ChatGPT Sites turns a prompt or compatible project into a hosted website, web app, dashboard, or game. The building and publishing work happens through Sites in ChatGPT on the web or in the desktop app, with Codex handling the creation and revision process. This is not a general promise of unrestricted consumer web hosting. Sites is in public beta, availability depends on your plan, region, and workspace settings, and every account is subject to plan-specific usage limits.
The feature is best understood as a short path from an idea to a focused hosted experience. You describe the audience and behavior, review what ChatGPT creates, request changes, save a version, and deploy only after approval. OpenAI provides the hosting layer and supports access controls, environment values, analytics, and optional data services within the Sites runtime.
What ChatGPT Sites is
According to the official Sites documentation, Sites can create, host, refine, and share websites, web apps, and games. A Site remains available in the Sites list after the chat that created it ends. It is also separate from a ChatGPT Project, even when project files or a compatible local codebase helped produce it.
OpenAI first presented Sites on June 2, 2026 as a preview for Business and Enterprise teams. The current documentation calls it a public beta and says access may vary by plan, region, and workspace configuration. That distinction matters. Check the Sites entry in your own ChatGPT account rather than assuming that another user’s access or limits apply to you.
Sites has management views in ChatGPT on the web and desktop. It does not have a standalone Sites management view in Codex CLI or the IDE extension. You can still use those tools to edit and test a local project, but creating, saving, deploying, and managing the hosted Site happens in ChatGPT.
If you are comparing this with broader knowledge-work features, our guide to ChatGPT Work outputs explains how websites fit beside documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. The separate guide to Codex for knowledge work covers the wider research and production workflow.
Choose a small job before you build
A strong first Site has one audience and one recurring task. OpenAI’s Academy examples include a launch tracker, weekly review dashboard, option calculator, onboarding page, and internal project page. Each is narrow enough to review without pretending that a generated first draft is a finished software product.
A launch tracker might contain milestones, owners, links, risks, and weekly updates. A calculator could accept a few inputs, state its assumptions, and show how it reached the result. An onboarding page could collect the project background, useful documents, team contacts, common questions, and a first-week checklist. These are easier to inspect than a large application with many roles, integrations, and hidden business rules.
Write a brief before opening Sites. Name the people who will use it, the decision or task it supports, the information it needs, what users can change, and what must remain private. If the Site needs to remember records or accept uploads, say that explicitly. If a simple content page is enough, do not request storage merely because the platform offers it.
A practical build, review, and update workflow
1. Describe the audience and required behavior
Open Sites from the ChatGPT desktop app, or choose More > Sites on the web. You can also go to chatgpt.com/sites. In your request, use the word “website” or mention @Sites to start the workflow explicitly.
A useful request is concrete: “Build a website for our weekly product launch review. Show milestones, owners, due dates, current risks, and links to approved documents. Let reviewers filter milestones by owner. Keep access limited while I review it.” This defines the audience, page purpose, information, interaction, and initial access without dictating an unnecessary technical stack.
For an existing local project, ask ChatGPT to check compatibility before deployment. Sites runs within a supported runtime, so some frameworks, private networks, databases, background services, and hosting patterns will not work. Compatibility should be established rather than assumed.
2. Inspect the first version as a visitor
Review the generated page before discussing polish. Confirm that the labels match your workflow, links point to the intended resources, forms collect only necessary information, and calculations use the stated rules. Try the main path from the perspective of a new visitor. A clear design cannot compensate for a wrong formula, a misleading status, or access that is broader than intended.
OpenAI’s Academy guide recommends checking content, structure, labels, calculations, and interactive elements. The current product documentation also allows edits from the preview: choose Edit, describe the change, and attach a screenshot or relevant file when visual context would help.
3. Request precise revisions
Make revision requests observable. Instead of asking for a “better dashboard,” ask to move unresolved risks above completed milestones, add an owner filter, explain the scoring formula beside the result, or shorten the onboarding checklist. Reopen the preview after each meaningful change and repeat the core user path.
Keep factual and editorial review separate from visual review. First check the source material, numbers, permissions, and behavior. Then review spacing, hierarchy, mobile layout, empty states, error messages, and keyboard use. If the Site came from a local project, inspect source changes and database migrations in the Codex review pane before publishing.
4. Save a version before deployment
Sites separates saving from deploying. Saving creates a reviewable, deployable version. Deploying publishes a saved version and returns its production URL. Every Sites deployment URL is a production deployment, so a deploy action should never be used as a private preview shortcut.
Ask ChatGPT to save a version without deploying it, review that candidate, and deploy only the approved version. You can also ask it to list or inspect saved versions if several candidates exist. This small release discipline makes later updates easier to reason about.
5. Set the narrowest suitable audience
A new Site is limited to its owner and workspace admins until access changes. Depending on the account and workspace, choices may include selected active users or groups, anyone in the workspace, or anyone on the internet. Internet access appears only when public publishing is enabled. Enterprise public publishing is off by default and requires an admin to enable it.
Sharing permission allows people to visit; it does not give them editing rights. Invited users in a restricted audience must sign in with the account that received access. A public Site can be visited without workspace access, but that option should not be confused with universal availability on every plan or workspace.
6. Verify the production version and maintain it
Open the production URL as the intended audience would. Test sign-in, navigation, forms, saved data, uploads, calculations, and responsive layouts. Confirm that a restricted visitor cannot reach content outside the chosen audience. Sites records traffic automatically and provides unique visitor and page-view metrics over time, although the official documentation says this analytics view is currently unavailable for Enterprise-owned Sites.
For updates, reopen the Site, describe the change, review the new result, save another version, and deploy that approved version. The OpenAI Academy page notes that Sites cannot connect directly to live data today. For frequently changing information, it suggests using a separate automation to gather updates, then reviewing and refreshing the Site. Do not describe a scheduled summary as a direct live-data connection.
Hosting, access controls, storage, and databases
OpenAI documents hosting, access controls, storage, and database support, but each belongs to the supported Sites runtime. Content-led pages can avoid persistent application state. Durable structured records, user progress, and scores can use D1, a relational database. File uploads such as images, documents, audio, and video can use R2 object storage. A searchable upload system may use D1 for metadata and R2 for the file contents.
Request durable storage only for information people expect the Site to remember. A temporary theme choice or dismissed banner does not need the same treatment as submitted project requests or saved progress. For identity-aware internal tools, Sites can use the current workspace user’s identity. Public Sites may offer optional Sign in with ChatGPT while remaining open to signed-out visitors, if that behavior is deliberately built into the Site.
Hosted environment values and secrets are managed in the Site’s settings. OpenAI says not to place secrets in prompts, attached files, Site content, or .openai/hosting.json. After changing hosted environment values, redeploy the approved saved version so the new deployment uses them.
Limits and security checks before sharing
During the public beta, plan-specific limits apply across all Sites. ChatGPT displays current limits and warns as you approach one. Reaching a limit can stop you from creating another Site, adding storage, or keeping a high-usage Site public, while still allowing you to edit and manage existing Sites. The official page does not publish one universal allowance, so the limit shown in your account is the relevant one.
Review generated text and images, external links, uploaded files, forms, and interactions. Remove confidential information, credentials, and third-party material you do not have permission to share. If a feature collects personal data, decide whether collecting it is necessary, explain how identity information is used, and meet applicable privacy requirements.
Sites does not support data residency or inference residency at launch. OpenAI says this covers deployed Sites, source code, D1 and R2 data, generated artifacts, and logs. Its documentation also prohibits using Sites for Protected Health Information, payment-card data, financial transactions, malware, phishing, impersonation, or experiences aimed at children under 13 or the applicable digital-consent age.
Custom domains may be available for some accounts. You must own the domain and control its DNS because Sites does not register domains. OpenAI also states that custom domains are unavailable in Enterprise workspaces at launch. Treat both public publishing and custom domains as account-dependent settings, not guaranteed parts of every Sites plan.
FAQ
Do I need to know how to code to use ChatGPT Sites?
No coding knowledge is required to start from a plain-language description. You still need to review the generated content, behavior, data handling, and access settings. More complex products may require engineering work outside Sites.
Can anyone on the internet open a ChatGPT Site?
Not by default. A new Site is limited to its owner and workspace admins. Public access is available only when the account and workspace support it, and Enterprise admins must enable public publishing.
Can a Site store records and uploaded files?
Yes, within the supported runtime. OpenAI documents D1 for durable structured data and R2 for file storage. Ask for these only when the experience needs persistent records or uploads.
Can I update a Site after it has been deployed?
Yes. Reopen it, request and review the changes, save a new version, then deploy the approved version. Because Sites cannot connect directly to live data today, regularly changing content may require a separate automation and a reviewed refresh.
Official references
- OpenAI Academy: ChatGPT Sites
- OpenAI documentation: Sites
- OpenAI Codex: What’s new
- OpenAI announcement: Codex for every role, tool, and workflow
This guide is based on OpenAI’s published documentation and announcements. It does not claim hands-on testing of account-specific beta access, limits, or deployment behavior.