Projects are smart workspaces that keep everything related to a long‑running effort in one place. Group together chats, upload reference files, and add custom instructions so ChatGPT remembers what matters and stays on‑topic. With memory, context, and flexible tools, they’re ideal for repeated and evolving work such as writing, research, planning, and more.

Projects are available to all free and paid subscription types globally. Business, Enterprise and Edu users can additionally share projects with teammates, making it easier to align on goals, share progress, and build together in ChatGPT.

Projects are available to all free and paid subscription types globally.

Upload PDFs, spreadsheets, docs, or images to give ChatGPT material to reference in its answers. The number of files you may upload depends on your plan type. See Plans and limits below for details.

Click on the three dots on the upper right hand corner of your project to add project instructions. Tell ChatGPT how it can be helpful in its responses in this project specifically, for example:

“Act like my marketing mentor. Be concise. Use bullet points. Ask clarifying questions.”

Projects have built in memory, which means that it remembers all the chats and files you have created or uploaded in a project. Working in a project means that ChatGPT won't forget where you left off. See Memory in projects below for more information.

If you’ve already used ChatGPT and would like to move select chats into a project, here’s how:

Use all the same tools you’re familiar with outside of projects, including:

Paid plans may include access to additional tools such as agent mode and deep research, depending on your subscription.

You can now share a project with your team and others and others to move faster together and create a live context hub for ongoing work. ChatGPT can draw from anything in the shared project – including chats, uploaded files and custom instructions – so responses are informed by your group's internal knowledge, and you can pick up where others left off.

Shared projects are ideal for:

You can share your personal project by using the Share button on the top right to bring up the sharing pane. Invite teammates in your workspace by individual email, group, or by using a workspace link. Invitees get two levels of access: edit or chat.

As the project owner, you can create chats, update instructions, add files, invite/remove members, set member permissions, modify the project name, and delete the project.

You can only invite members within your workspace. Invite members by individual email, group, or by creating a shareable link applicable to your workspace.

ChatGPT Free, Plus, Pro, and Go users can invite individuals by using the Only those setting in the sharing pane. ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, and Edu users can invite individuals or workspace groups. Type their name, email, or group in the text box. You can also set their access level at invite time (chat/edit). Once you click Invite, both you and the invitee will receive an automated email confirming the invitation. If you invite a group, all members of the group will receive an email invitation.

When group members accept the invitation, the individual is shown on the sharing pane (along with the group), with the access level (chat/edit) set for the group. Note that while you can change the individual’s access level to be different from the group’s access level, the higher of the two will be applied for the users.

For example, if you invite a group with chat access level, you can then provide edit permissions to specific members of the group by updating their individual access level in the sharing pane. If you invite a group with edit access level, all members who join will be able to edit, even if you set specific individuals to chat access.

Owners can choose to share a project with “Only those invited” or “Anyone with a link.”

If set to “Anyone with a link,” any logged-in ChatGPT user who has the link can join the shared project. Only the owner can decide whether a link is open to “Anyone with a link.” The maximum number of collaborators is determined by the owner’s subscription plan.

Collaboration Limits

Owners can change visibility settings at any time, including switching back to invite-only.

For Business, Enterprise, and Edu customers, You can invite all members of your workspace by generating and sharing a link. Invitees using a workspace link join the project by default with chat access; you can update their access to edit afterwards, if desired, from the sharing pane. Unlike group links, you cannot provide edit access generally to all members of the workspace.

The total number of individuals that can join a workspace project is currently limited to a 100, regardless of invite type (individual email invite, group email invite, or workspace link). The total number of files supported in a single project is 40 for Business, Enterprise and Edu users (see Plans & Limits below for more information).

Project owners have full visibility and control over everyone that was invited, and can modify their access levels, or remove them from the project anytime, even before the individual has joined the project.

In addition to project controls listed above, enterprise customers can manage access for their workspace. See the Admin controls, data, and compliance API section below for specific details on project sharing controls.

After joining, members can move their existing chats into shared projects, as described above in Move an Existing Chat into a Project, above. Chats that are moved no longer appear outside the shared project, and inherit the project’s instructions and context, including files.

Once a project is shared, project-only memory turns on automatically. Shared projects do not have access to any member’s context or memories outside the project. For more information, review the Memory in Projects section below.

Members may move their chats outside the project, archive the chat, or delete it entirely. Once removed, others in the shared project, including the owner, will no longer be able to see the chat.

As with all OpenAI products, we aim for our tools to be used safely and responsibly, while maximizing your control over how you use them."

Users can open an existing chat and continue the conversation to explore a new idea without losing the original thread. For example, a data scientist might branch a teammate’s chat to test a new hypothesis while preserving the original chain of thought.

Branched chats appear in the project alongside the original (titled ‘Branch’), and can be viewed in the list of all chats in the project. You can find which member initiated a chat by clicking on the user profile icon next to the chat.

Users can leave a shared project from the sidebar (see image), and will be given the option to make a copy of their chats within the project prior to leaving. Copied chats are moved to a new project in their sidebar, named after the original project with ‘Copy’ prepended to the project name.

Workspace owners may also remove collaborators from a project at any time. Owners can also delete the project entirely, which will make all chats, files and resources in the project unavailable to collaborators unless previously copied (see Deleting a Project below)

Workspace owners can remove all collaborators from a project, effectively stopping the sharing process. However, project memory will continue to be project-only (limiting context to resources within the project) and cannot be changed to default for access to other non-project memories.

If the project was shared by workspace link, new users may still be able to join the link, unless the share setting is modified to Only those invited in the sharing pane.

Enterprise users have access to the compliance API to further control project sharing. See Admin controls, data, and compliance API

You can share single chats from your personal project. Click Share in a chat to create a unique link for others to view your conversation. Viewers see only that chat. Other project chats, files, instructions, and history are not shared. More on sharing conversations from ChatGPT.

If you share a chat from your shared project, your recipient will not be able to view that chat until they join the project.

Open the menu next to the project name and select Delete project. This permanently deletes all files, chats, and instructions in that project and cannot be undone. Note that this applies even if the project is shared, and members will lose access to all files and chats within the project.

Enterprise and Edu workspace owners can open the menu next to the project name and select Delete project. This permanently deletes all files, chats, and instructions in that project and cannot be undone. Note that this applies even if the project is shared, and members will lose access to all files and chats within the project.

We will only train on shared project data if every project contributor and owner has their “Improve the model for everyone” toggle turned on in their account settings.

Project memory keeps ChatGPT focused by drawing context only from conversations within the same project, rather than from your other projects. This creates a self-contained space that’s especially useful for long-running or sensitive work where you want ChatGPT to stay anchored to that project’s tone, context, and history.

When you create a project, you choose whether its memory is project-only or default. Existing projects stay on default memory, while project-only memory can only be set when starting a new project.

When you share a project, the project’s memory is set automatically to project-only (see below) from that point onward to maintain clear context boundaries for those in the project. It cannot be reverted to default memory. Shared projects do not have access to any individual member’s context or custom instructions or memories outside the project.

Project memory will continue to be project-only (limiting context to resources within the project) and cannot be changed to default for access to other non-project memories.

When you choose project-only memory during project creation:

To use project memory, the following settings must be enabled:

With default memory, your saved memories are referenced and chats can draw on other conversations within the same project. However, whether conversations outside the project can be accessed depends on plan:

Chats remain contained within the project. They cannot reference conversations outside the project (such as general ChatGPT or another project), nor can they be referenced by conversations outside the project.

Please reference the following table to understand how context works in projects with ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu workspaces:

Chats can reference both project and non-project conversations (general ChatGPT or other projects), unless the other project is set to project-only memory. These chats can also be referenced by conversations outside the project.

If memory for your account is enabled, it remains active across all chats, including chats in your projects.

For Plus and Pro users: In addition to saved memories, ChatGPT can reference previous chats within a project to deliver more relevant, focused responses. When you ask a question in a project, ChatGPT prioritizes the project chats and files.

For Business users: shared projects are set to project-only memory at the time of sharing, regardless of any previous memory setting.

Users can create an unlimited amount of projects.

File upload limits vary by subscription type. Note that only 10 files can be uploaded at the same time.

Projects inherit all toggles and restrictions that apply to your Business, Enterprise, or Edu workspace:

Admins can enable members of their workspace to use projects by using the toggle in the Projects section, in Settings & permissions, in the workspace tab.

Admins can additionally control project sharing in workspace settings in the Early Access Period section.

Project information, including control over shared projects, is available in the Compliance API. For technical details, please see the Compliance API reference.

All messages created in a project inherit the retention duration and residency region configured for your workspace. No separate retention policy is required, and deleted projects and their chats, files, and custom instructions are removed from our systems within 30 days unless we’re required to retain them for legal or security reasons.

For additional information on the data retention policy, please refer to our help article: Chat and File Retention Policies in ChatGPT

For ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, and Edu customers, we do not use information accessed from projects to train our modes by default. Please see our Enterprise Privacy page for information on how we use business data.

For ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro users, we may use information accessed from projects to train our models if your “Improve the model for everyone” setting is on. You can read more about how your data is stored and used in this article in our help center: Data Controls FAQ

No, access to projects is included with every qualifying ChatGPT plan. Any credits or usage charges—such as those for models or tools—apply to project chats the same as they do to regular chats.

Remove older or unnecessary uploads, combine file data, or split work into multiple projects.

Connectors are currently not supported.

Use the search chats feature to locate past chats within a project. It lets you quickly find and revisit discussions you've had in that project, and others.

Rate limits are based on your subscription level.

No. Each project’s memory must be set individually, and also respects your personal and workspace memory settings.

No. A new project will need to be made in order to utilize project-only memory. You can, however, move conversations from one project to another.

If you are a Business or Enterprise user, project-only memory is available only if Memory is enabled for your workspace and you have enabled Personal memory.

No. Project memory does not show a list of memories like personal memory. When you ask a question, ChatGPT may use context from other conversations in the same project. If you want it to ignore a specific conversation, you’ll need to delete that conversation or move it to a different project.

No, temporary chats cannot be added to projects.

Projects and GPTs are both ways to bring more context into ChatGPT, but they serve fundamentally different purposes.

GPTs are:

Example: HR Benefits GPT

In contrast, shared projects are::

Example: Q4 planning hub (analyze quarterly data with your team)

All members of the project can view chats and files, and the current list of members by clicking on the Share button. Individual members of the project are displayed with their names and email, along with any invited groups. Each chat – new, branched, or moved into project – is associated with the author by their user profile icon.

If you used the default icon when creating the project, after sharing, the icon is updated on the sidebar to indicate that the project is now shared (see Q4 Planning in the image below).

This only applies to the default icon - if you changed to a different icon or color, it won’t show the change. In this case, you can also click on the project itself, and either view the chat list (which will indicate different authors) or click on the Share icon on the top right to review the current list of members.

All members of a project can view and download files added to the project.

Shared projects will be supported by RBAC (role-based access controls) for launch, meaning admins can enable access to specific users. It will be defaulted to off at launch for a four-week Early Access period, and can be enabled anytime. For more information, review the Admin controls, data, and compliance API section.

Chat responses will only reference uploaded files and content shared directly in the project. If a member adds a file or context to a shared project, ChatGPT may use that information in responses visible to other members to make responses more relevant.

When you share a project, new members can view all chats, files and members within that project. Members can then create new chats, branch chats, and move existing chats into the project, and collaborate together.

In contrast, sharing a chat from a personal project or from your chats list allows users to view only that chat, up to the point the chat was shared. Users cannot access the personal or shared project the chat was shared from.

Note that if you share a single chat from a shared project, users will not be able to access that chat until they join the project.

See sharing conversations from ChatGPT

Currently, custom GPTs cannot be used in projects, with or without sharing. Owners and members with edit access can add custom instructions for all chats applicable to the project. Custom instructions do not take effect outside the project.

The compliance API includes the following shared projects information:

Chats in shared projects can be branched, not collaborated on synchronously.

Branching lets you explore a different direction or “remix” the thread without changing the original conversation—especially useful for testing alternate drafts, refining logic, or building on a teammate’s work.

Members can see the branched chat; chat creators can make it private by moving it out.

Project owners can remove members individually. Editors can add members, but not remove them. The Compliance API supports isolate project. Learn more about what’s supported in the Compliance API.

For enterprise users, sharing can be turned off entirely from workspace settings.