OpenAI and the U.S. General Services Administration announced a multi-year government deal on September 10, 2026, that drops the ChatGPT license fee from $15 per user per month to $0 and cuts usage prices by 50 percent. The same terms now cover federal agencies and, for the first time under this agreement, state, local, and tribal governments. The contract runs 27 months, from October 1, 2026, through December 31, 2028.

OpenAI said more than one million government employees already use ChatGPT under earlier agreements, and that the expanded offer reaches a U.S. public-sector workforce of about 23 million people. There is no minimum seat commitment. Agencies keep ChatGPT Enterprise rules that say business inputs and outputs are not used to train OpenAI models. The post says eligible organizations also get buyer guidance, spend controls, FinOps help, and an expanded Government Academy.

The deal is paired with cyber-defense access. Every verified government entity will be approved for Daybreak Blue, OpenAI’s advanced defender tier, at 50 percent off commercial pricing, with training attached. Those teams can also request Daybreak Red for vulnerability research, exploit validation, and red teaming at full commercial rates. OpenAI tied the policy to last week’s Daybreak for Frontline Defenders program, which it described as a $1 billion global commitment for subsidized defender access.

The company listed recent public-sector uses as the case for broader seats. It said Daybreak Access has sped vulnerability research and malware analysis, the CDC cut some literature reviews to under 30 minutes, Georgia’s Department of Revenue digitized a tax form in 15 minutes instead of up to two weeks, North Carolina’s treasurer used ChatGPT to flag unclaimed property, and Lawrence Livermore compressed early fusion-model work from months into hours. GPT-6 Astra is named as part of the toolset on offer.

Decoded Take

Zero-dollar seats are how OpenAI turns ChatGPT into default government infrastructure before a procurement fight starts. Fifty percent off tokens still leaves agencies paying for Astra-class usage, which is where the bill, and the lock-in, will show up. Daybreak Blue for every verified government entity is the sharper shift: it puts an offensive-adjacent cyber stack on the same contract as a clerk’s writing assistant. The tell over the next 27 months is not how many free seats get provisioned. It is whether state and tribal CISOs actually turn on Daybreak, and whether a successor GSA schedule still exists when the discount expires on December 31, 2028.