For most of the last two years, "using AI in your product" meant bolting a chat box onto your app. The Apps SDK that OpenAI shipped flips that around. Instead of putting a chatbot inside your software, you put your software inside ChatGPT, where it runs as an app the assistant can open mid-conversation, in front of an audience measured in the hundreds of millions.
That is a genuinely new distribution channel, and new channels do not come along often. It is also early, in beta, and easy to over-invest in. This piece is the honest version: how ChatGPT apps actually work, where the value is, what it costs to build one, and how to tell whether your business should bother in 2026 or wait.
What a ChatGPT app actually is
A ChatGPT app is not a website you link to. It runs inside the conversation. Someone asks ChatGPT something, and if your app is relevant, the assistant can invoke it and render your interface right there, an interactive card, a form, a result, without the user ever leaving the chat.
Under the hood, the Apps SDK is built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the same open standard that agents use to reach tools and data. That is the most important technical detail in the whole release. You define your logic, your UI components and your integrations; ChatGPT handles rendering and hands your app the context of the conversation. If you have already invested in an MCP server for your data or tools, you are closer to a ChatGPT app than you think.
One integration, several surfaces
Because it is MCP under the hood, the work you do to expose your business to ChatGPT is not single-use. The same server can back an in-house agent, a partner's agent, and other MCP-aware clients. As of early 2026, approved ChatGPT apps are also being converted to plugins for Codex distribution. You are building a capability, not a one-off.
Distribution: the actual prize
The reason to care is not the technology, it is the shop window. Apps are published through a review flow into the ChatGPT apps directory. Apps that meet the guidelines are eligible to be listed, and the ones that clear higher design and functionality bars get featured more prominently.
Think about what that means. Instead of paying to appear next to a search result, your capability can be surfaced by the assistant at the exact moment a user expresses the need it serves. That is closer to being recommended than being advertised. For the right kind of business, it is the most valuable placement on the internet right now, precisely because it is early and uncrowded.
The catch: "relevant, at the right moment" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If what you offer is not a natural fit for a conversational request, the placement is worth very little.
Can you make money from it?
Yes, but be clear-eyed about how. The generally available path is external checkout: the app drives discovery and comparison inside ChatGPT, and the user completes the purchase through your existing checkout. Apps also support in-app purchases through Stripe and PayPal, and commerce inside the chat is emerging through the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open standard from OpenAI and Stripe, with instant checkout in limited beta for approved partners on physical goods.
For most businesses in 2026, the realistic play is discovery and lead capture, not a full in-chat storefront. The app earns its keep by putting you in front of intent you would otherwise never see, then handing the transaction back to infrastructure you already run.
Who should build one, and who should wait
A ChatGPT app makes sense when:
Your product answers a conversational, in-the-moment need, "find me", "book me", "calculate this", "compare these", that a user would naturally ask an assistant.
You already have an API or MCP server, so the app is a new front end on existing logic, not a rebuild.
Being discovered by the assistant is worth more to you than owning the full interface.
It is probably too early when your value depends on a rich, bespoke interface the chat surface cannot render, when your buyers are not in ChatGPT, or when you have no clean API to build on yet. In that last case the first job is the API, and that is worth doing regardless of whether the app follows.
Beta means the ground still moves
The SDK, the directory rules and the monetization paths are all evolving. Design so your core logic lives in your own MCP server or API, with the ChatGPT app as a thin layer on top. When the platform changes, and it will, you adjust the layer instead of rebuilding the business.
What it takes to build one
If you already have an MCP server or a clean API, a focused first app is a matter of weeks, not months: define the tools ChatGPT can call, build the UI components it will render, handle auth and permissions, and pass the review flow. If you are starting from a tangle of internal systems with no clean interface, budget for that groundwork first. It is the same plumbing every agent and integration in your future will need, so it is rarely wasted.
The mistake we see is treating the app as the project. It is not. The durable asset is the integration layer underneath: a well-defined, secure interface to your business logic and data. The ChatGPT app is one thing you can put on top of it. Agents, partner integrations and your own products are others.
The bottom line for 2026
ChatGPT apps are a real channel, early enough that the placement is still cheap in attention terms and crowded enough already that "wait and see" has a cost. If your product fits a conversational moment and you have the interface to build on, a scoped pilot is worth running now while the directory is uncrowded. If you are missing the API underneath, build that first, because you will need it either way.
If you want a straight answer on whether your business is a fit, and what the integration layer under it should look like, get in touch.
