This site uses affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you use my links and make a purchase without incurring additional fee yourself. Many thanks for supporting this website. Please see my legal page for more details.

Last updated: June 2026

Custom GPTs vs Claude Skills: What’s the Difference and Which Should You Use?

If you’ve been using ChatGPT for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of custom GPTs. Maybe you even built one or two. They sounded like a brilliant idea – a custom version of ChatGPT, trained on your stuff, your voice, your rules, ready to help whenever you needed it.

And then… you kind of forgot they existed.

That was me. I built a couple. Used them once or twice. And then went back to a fresh chat every single time because I just didn’t think about them in the moment. The GPT was sitting there, perfectly configured yet completely unused.

When I switched to Claude, I discovered Claude Skills – and the experience has been totally different. I’m creating more of them, using them more consistently, and they’re actually changing how I work day to day.

But if you’re still on ChatGPT, or you’re trying to decide between the two, it’s worth understanding what makes them different – and there’s also some pretty significant news about the future of custom GPTs that might affect your decision. I’ve covered all of it below. 

Quick answer: Custom GPTs vs Claude Skills

Claude Skills are better for everyday practical use – they’re easier to create, they stack together, and Claude knows when to use them without you having to think about it. Custom GPTs have an edge if you want to sell or share standalone AI tools publicly, or if you’re running a membership and want password-protected access. But as of 2026, OpenAI is in the process of replacing custom GPTs with a new system called Workspace Agents – so the long-term picture for GPTs is uncertain.

What actually are custom GPTs?

Custom GPTs are specialised versions of ChatGPT that you build once and can reuse. You give it a name, a set of instructions, and optionally some files it can reference – and it becomes a mini assistant that knows exactly what it’s supposed to do.

So instead of typing out a long prompt every time you want ChatGPT to write in your brand voice, you build a GPT with your style guide baked in. Need it once? Done. Go to that GPT, start a chat.

You can keep them private (just for you), share them with specific people, or publish them on the GPT Store for anyone on ChatGPT to use. You can also build Actions into them – connections to external tools and APIs – though that gets technical quickly.

Building from scratch takes time though. The most practical shortcut I found was IP to GPT by Wake Up to Freedom – you paste in a lesson, transcript or piece of content and it builds the GPT for you. It’s still more involved than creating a Claude Skill, but it’s a lot quicker than starting from a blank prompt.

How do you access a custom GPT?

This is where the friction starts. You have to navigate away from your current conversation, find the GPT in your list, and open a new chat inside it. You can’t layer two GPTs together – if you want a subject line GPT and an email drafting GPT to work at the same time, they can’t. It’s one or the other.

For most people, this means they use GPTs when they remember to go looking for them. Which, in the flow of a busy day, isn’t often enough.

What are Claude Skills?

Claude Skills are reusable sets of instructions you save inside a Claude Project. They tell Claude how to behave in certain situations – your writing style, a specific workflow, a particular task it should always handle a certain way.

The key difference is where they live. Skills sit inside your project and Claude automatically knows when to use them based on context. You don’t have to navigate anywhere. You don’t have to think ‘oh, I should load my email drafting skill.’ You just start talking and Claude picks up what’s relevant.

Creating one is also super fast. You can literally say ‘let’s turn this into a skill’ mid-conversation, and it gets saved. From context to saved skill in under a minute. No separate interface, no switching tabs, no setup wizard.

Can you stack Claude Skills?

Yes – and this is the bit that changes everything. If you have a subject line skill and an email drafting skill, Claude can use both in the same conversation. They complement each other. You’re not choosing between your tools, you’re using all of them at once.

I’ve started building far more Skills than I ever built GPTs, specifically because I know I’ll actually use them. The creation is quick, the access is invisible, and the results are better because they work together.

Can Claude Skills do tasks for you? 

Yes they can! If you have other tools connected via MCP (e.g. Gmail, Airtable, Google Sheets, G Drive, Kit etc,) you can have skills that do tasks for you. 

For example, I have a skill that adds any new ideas I start talking about into an Airtable Ideas Bank along with any related documents, offer outlines etc that we created. It fires whenever I discuss ‘new ideas’ with Claude.

I have another skill that calls my Airtable base with my offer details, affiliate links, blog posts and lead magnets as a single source of truth whenever it is helping me draft or edit any content. It can pull in the appropriate link, check prices, descriptions etc.  

The real difference: will you actually use it?

This is the bit nobody talks about. The best tool in the world doesn’t help if you forget it exists.

With custom GPTs, there’s a psychological step between ‘I need help with something’ and ‘I should use my GPT for this.’ You have to remember the GPT exists. You have to leave your current chat. You have to find it and open it. It’s not a huge effort, but it’s enough friction that most people default to continuing inside the current chat instead.

I did this constantly. I’d spend time building a GPT, use it for a bit, then drift back to plain ChatGPT because it was right there and the GPT required a detour.

With Skills, there’s no detour. Claude is already open, you’re already talking to it, and the Skills are just… there. Working. In the background. It’s the difference between a tool that lives in a drawer and a tool that lives on your desk.

The compounding effect of this is significant. The more Skills you build (because they’re quick to create), the more useful Claude becomes, because everything layers together in a way GPTs never could.

The elephant in the room: are custom GPTs being discontinued?

This is worth knowing about before you invest time building a GPT library.

In April 2026, OpenAI launched something called Workspace Agents – and explicitly described them as ‘an evolution of GPTs’ and their official replacement. 

The idea is that instead of standalone GPT tools, you’d have more powerful agents that can handle multi-step workflows, connect to tools like Slack and Salesforce, and keep working even when you’re not actively using them.

For individual ChatGPT Plus users, custom GPTs are still available – for now. 

OpenAI hasn’t set a date for sunsetting them at the individual user level. But the direction of travel is clear. OpenAI has confirmed business and enterprise GPTs will need to migrate, and the overall message from the company is that custom GPTs are a transitional technology, not a long-term feature.

Workspace Agents are currently only available on Business, Enterprise, Edu, and Teachers plans – so if you’re a solo business owner on a Plus plan, they’re not accessible to you yet.

What does this mean practically? If you’re considering building out a significant GPT library as a core part of your business or as products to sell, it’s worth factoring this in. Investing heavily in a feature that’s on the way out isn’t ideal.

Where custom GPTs still have an advantage

To be fair about this – there are areas where GPTs do something Skills don’t.

The GPT Store. If you want to publish an AI tool publicly – something anyone on ChatGPT can find and use – GPTs have that distribution built in. Claude Skills are personal to you. There’s no equivalent Skills marketplace. If your goal is to get an AI tool in front of a large audience, GPTs have the edge here.

Password-protected access for memberships. GPTs can be configured so only people with a link (or link plus password) can access them. This is a useful model for memberships – members get access to your GPT tools, and when they leave the membership, they lose access. Claude Skills don’t have this gating mechanism.

More file storage. Custom GPTs support up to 20 knowledge files at up to 512MB total. Claude Projects load documents directly into context, which means more precise retrieval but a smaller storage limit per file. If you need to upload a lot of reference material, GPTs have more room.

Image generation. ChatGPT can generate images directly in the chat. Claude can’t. If that’s part of your workflow, GPTs (and ChatGPT generally) have the edge.

Where Claude Skills win

Speed of creation. Building a custom GPT takes 10-30 minutes from scratch, even with a tool like IP to GPT to help. Creating a Claude Skill takes a couple of minutes. Lower barrier = more tools = more useful over time.

No context switching. Skills live inside your active conversation. There’s no hunting through a list, no opening a separate chat. You stay in flow.

Layering. Multiple Skills can work together in one conversation. Your brand voice skill and your email structure skill and your subject line skill can all be active at once. GPTs can’t do this.

Automatic activation. Claude reads the context of what you’re working on and knows which Skills are relevant. You don’t have to manage this yourself.

Better for complex documents. Claude loads your reference files directly into its context window rather than doing keyword retrieval. This means it can reference any part of any document precisely, not just the bits a search surfaced.

What about selling your AI tools – GPTs or Skills?

This comes up a lot for course creators and coaches who want to package up AI tools as products or bonuses. The honest answer is that neither option is perfect.

Selling custom GPTs

You can sell access to a custom GPT by sharing a link. If you want to gate access (so only paying customers can use it), the password protection feature helps. Your system prompt isn’t fully visible to users – there’s more protection for your underlying IP, though it’s not completely locked down either.

The GPT Store also creates an organic discovery route – someone could find your tool just by browsing, even without buying from you directly.

Selling Claude Skills

This is where Skills have a genuine limitation. The underlying skill file is more visible – the ‘how it works’ behind the scenes isn’t hidden in the same way. If your IP is sensitive, this is worth thinking about.

What you can do is package Skills as part of a broader product – a course, a toolkit, a setup guide that includes the skill file. The skill itself is less protected but the product around it can still be valuable. It’s a different model.

For the record: I think there’s actually a bigger opportunity here for people who sell Claude-based tools than most are realising. Your audience is buying your thinking and your frameworks, not just a text file. But that’s a conversation for another day.

Frequently asked questions about Claude Skills vs Custom GPTs

Do I need a paid plan to use Claude Skills?

No – Skills are available on all Claude plans, including Free. You do need to enable Code execution and file creation in Settings > Capabilities first (it’s a toggle, takes about 10 seconds), then you’ll find Skills under Customize > Skills.

Can I use multiple Claude Skills at once?

Yes – this is one of the biggest advantages over GPTs. Claude can draw on multiple Skills in a single conversation, which means your tools genuinely compound each other rather than working in isolation.

Can I sell Claude Skills like I can sell GPTs?

You can include Skill files as part of a product, yes. The main difference is that the instructions inside a Skill are visible to the buyer in a way that a GPT’s system prompt is more obscured. If you’re building tools with highly sensitive frameworks or IP, this is worth factoring in. For most online business owners, packaging Skills inside a course or toolkit works really well.

Do I need to know how to code to build a Claude Skill?

Not at all. The simplest Skills are just well-written instructions – no code required. You can build a useful Skill in plain English. More advanced Skills can include scripts and tool connections, but that’s optional, not a requirement.

Can I convert my existing GPTs into Claude Skills?

Yes, and it’s simpler than you might expect. The instructions from a GPT translate reasonably well into a Skill file – you’re essentially taking what you told the GPT to do and rewriting it in the Skill format.

What’s the difference between a Claude Skill and a Claude Project?

A Project is the container – a workspace where you store your context, files, and instructions for a particular area of your business. A Skill is a specific set of instructions saved inside that Project. Think of the Project as a room and the Skill as a tool kit inside it.

Are custom GPTs being discontinued?

For individual Plus users, they’re still available at the time of writing (June 2026). But OpenAI launched Workspace Agents in April 2026 as the official successor to GPTs, and has confirmed enterprise GPTs will need to migrate. There’s no fixed date for individual users yet, but the trajectory is clear. Worth keeping in mind if you’re building out a GPT library as a long-term strategy.

So which should you use?

Use Claude Skills if: you want tools you’ll actually use day to day, you want to layer multiple capabilities in one conversation, you want to build quickly without a setup process, and you’re already using Claude or planning to switch.

Use custom GPTs if: you want to publish tools publicly via the GPT Store, you need password-protected access for a membership model, or your team is already committed to ChatGPT and migrating is not on the cards right now.

Keep an eye on: OpenAI’s Workspace Agents rollout. The feature is currently enterprise-only, but if it eventually comes to individual plans, it could change the picture for GPT users. That said, it’s a move toward agent-based automation rather than the simple ‘saved instructions’ model of GPTs – a different thing entirely, aimed at a different use case.

The reason I switched to Claude wasn’t really about Skills specifically – but Skills are a big part of why I haven’t looked back. The tools I build actually get used, which means they actually make a difference.

If you want to understand more about why I made the switch in the first place, I wrote about it here: Why I Switched from ChatGPT to Claude. And if you’re curious about what Claude can actually do for your online business specifically, this post covers the practical applications.