Can a ChatGPT Site Be Private?

The short answer

A ChatGPT Site starts locked. When ChatGPT creates it, only the owner and the admins of the ChatGPT workspace can open it. Nobody else can find it or load it. You do not have to do anything to make a new Site private.

The question people usually mean is different. They mean: can I keep it private and still show it to the right people? The answer depends on who those people are. If they have ChatGPT accounts, yes. If they do not, no. That line runs through every option below.

The five audiences, from narrowest to widest

The owner chooses one audience for the Site. Each step widens who can open it.

The first four audiences are private in the sense that matters: a stranger with the address cannot open the Site. The fifth is public. There is nothing between the fourth and the fifth.

Named outside invitations arrived in September 2026. Before then, the only way to show a Site to a person outside the workspace was to make it public. Enterprise admins decide whether members may invite outside people at all.

Three things "private" does not cover

1. A reader without a ChatGPT account. Every private audience signs in with ChatGPT. An invited outside person must sign in with the exact account that received the invitation. A client who does not use ChatGPT cannot open a private Site. A colleague on a team that has not adopted ChatGPT cannot open it either. Their only door is the public one.

2. A gate that is not an account. Sites has no password on a link, no company-email domain check, and no expiry date. Those are the tools people reach for when the reader has no account. None of them exist here. A public Site can add Sign in with ChatGPT, but that tells the app who the visitor is. It does not close the Site to anyone.

3. Who opened it. Sites shows unique visitors and page views over time on most plans. It does not show which person opened the Site, or when. On Enterprise-owned Sites, the analytics are not available at all. If a reviewer asks who has seen a document, a Site cannot answer.

What the beta limits do to a private Site

Every Site on your account shares one set of usage limits. ChatGPT notifies you as you approach them. When you reach a limit, you may be unable to create a new Site or add storage.

The limit that affects visibility applies to public Sites. A high-usage public Site may lose its public availability until usage drops. A private Site keeps its audience. It may stop growing, but it does not become public and it does not disappear.

How to check and change who can open a Site

1. Open the Site in ChatGPT, on the web or in the desktop app. Your Sites are listed at chatgpt.com/sites.
2. Open the Site's sharing settings. Only the owner can change the audience. Editors cannot.
3. Choose the audience. To show the Site to one outside person, add their email address as an invited viewer. They receive an invitation and sign in with that account.
4. To make a Site public, choose the public audience. On Enterprise, this option appears only after an admin enables public publishing and gives you permission to publish.
5. To lock a public Site again, choose a narrower audience. The address stays the same, and visitors without access see nothing.

An editor can change and save the Site. After you publish it once, an editor can publish later versions to the same address. Editors cannot widen or narrow the audience, rename the Site, change its address, or transfer it.

When private-to-ChatGPT is not private enough

Three readers meet the account line every day.

The colleague without a ChatGPT seat. Your product manager reviews the report. Legal reviews the terms page. Neither has a ChatGPT account. You can make the Site public and send them the address, or you can buy them seats.

The client. A client can now receive a named invitation, but only if they sign in with a ChatGPT account. A client who does not have one, or who will not create one for a single document, cannot open a private Site.

The reviewer who asks who opened it. A security review or an audit wants a record. Sites keeps page views, not people.

Display is the AI docs workspace that's open to all agents and people, and it answers all three. Any agent publishes an HTML or Markdown file through MCP, the CLI or the API, and you can also publish a file from the dashboard. The file gets its own URL. The publisher sets the audience.

• Company. Everyone at your organization can open it. On Solo and higher plans, they sign in with the Google or Microsoft account they already use for email. On every plan, a one-time password sent to their email address also works. No ChatGPT seat, no new account.
• Private. A new page is private by default. Only you and the people and groups you share it with can open it. You invite a person outside your organization by email and give them a role: Viewer, Commenter, Contributor or Editor. They sign in with a one-time password, Google or Microsoft, and do not join your organization.
• Public. Anyone, no sign-in. You choose it on purpose, and you can reverse it.

Every update lands at the same URL. Paid plans keep earlier versions. Reviewers comment on the page, and your agent reads the comments through MCP and publishes the next version. Your teammates can also select Edit and correct a line on the page. The Solo plan records view counts. The Team plan records which person opened the page, and when. Business keeps 365 days of audit logs. Viewers are unlimited on every plan, including Free.

From a Site to a Display URL

If ChatGPT built the page from a local project, the HTML is on your disk. Ask your agent to publish it:

"Publish ./report.html to Display for everyone at my company."

To invite one outside reader instead:

"Publish ./report.html to Display as private and share it with client@example.com."

If you built the Site on the web without a local project, export the page's HTML from your project files first. Then publish it the same way, or publish the file from the Display dashboard.

Two notes. Internal apps that pull data from your own sources are in private beta. And publishing from inside ChatGPT with the Display connector requires ChatGPT Business or Enterprise, because OpenAI limits custom-app write actions to those plans. On Plus or Pro, publish with the CLI or from the dashboard.

Get started free – 3 gated artifacts on the Free plan, unlimited viewers, no card required.

We checked every audience, sign-in, and limit claim against OpenAI's Sites developer guide and help center on 22 September 2026. Sites is in beta. Named outside invitations are still rolling out. Check the sharing settings in your own account.

Sources and further reading

• Sites developer guide – OpenAI Learn
• Creating and managing ChatGPT Sites – OpenAI Help Center
• Managing ChatGPT Sites for your workspace – OpenAI Help Center
• What is ChatGPT Sites? Plans, limits, and who can open one
• Sharing and access on Display