It depends less on the AI tool than on the account you made it in. A table of who outside your organisation can open a shared ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Microsoft 365 Copilot link, whether they need an account, and whether your admin can switch it off. Checked against each vendor's documentation on 12 October 2026.
You built the proposal with Copilot at work. Or the analysis came out of your company's ChatGPT, a Claude artifact, a Gemini canvas. It reads well, there's a share button, and the client is waiting for it.
Before you press it, the question that decides what happens isn't how to share. It's where the other person is standing. Your client is outside your company, and outside whatever plan your company pays for. A lot of these share buttons were built for the people inside.
Usually not by default, and that's on purpose. Workspace plans (ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, Claude Team and Enterprise, Gemini on Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 Copilot) draw a line around the organisation that bought them, and shared links start out on the inside of that line. Your client is on the other side of it, however normal the link looks from your desk.
Personal accounts work the other way. A shared ChatGPT chat from a personal account, a legacy Claude artifact published from a chat on Free, Pro or Max, a shared Gemini chat: the vendors' own wording is close to "anyone with the link". That opens for your client. It also opens for anyone your client forwards it to, and Google says so plainly about Gemini: people can read a shared chat "even if you didn't share the link with them directly."
So the order of questions is:
Checked against each vendor's own documentation on 12 October 2026. These are their products and their settings to change, so treat the table as a starting point and your own account as the final word. Numbers in brackets point to the sources listed under the table.
| Who outside your company can open it | Do they need an account? | Can an admin turn outside sharing off? | Does the link expire? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT: shared chat, personal account (Free, Plus and other personal plans) | Anyone with the link [1] | Not stated | Not applicable (no admin on a personal account) | No expiry setting. Works until you delete the link, the chat or the account [1] |
| ChatGPT: shared chat, Business | No one outside. Only eligible members of the same workspace; others are sent to the home page with a no-permission message [1][2] | They'd have to be in your workspace | No. Business has no option to turn shared links off entirely [2] | No expiry setting [1] |
| ChatGPT: shared chat, Enterprise or Edu | No one outside. Same workspace only [1] | They'd have to be in your workspace | Yes [1] | No expiry setting [1] |
| ChatGPT Sites (beta; Plus, Pro and workspace plans) | Depends on the audience you pick: specific members, outside people invited by email, everyone in the workspace, or anyone on the internet. A new Site starts visible only to its owner and workspace admins [3] | Invited outside people sign in with the account the invite went to. A public Site doesn't need workspace access [3] | On Enterprise, public publishing is off until an admin turns it on [3] | Not stated. You can delete a Site [3] |
| Claude: legacy artifact published from a chat (Free, Pro, Max) | Anyone with the link [4] | No [4] | Not applicable | Not stated |
| Claude: any other shared artifact (personal plans) | Anyone with the link, if you choose that option. People you invite by email sign in with that address [4] | Mostly no for "Anyone with the link"; Docs, and parts of some dashboards, need sign-in. Email invitees: yes [4] | Not applicable | Not stated |
| Claude: Team or Enterprise artifact | Inside your organisation by default. Outside only if an Owner turns on External sharing, or allows it for that one artifact. Even then, artifacts that connect to other websites, or carry an uploaded file still being checked, can't use "Anyone with the link" [4][12] | For organisation and email shares, yes. For "Anyone with the link", mostly no; Docs need sign-in [4] | Yes. Turning External sharing off stops existing outside links working until it's turned back on [4] | Not stated. Email invitations expire after 30 days if not accepted [4] |
| Claude: shared chat | Personal plans: anyone with the link can view a snapshot. Team and Enterprise: members of your organisation only [5] | Not stated | Team and Enterprise are limited to the organisation already [5] | Until you unshare it [5] |
| Gemini: shared chat, personal Google account | Anyone with the link, including people you didn't send it to [6] | Not stated for reading. To carry on the chat they need their own account [6] | Not applicable | No fixed expiry. Lasts while the chat is kept in Gemini Apps Activity; deleting the chat deletes the link [6] |
| Gemini: Canvas | Shared as a g.co/gemini/share link that opens on gemini.google.com. For an app built in Canvas, anyone with the public link can view and edit data associated with the app [7] | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Gemini: Google Workspace account | Link sharing is off by default and your admin decides [8]. When it's on, anyone with the link can read the chat [6] | Not stated for links. Anything shared through Drive needs a Google sign-in [8] | Yes. Links shared before it was turned off keep working until the person who shared them deletes them [8] | Not stated |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Pages | No one outside through the link alone. A guest can add the link to their own Loop workspace if cross-tenant guest access is set up. Copilot Notebooks can't be shared externally [9] | Yes, as a guest [9] | Yes, with an external sharing override that also affects Loop My workspace [9] | Not stated |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: shared conversation or response (work or school account) | Inside your organisation: anyone with the link who signs in with a work or school account. Outside: not stated, beyond a note that a link "might only be available to people in a different organization" [11] | Yes [11] | Yes. Sharing is on by default; switching it off stops new links but doesn't affect copies people have already continued [10] | No fixed expiry. Until you unshare or delete the conversation [11] |
| Microsoft Copilot: shared conversation, personal Microsoft account | Anyone you share the link with, after they sign in with a Microsoft account [11] | Yes [11] | Not applicable | Not stated |
How to read the gaps. "Not stated" means the vendor's page we read doesn't answer that question. It doesn't mean no, and it doesn't mean yes.
Older Claude pages say something else. Some of Anthropic's older help pages describe Team and Enterprise artifacts as shareable only inside the organisation, with no public publishing. The current pages [4][12] put that decision with an Owner, so if what you read elsewhere disagrees with the table, check your organisation's External sharing setting. We've been through Anthropic's wording on the Claude side before, including what an outside viewer sees where your name would be, in Claude Code wants to publish an artifact. Who can open that link?
ChatGPT canvas isn't in the table. OpenAI's release notes say a canvas can be shared much like a conversation, but we couldn't find a current help page that says who can open it, and we're not filling those cells from second-hand descriptions.
Microsoft's other layer. If the work goes into SharePoint rather than staying as a Copilot Page, external sharing there is set at both the organisation and the site level, and the stricter setting wins. That's covered in your interactive HTML report is going into SharePoint.
Sources, as read on 12 October 2026:
Opening the link yourself doesn't count. If you're signed in with your work account, the link checks who you are and lets you in, which tells you nothing about someone who isn't you.
It takes about thirty seconds:
Do it each time, not once per tool. The answer depends on settings you don't own, and some of them change links that already exist. On Claude Team and Enterprise, an Owner turning External sharing off stops outside links that used to work [4]. On Google Workspace it goes the other way: switching sharing off leaves the old links working [8]. Either way, a link that opened last month isn't evidence for today.
If you want the reasons tool by tool (the preview that dies with your session, the org wall, the sign-in prompt), why your AI share link won't open for them goes through each. Here are just the ways forward.
Find out whether it was switched off on purpose. Often it was, and for a sound reason: the same setting protects everything else your company keeps in that tool. If your company has decided client material doesn't leave its systems through these links, the next step is the person who owns that decision. Moving the work into a personal account to get a public link doesn't get around it. It's the same decision, made by you instead.
If you're allowed to send it out, get it out as a file. An HTML page, a PDF, an image. Once it's a file, it no longer depends on the account it was made in. A PDF can go as an attachment. A page with anything interactive in it (filters, tabs, a chart that draws itself) needs a browser and an address, and that's where a private-link host such as miinideck fits: you upload a self-contained HTML file, a ZIP of the whole build, a PDF, or a PNG or JPEG, and your client opens it in any browser with no account. Without signing up you can try it with one file up to 3 MB, and that link expires after 7 days. A password needs a free account.
If it needs a back end, it isn't a file. Logins, a database, anything that saves what the visitor types: that's an app, and it needs a real deploy. Vercel and Netlify are built for that.
Upload the exported HTML, ZIP or PDF and send one link your client opens in any browser, with no account and no guest invite. Add a password when the contents call for one.
No. It means whoever holds the link, and links get forwarded. Google says this outright for Gemini, and it's true of every "anyone with the link" row in the table.
If the content shouldn't travel past the person you sent it to, you want one of two things: a list of named people who are let in (ChatGPT Sites can invite specific outside people by email [3]), or a link with a password that you send in a separate message. The first asks your client to sign in to something. The second asks them to type a password. Ask which they'd rather do before you pick.
Hit a ChatGPT Sites usage limit? Your Sites aren't gone. Here's how to tell the ones that are just pages, which travel, from the ones that need Sites underneath them.
The AI tool built the page. Sending it to a client is a second job: stripping the construction site, making it read as yours, and putting it behind a private link. A practical checklist for turning AI output into a client-ready handoff.
ChatGPT Sites can now invite a named viewer from outside your workspace — but they have to sign in with the account you invited. If your client won't, here's the shape of what's left and the route round it.
miinideck turns a single HTML file into an unguessable link with optional password and expiry. Default-private, never indexed.