Claude Projects vs ChatGPT Projects: what they remember and how teams share them
Short answer: Claude Projects and ChatGPT Projects both group chats with files and instructions so the assistant starts each conversation with the right background, and both now keep a memory per project. Claude lets you share a project only on Team and Enterprise plans; ChatGPT lets you share on every plan from Free up. Neither is a record of your customers and tasks, and neither is visible to the other assistant. If your team uses both, or wants deals, tasks and decisions that outlast any chat, keep those in one shared workspace that both connect to, and use Projects for instructions and reference files.
As of November 2026. Details come from Anthropic's and OpenAI's help pages, linked below, and change often. Written by Flori, which makes one kind of shared workspace.
What is a Claude Project?
Anthropic's help article describes Projects as "self-contained workspaces with their own chat histories and knowledge bases." You upload documents, set project instructions, and every chat in the project starts with them.
The details that matter in practice:
- Every plan has them. Free accounts can create up to five projects.
- Large knowledge bases work on paid plans. When project knowledge gets close to the context limit, paid plans switch to retrieval and expand capacity "by up to 10x," Anthropic says.
- Chats don't see each other. Anthropic's guide to managing projects notes that context isn't shared across chats in a project unless you add it to the project knowledge.
- Sharing is for Team and Enterprise. Members get "Can view" or "Can edit" access, and a project can be shared with named people or the whole organization.
Anthropic is also rolling out a new version of projects in beta, starting with Claude Code, where a project is one ongoing conversation that Claude splits into parallel threads running in the cloud. In Claude Cowork, projects add their own scheduled tasks; see what Cowork is and what to connect.
How does Claude's memory work with projects?
Claude saves memory as topics while you chat, and you can tell it to "remember this." According to Anthropic's memory article:
- Each project has its own memory. Inside a project, Claude uses that project's memory plus your memory from chats outside projects, but not memory from other projects.
- You can wall a project off. Turn off "Use account memory" on the project's page to keep its memory fully separate.
- Memory is personal. It is on by default for Free, Pro, Max and Ultra. On Team and Enterprise, owners decide whether it's available, and it's off for each member until they turn it on.
- Chat and Cowork share it. What comes up in a Cowork task in the cloud carries back to chat, and the other way round.
Paid plans can also ask Claude to search past chats, limited to the current project when you're inside one. Our guide on giving Claude project memory walks through the setup.
What is a ChatGPT Project?
OpenAI's Projects help page says projects "keep related chats, files, and instructions together" so ChatGPT can use the same context across chats.
What stands out compared with Claude:
- Project instructions override your global ones. They apply only inside that project.
- Live app sources. In a private project you can add Google Drive files and folders or Slack channels by pasting a link.
- Saved answers. You can save a useful response, such as a decision note or draft, as a project source and reuse it later.
- Sharing on every plan. Project sharing is available on Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu. Members get edit access or chat access, and only the owner can remove members.
File limits depend on your plan. OpenAI's memory page says ChatGPT's memory can draw on past chats, saved memories, custom instructions, saved files and connected apps, depending on plan and region, and that it "does not retain every detail from every conversation." Our guide to making ChatGPT remember your project covers the settings.
Claude Projects vs ChatGPT Projects: how do they compare?
| Question | Claude Projects | ChatGPT Projects |
|---|---|---|
| What a project holds | Chats, uploaded knowledge, instructions, a project memory | Chats, files, instructions, saved answers, project memory |
| Free plan | Yes, up to five projects | Yes, file limits depend on plan |
| Live sources from apps | Through connectors you turn on in a chat | Google Drive and Slack links as project sources |
| Sharing | Team and Enterprise only, can view or can edit | Every plan, edit or chat access |
| Memory between projects | Separate per project, plus your account memory unless you turn it off | Projects use their own chats and files as context |
| Visible to other assistants | No | No |
Neither one is better across the board. Claude's projects suit people who want strict separation between clients and long reference documents. ChatGPT's suit groups that want to share a project without a business plan, or pull in live Drive and Slack content.
Why aren't Projects enough for a team's customers and tasks?
Projects give an assistant background. They don't give a business a record. Four gaps show up quickly:
- Nothing is structured. A project knows what's in its files and chats, but there's no list of customers, deals, tasks with owners and due dates, or a status anyone can filter.
- Memory belongs to a person or one project. A teammate who wasn't in the chat doesn't inherit what Claude remembered, and on Team plans memory may be off entirely.
- The assistants don't share it. A Claude project is invisible to ChatGPT, Codex or Cursor, and the reverse. Teams that use more than one assistant end up with several partial copies of the same client.
- Decisions stay in chat. A decision made in a chat is easy to lose unless someone copies it somewhere both people and assistants check.
Our guide on sharing project context between ChatGPT and Claude covers the copy-and-paste workarounds and where they break down.
When does a team need a shared workspace as well?
Add one shared workspace when two or more of these are true:
- More than one person works with the same customers.
- You use more than one assistant, or plan to.
- You want the assistant to update tasks and records, not only answer questions.
- You need to see what an assistant changed, and undo it.
The pattern that works: keep instructions, style guides and reference files in each assistant's project, and keep customers, deals, tasks and decisions in a workspace every assistant connects to through MCP. Each assistant then reads the same current record instead of its own memory of it.
Where does Flori fit?
Flori is a CRM with projects built in for freelancers and small teams, and it is one way to run that shared workspace. Accounts, people, deals and the project that follows each sale live on one record. Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor and Grok connect through Flori's remote MCP server with browser sign-in, and you choose read-only or update access for each.
Because the record lives in Flori rather than in any one assistant's memory, a task Claude updates is the task ChatGPT reads next, and the teammate who opens it sees the same thing. Saves record which assistant made them, and submitted work can wait for your review. See Flori's MCP server, how to connect your assistants and the list of every Claude connector.
FAQ
Are Claude Projects free? Yes. Anthropic says projects are available to all users, including free accounts, which can create up to five projects. Paid plans add retrieval for large project knowledge bases, and sharing projects with colleagues needs a Team or Enterprise plan.
Can I share a Claude Project with someone outside my team? Anthropic documents project sharing only within an organization on Team and Enterprise plans, with Can view or Can edit access. On Pro or Max there is no project sharing, so a colleague would need their own copy of the files and instructions.
Does each Claude Project have its own memory? Yes. Anthropic says each project has its own memory, and Claude uses it alongside your memory from chats outside projects but not memory from other projects. Turning off Use account memory on the project's page keeps it fully separate.
Can ChatGPT Projects be shared on the Free plan? Yes. OpenAI lists project sharing on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu. Invited members get edit access or chat access, and on Free, Go, Plus and Pro you invite individuals by invitation only.
Can Claude and ChatGPT share one project? No. A Claude project and a ChatGPT project are separate and neither assistant can read the other's. To give both the same context, keep the shared facts in a tool both connect to, such as a CRM or workspace with an MCP server, and point each project's instructions at it.
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