# ChatGPT Sites private sharing: who can open an invited Site · Stacktree Source: https://stacktr.ee/blog/chatgpt-sites-private-sharing [Skip to content](#main) [Stacktree](/)[Developers](/developers)[Agents](/agents)[Docs](/docs)[Use cases](/use-cases)[Pricing](/pricing)[Blog](/blog)[Dashboard](https://app.stacktr.ee)[Sign in →](https://app.stacktr.ee) By [ Steve Smith ](/about) · Founder, Stacktree · Last updated September 11, 2026 blog · shipped 11 September 2026 # ChatGPT Sites can now be shared privately. The viewer still signs in. OpenAI announced private sharing for ChatGPT Sites today: invite specific people to a Site without making it public. It closes the gap our earlier posts described, where a private Site could only reach accounts inside your own workspace. It does not close the other one. An invited viewer opens the Site by signing in with the ChatGPT account that received the invitation, so the link alone still opens nothing. Here is exactly what shipped, how the invite works, and where a client deliverable still needs a different kind of link. [ Get started free ](https://app.stacktr.ee/?join=1&from=seo_blog_chatgpt_sites_private_sharing) install npx stacktree-install Copy No card · 3 pages free · about a minute ## What is ChatGPT Sites private sharing? An access option, announced 11 September 2026, that lets a Site owner add named people by email address as view-only visitors of a private Site. They do not join your workspace, cannot edit, and the Site stays off the open internet. The condition, from OpenAI's help center: "Invited visitors must sign in with the account that received access." Private, but not account-free. The same report, two private links q3-report.yourname.chatgpt.site Invited on ChatGPT Sites Sign in with the invited account No passcode No expiry q3-report.youragency.com Published to Stacktree Opens with no account Passcode or email-domain gate Expiry, your own domain Both are private. Only one of them can be opened by a client who has never used ChatGPT. ## On this page - 01 [ What shipped on 11 September ](#what-shipped) - 02 [ How the invite works, step by step ](#how-it-works) - 03 [ The sentence that decides it ](#the-sentence) - 04 [ What private sharing still does not have ](#still-missing) - 05 [ The database line worth reading twice ](#database) - 06 [ When invited viewers are the right tool ](#right-tool) - 07 [ When the reader is a client ](#client) ## What shipped on 11 September The [announcement from @ChatGPT](https://x.com/ChatGPT/status/2098457920291946894) bundles five updates, three months and "over 5M sites" after launch: invite teammates to edit, save and publish a shared Site; invite specific people to a private Site without making it public; deploy in half the time; ask ChatGPT to inspect a Site's database, which editors can view too; and connect your own custom domain. Collaboration and custom domains were already in the docs in August. Private sharing is the new one, and it is the one this post is about. The help center caught up a few days before the tweet. Its list of access options still has four entries, but the second one changed. It used to be "selected active users or groups". It now reads: "Selected active users or groups, and named external viewers." Everything below follows from that clause. ## How the invite works, step by step From OpenAI's help center, condensed and quoted where the wording matters: - Open the Site and select Share. Set "Who has access" to "Only those invited" to keep it private. - "Use the available people or email control to enter the email address for the person you want to invite." On a personal Site the control is "Enter an email address". - "Review the recipient and their view-only access, then save the sharing change." - "Confirm that the person appears in the Site's access list. Ask them to open the Site while signed in with the account that received access." The person you invited "cannot edit or publish the Site" and does not become a workspace member. To revoke, remove them from the access list, then, in the help center's words, "check the remaining audience settings", because workspace-wide or public access may still let them in. In Enterprise workspaces the ability to invite external viewers is itself a permission an admin has to grant. This is a real improvement over the July model. Our [earlier post on sharing a Site with a client](/blog/share-chatgpt-site-with-client) said the only private audiences were accounts inside your own workspace, and that a client "either needs a seat or gets a URL anyone can open". The seat is no longer required. That post is updated today to say so. ## The sentence that decides it "Invited visitors must sign in with the account that received access." That is the whole mechanism. The invite is an entry on an access list keyed to an email address, and the check at the door is a ChatGPT sign-in on that address. It is the same identity check the workspace options use, extended to one more identity. It is not a link that carries its own permission. People in the launch thread landed on the same point within the hour. One reply asked the question directly: "Do people still need to be logged in to ChatGPT? If so it's not really viable." Another, with the most likes of any skeptical reply, read "share privately" as private from everyone except OpenAI. In the product lead's feedback thread the day before, a developer described wanting "super simple multi-user auth, e.g. only this list of gmail folk can access", finding that a Pro account could not do it, and hand-rolling authentication on a public Site instead. That is the shape of the demand: a list of people, no accounts, no public URL. Private sharing answers the first part of it. ## What private sharing still does not have - A passcode. Nothing a recipient types to get in. Access is identity or nothing. - An email-domain gate. You cannot say "anyone at client.com". You name people one at a time, and each of them signs in. - An expiry. No date after which the link stops working. Asked for one in the feedback thread ("Sites with expiry date and auto delete. Would be useful for polls or survey"), the product lead suggested having Codex add a scheduled task that disables the Site or swaps in a "poll closed" page. Workable, and not a setting. - A link-only private mode. Our London test in August found a personal plan offered "Only you" and "Anyone with the link"; the docs now add invited viewers. There is still no mode where an unguessable URL is itself the credential. - Per-recipient links. Every invited viewer opens the same URL after signing in. There is no way to know which of three invitees opened it without building that into the Site. ## The database line worth reading twice "Explore your data: ask ChatGPT to inspect your Site's database. Editors can view it, too." Two replies to the announcement flagged the same thing independently: database access shared with every teammate you invite as an editor is a larger grant than "collaborative editing" suggests. The docs agree in plainer words: "Editors can read the Site's live database data." Invited viewers are not editors, so this does not apply to them. But if the reason you want a private Site is that it holds real data, the permission to keep straight is "Can edit", not "Can view". ## When invited viewers are the right tool Plenty of cases, and it is worth being fair about them. A co-founder who already lives in ChatGPT. A stakeholder at a partner company who has a Plus account and is happy to sign in. A dashboard with a live database that a handful of named people should be able to poke at, where a sign-in is a feature rather than a hurdle. Anything where the viewer is technical, already a ChatGPT user, and the Site is an app rather than a document. Sites builds full applications with a database and server logic, and private sharing gives those apps a real audience short of the open internet. Use it. ## When the reader is a client The case that does not fit is the one where you are sending finished work to someone who did not ask to create an account. A proposal, an audit, a quarterly report, a design review: the reader is a client, the content is theirs, and the relationship is that you make it easy for them. Asking them to sign up for ChatGPT so they can read a PDF you could have emailed inverts that. The person who wanted "only this list of gmail folk" did not want those people to have ChatGPT accounts. He wanted a list. That is the case [Stacktree](/share-with-clients) is built for, and it starts from the link rather than from an identity provider. Every published page is an unguessable private URL. A client opens it with no account. If the content needs a gate, you add a passcode they type, or a company email-domain gate they pass with a one-time magic link, still with no account created. Links can expire or delete themselves after first view. Each recipient can get their own named link, so you know who opened what and can revoke one person without touching the rest. The page sits on your own domain from the Solo plan, and any agent can publish it over MCP or a single curl, then revise it in place on the same URL. Two products, two questions. Sites answers "how do a few named ChatGPT users get into my app?" and now answers it well. The question a deliverable asks is "how does one person outside the building read this with no friction, and how do I know they did?" Private sharing moved the first question forward today. The second one still has the same answer it had in July. Fix it now You've read why the public link is a problem. Paste the artifact here and get a private one, no account, and a passcode if you want it. Paste HTMLDrop a fileno account · 24 h linkHTML to publishAdd a passwordPublish private link The private link that opens without a sign-in Publish the page, send the link, and the client just reads it. Add a passcode or a company email-domain gate when the content needs one, set an expiry, and see who opened it. Free for three pages, no card. [ Publish a private page → ](https://app.stacktr.ee/?from=blog_cta_chatgpt_sites_private_sharing&join=1) Free to try: 3 pages, each live for 7 days. Own domain from $19/mo. FAQ ## Frequent questions Can you share a ChatGPT Site privately? + Yes, since September 2026. Set "Who has access" to "Only those invited", enter the person's email address, and save. OpenAI's help center describes this as adding "a named person outside the workspace as a viewer" without making the Site public. It works from personal Plus and Pro accounts as well as Business and Enterprise workspaces, where an admin has to allow external invitations. Do invited viewers need a ChatGPT account? + Yes. The help center is explicit: "Invited visitors must sign in with the account that received access." The invitation is tied to an email address, and the person opens the Site while signed in to the ChatGPT account on that address. The link on its own opens nothing for someone who is not signed in. Only a Site published to "Anyone on the internet" is readable without an account. Can you password protect a ChatGPT Site? + No. The documented access controls are identity-based: owner and admins, selected users or groups plus named external viewers, anyone in the workspace, or anyone on the internet. There is no passcode a recipient types, no email-domain gate, and no expiry date. A Site can include its own sign-in feature if you build one, which is a different thing from a gate on the link. How do you share a ChatGPT Site with a client who does not use ChatGPT? + You have two choices inside Sites: publish it to the open internet, or ask the client to create a ChatGPT account and sign in before they can see the invite. If neither fits, publish the page to a host where the link itself is the credential. On Stacktree every page is an unguessable private URL a client opens with no account, with an optional passcode or company email-domain gate and an expiry. Can invited viewers see the Site's database? + Viewers see what the Site shows them. Editors are different: the docs state that "Editors can read the Site's live database data", and the 11 September update lets editors ask ChatGPT to inspect the database directly. Several replies to the announcement read that line twice. If a Site holds anything sensitive, treat "Can edit" as data access, not just code access. Can a ChatGPT Site link expire? + Not as a setting. There is no expiry date or burn-after-read on a Site. When a user asked for "Sites with expiry date and auto delete" in the feedback thread, the suggested route was to have Codex add a scheduled task that disables the Site or swaps in a "closed" page. Removing a viewer from the access list is the manual equivalent. Expiring links are a one-line setting on Stacktree. Is ChatGPT Sites private sharing available on Plus? + Yes. OpenAI's docs say external invitations are "rolling out to Sites users on Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans", and that you can "share a private Site from a personal account". Sites itself is a public beta with plan-specific usage limits, so a private Site still counts against the same site, storage and traffic caps as a public one. Keep reading ## Related guides - [ Sharing a ChatGPT Site with a client Updated for private sharing: the three audiences, and the one that still needs another tool. ](/blog/share-chatgpt-site-with-client) - [ ChatGPT Sites explained The living status post: cost, access, domains, limits, what is still undocumented. ](/blog/what-is-chatgpt-sites) - [ ChatGPT Sites usage limits What the 50% warning means and what to do about it. ](/blog/chatgpt-sites-usage-limits) - [ Share an HTML file with a client The account-free version: a private link, a passcode, an expiry. ](/share-html-file-with-client) - [ Clients view without an account Why the link should be the credential when the reader is a client. ](/client-view-without-account) - [ The private alternative to ChatGPT Sites When the deliverable should be neither public nor tied to viewer accounts. ](/openai-codex-sites-alternative) References ## Sources and further reading - [ ChatGPT Sites update: 5M sites, private sharing, custom domains (@ChatGPT) ↗ The 11 September 2026 announcement: "Share privately: invite specific people to a private Site without making it public." ](https://x.com/ChatGPT/status/2098457920291946894) - [ OpenAI Help Center: Creating and managing ChatGPT Sites ↗ The four access options including "named external viewers", the invite steps, and "Invited visitors must sign in with the account that received access." ](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001339-creating-and-managing-chatgpt-sites) - [ ChatGPT Sites documentation ↗ "You can invite viewers outside your workspace, or share a private Site from a personal account"; editor permissions including live database access; plan rollout for external invitations. ](https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/sites) - [ ChatGPT Sites feedback thread (Kath Korevec, OpenAI) ↗ The product lead's open call for feedback, 11 September 2026, including the expiry request and the "only this list of gmail folk" auth workaround. ](https://x.com/simpsoka/status/2098244223728505322) ## Send it to one client, not to everyone Private by default, a passcode they type without an account, an expiry, and a named link per recipient so you know who opened it. 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