Custom GPTs Are Being Retired: What OpenAI Said, and What to Do With Yours

If you built a custom GPT, or you open one every day, it has an end date. OpenAI's custom GPT retirement FAQ sets December 11, 2026 as the "scheduled retirement" for Enterprise workspaces: "Custom GPTs stop running." For every other plan, OpenAI says only that it "may follow the same transition timeline." The announcement itself, in OpenAI's ChatGPT release notes of September 11, 2026, covers every plan. Your GPTs keep working until then, and published ones can be moved into a plugin.

Key Takeaways

• The date is December 11, 2026, for Enterprise. OpenAI's FAQ lists it as "Scheduled retirement. Custom GPTs stop running." It adds that "the dates are subject to change."
• Other plans have no confirmed date. OpenAI: "The other plans may follow the same transition timeline, with in-product announcements coordinated with Enterprise." Free, Go, Plus and Pro should plan around December 11 but watch for their own notice.
• This covers every plan. OpenAI: "The transition affects all ChatGPT plans."
• At retirement, GPTs leave the directory too. OpenAI says custom GPTs "stop running and leave the GPT directory," which is the GPT Store.
• Migration moves your instructions, not everything. A GPT's instructions "become a skill within the new plugin" and connected apps come along. Custom actions, conversation starters, previous chats and the chosen model do not.
• Only the creator or an admin can migrate a GPT, and only a published one. "Drafts cannot be migrated directly."
• Making new GPTs is already off on personal plans. OpenAI's free-tier FAQ, rewritten August 14, 2026, says: "No. New GPT creation and publishing are not available on personal ChatGPT accounts, including Free, Go, Plus, and Pro." Enterprise loses creation on September 25, 2026 (planned).
• This is the second GPT retirement in two months. OpenAI retired its official DALL-E GPT on August 30, 2026 and said at the time that user-created GPTs were unaffected. That has now changed.

The Retirement Timeline

OpenAI publishes four dates, all for "affected Enterprise workspaces," and says they "are subject to change." We read them in an archived copy of the FAQ captured September 17, 2026.

If you are on Free, Go, Plus or Pro, those dates are the best guide you have, not a promise. OpenAI's wording is that other plans "may follow the same transition timeline," and that personal accounts should "follow the migration instructions in your in-product notice." One detail reaches across plans: public GPTs built in an Enterprise workspace follow the Enterprise dates "even if you access them from a personal account." What decides the date is where a GPT was made, not what you pay.

What OpenAI Actually Said

Two short paragraphs, and they are worth reading in full because the hedging is deliberate. Here is the September 11, 2026 entry, titled "Planned custom GPT retirement and migration to plugins," verbatim:

We're planning to retire custom GPTs across ChatGPT plans and provide a migration path to plugins, which can combine reusable instructions with connected apps. You can continue using existing GPTs until the retirement date that applies to you, subject to your permissions.

To prepare, review the GPTs you rely on and identify their creators and anyone who needs access. When migration becomes available, test migrated plugins and review sharing. Timing and availability may vary by plan and workspace; follow applicable notices and learn more about the planned retirement.

The release note carries no date. The dates are in the retirement FAQ it links to, set out above. That FAQ also answers what the note left open about the GPT Store: at retirement, custom GPTs "leave the GPT directory," and "migrated GPT links are planned to redirect to the replacement for people who have access." What neither page says is what happens to a GPT's uploaded files if nobody migrates it.

Creation Is Already Gone, a Month Before the Announcement

If you tried to build a new GPT recently and could not, this is why, and OpenAI never announced it in a release note. Its free-tier FAQ was rewritten on August 14, 2026 and answers the question directly:

Can I create a GPT as a Free tier user?

No. New GPT creation and publishing are not available on personal ChatGPT accounts, including Free, Go, Plus, and Pro. You can continue using existing GPTs. Editing an existing GPT still depends on your plan and permissions. GPT creation remains available in Business, Enterprise, and Edu workspaces when workspace settings and permissions allow it.

Read that against the article's title. It is filed as a free-tier FAQ, and the answer names Plus and Pro as well, which is why almost nobody paying $20 or $100 a month has seen it. Two archived captures, August 15 and August 22, 2026, carry the identical wording, so this is not a one-day draft.

The same FAQ adds one limit that catches people out: "GPT usage follows your current Free tier model limit." Hit that limit and "GPT access pauses until the limit resets."

So the order of events is: creation and publishing stopped in mid-August 2026, and OpenAI announced the wider retirement on September 11, 2026. The September note is the second step, not the first.

What This Means for You

It depends on whether you made a GPT, use someone else's, or never touched them. The short version: if you built one, publish it and migrate it; if you only use other people's, the creator has to do the work.

Why OpenAI Is Doing This

Because plugins do what GPTs did plus the part GPTs could not: connect to a live service. A custom GPT was a saved bundle of instructions, and optionally some files you uploaded. OpenAI's description of a plugin is "reusable instructions with connected apps," which is the same bundle with a working connection attached.

You can see the direction in what OpenAI has been shipping. Its September 2026 release notes add plugins for Zendesk and OneNote, a Data plugin for business data, and a Healthcare Public Data plugin, and its Health feature is itself managed under Settings then Plugins. The plugin directory is where OpenAI is putting everything now, and GPTs are the older idea it replaces.

That is a reasonable product argument. It is also a migration, and migrations lose things. OpenAI lists them itself: "GPT custom actions do not transfer," "conversation starters and previous chats may not copy," and "the GPT's selected model does not carry over." It also warns that "a migrated plugin may respond differently," so test a few familiar prompts before you rely on it.

What You Should Do This Week

One thing, and it takes ten minutes. Open each custom GPT you actually rely on, and copy its instructions into a note you own. If you uploaded files to it, download them. That single step makes you immune to every version of this migration going badly, and it is worth doing whether or not you ever touch plugins.

Do not rebuild anything as a plugin by hand yet. OpenAI's migration button carries your instructions across for you, and for Enterprise it was targeted for September 17. On a personal plan, wait for the in-app notice. The exception is a GPT with custom actions: those "do not transfer," so that part needs rebuilding either way.

Do not cancel ChatGPT Plus over this. Custom GPTs are one item on OpenAI's list of what Plus adds over the free plan, and the bigger ones -- file uploads, image generation, Projects, and the paid thinking levels -- are untouched. It is worth knowing that the GPT half of that list has already stopped working for new builds, though: OpenAI's help centre still lists custom GPTs under what Plus gives you while its free-tier FAQ says creation is off on Plus.

The bottom line: OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs on every ChatGPT plan and replacing them with plugins. Enterprise GPTs stop running on December 11, 2026, and OpenAI says other plans may follow the same timeline. Building new ones is already impossible on Free, Go, Plus and Pro. Copy the instructions out of the GPTs you care about, publish any drafts, and migrate when ChatGPT offers it.

Corrections and Updates

September 18, 2026: this page said OpenAI had published no retirement date and that we could not read its detail article. OpenAI's retirement FAQ gives December 11, 2026 for Enterprise, says other plans may follow, and says retired GPTs leave the GPT directory.