Your Custom GPTs Stop Working December 11
OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs on every ChatGPT plan. Here is what to save, what each one becomes, and the order to do it in.
By John Martines · October 11, 2026 · 6 min
OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs on December 11, 2026, and pointing people to plugins instead. A small team can move its quote helper, staff FAQ bot and writing-style GPT in an afternoon, if it starts with a list.
Your estimator opens ChatGPT on a Monday in December and clicks the "Quote Helper" GPT she has used all year. It knows your labor rates, your markup and the way you word a scope of work. This time it doesn't open. The front desk's "Ask the Handbook" bot is gone too, and so is the GPT that writes your social posts in your voice.
Nothing broke. OpenAI retired them, and it said so in September. If your team built custom GPTs, you have until December 11, 2026 to move what you want to keep.
A custom GPT is a saved version of ChatGPT with its own instructions, its own reference files (OpenAI calls them "knowledge"), and sometimes a connection to another app. Many small businesses made one or two: a quote helper loaded with a price sheet, an FAQ bot for staff loaded with the employee handbook, a writing GPT that knows how the owner likes things said.
OpenAI is retiring all of them. Its help center FAQ says the change affects all ChatGPT plans, and it is steering people to plugins as the replacement. A plugin is a newer kind of add-on: it holds one or more "skills," which are saved instructions and reference files for a repeatable job, and it can also hold a connection to outside software.
How it got here:
- October 22, 2025: OpenAI opened shared Projects to every ChatGPT plan, including Free and Plus. That matters below.
- September 11, 2026: OpenAI notified workspace admins that custom GPTs would be retired and moved to plugins.
- September and October 2026: Creation of new custom GPTs is being switched off, on dates that differ by plan and workspace. Reported dates range from late September to late October.
- December 11, 2026: Custom GPTs are scheduled to stop running. OpenAI says timing can vary by account, and some Enterprise customers with an approved extension have until February 11, 2027. A small business should plan on December 11.
OpenAI built a migration button. In My GPTs, you select a GPT and choose Migrate to Plugin. According to OpenAI's FAQ and its migration guide:
- Carries over: the GPT's instructions (they become a skill), its knowledge files (copied into the plugin's reference files) and any connected apps.
- Does not carry over: custom actions (a GPT's own hookups to outside systems, which have to be rebuilt), the model you picked, your past conversations with the GPT, and who it was shared with. Conversation starters may not copy either.
- After you migrate: the original GPT becomes read-only. It keeps working until retirement, and the creator can't delete it.
- Only the creator or a workspace admin can migrate a GPT, and the new plugin starts out private. You have to share it again.
OpenAI also warns that a migrated plugin may respond differently than the GPT did. That alone is a reason to retest.
The risk isn't losing a clever toy. It's losing the knowledge inside it. A quote helper holds your rates. A handbook bot holds the policies your staff ask about ten times a week. A writing GPT holds months of small corrections about tone. Often only one person knows the GPT exists, and sometimes that person has left. If nobody owns it, it will vanish quietly on December 11 and someone will find out in front of a customer.
The good news: most small-business GPTs are just instructions plus a few files. That is easy to move, and you don't need a developer to do it.
1. Find every GPT your team uses. Ask each person one question: "Which GPTs do you open for work, and who made them?" Check My GPTs on the accounts that built them. Write the list down with three columns: name, owner, what it does. Include GPTs from outside the business that staff rely on, because you can't migrate someone else's.
2. Save the instructions and the files before you touch anything. Open each GPT's Configure tab, copy the instructions and conversation starters into a shared document, and download every knowledge file into one folder. Do this even if you plan to use the migration button. It gives you a copy you control, it lets you move the work to another tool later, and it protects you if a file doesn't come across cleanly.
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