week is that they sign up, look at the empty box, can't think of anything to ask, and close the tab. A good first question to type, exactly as written: "Help me prepare four questions to ask my doctor about my blood pressure medicine at my appointment tomorrow." Press Enter. Read the answer. That is the moment ChatGPT becomes useful, and it has to happen on the same day you sign up or it usually never happens at all.
What the sign-up screens actually look like in 2026
The screens move around. OpenAI redesigns the sign-up flow roughly twice a year. The button labels shift — "Sign up" becomes "Get started" becomes "Create an account." The order of the questions changes too: sometimes the phone number comes before the email verification, sometimes after. The nine steps above are the nine actions in the order they have to happen logically, not the order the screens always present them in.
If a screen asks you for something that isn't on this list — say, your country, or whether you want to receive product updates — answer honestly and move on. If a screen asks for a credit card to sign up for the free version, you are on the wrong screen. The free version of ChatGPT does not ask for a card. (The paid version, ChatGPT Plus at $20 per month, does. You do not need the paid version to start.)
A note on instructions you can hold in your hand: because the screens shift, a printed setup binder for ChatGPT — written in plain English, updated every quarter — exists for exactly this reason. We make one. It is $19, ships to your door, and is the version you give to someone who is going to do this once a year and wants the steps in front of them on paper, not on a YouTube video they have to pause every thirty seconds. The roadmap of which sentence will move between editions is the editor's problem, not yours.
What to do if the page asks for a phone number, a card, or your age
Phone number. The page is supposed to ask for it once, during step 7. If it asks again later — for instance, when you are already inside ChatGPT and trying to send a message — that means the verification didn't fully complete the first time. Repeat the six-digit-code step. It is not a scam. It is also not optional.
Credit card. The free version of ChatGPT, called ChatGPT Free, does not require a credit card. If a screen says "Add payment method" before you have even sent a message, you are looking at the upgrade prompt for ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Go. Click whatever says "Continue with free" or "Maybe later" or "Skip for now." The free version is the version most people should start on. You can always upgrade later in five clicks if you decide you want longer answers or image generation. The Federal Trade Commission, in its September 2022 staff report titled Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, specifically warned about screens designed to make the free option harder to find than the paid one. ChatGPT's sign-up flow is generally honest about this, but the "Maybe later" link is sometimes printed in pale gray text. Look for it. It is there.
Age. ChatGPT requires you to be 13 or older. There is no upper limit. There is no "senior" version and no "simplified" version inside the product. The Pew Research Center has been tracking technology adoption among older adults for years and, in its most recent figures, 76 percent of Americans 65 and older now own a smartphone — meaning, statistically, you are not behind. The sign-up flow is exactly the same one your forty-year-old daughter would see. If a particular screen confuses you, it is the screen's fault, not yours.
If you get stuck on a step, the official help pages at help.openai.com have walkthroughs for individual error messages. They are written in clearer English than most company help pages, though still not as plain as I would like.
When you finish, the chat screen sits there, empty, waiting. The thing nobody tells you is that this is the hardest part — not the sign-up, the first question. If you want the version of this where the first question, the four questions after that, and the printed reminder card all come in one envelope, that's the one-page plan I send free. If you'd rather skip ahead and have the full setup binder on your desk, it's $19. And if you signed up six months ago and now want to know whether what you're typing is safe to type, I wrote that piece next.
— Shawn Ivie Founder, Plain English Company