Photoluminescence measurements of pure GaAs crystals cleaved in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) are compared to those of air‐cleaved reference samples. Nonradiative surface recombination and band bending are considerably reduced at the UHV‐cleaved surface. We find at low temperature (∼20 K) roughly the same spectral shape and the same integrated intensity for the UHV‐ and air‐cleaved surfaces provided we apply a factor of 10 lower excitation power density to the UHV‐cleaved surface. This factor of 10 stays constant over more than five orders of magnitude of excitation density. A detailed comparison of the spectra shows that the characteristic reabsorption minimum in the free‐exciton polariton luminescence is missing in the case of the UHV‐cleaved surface.