ChatGPT (shopping, search and agent): what it does and what it costs
In short
ChatGPT shows products to shoppers in the United States from merchant feeds and the open web, and OpenAI charges no fee on purchases that start there. Buyers finish on the merchant's own site or app. Shopify and Etsy catalogs need no application, while feed onboarding is for approved partners.
At a glance
- What it is
- OpenAI's assistant answers from the web through its own crawlers, shows products from merchant feeds and the open web, and sends buyers to the merchant's own site or app to pay.
- Type
- Agent surface
- Operator
- OpenAI
- Homepage
- chatgpt.com
- Homepage check
- HTTP 200 on 5 November 2026
- Last read
- 5 November 2026
What it does for your business
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's merchants page, read 5 Nov 2026, says shopping in ChatGPT is live for users in the U.S. and that purchases are completed on merchant-owned websites or apps.
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's merchants page says "There are no fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT."
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's merchants page says catalogs of merchants who sell through Shopify or Etsy are already integrated and need no extra setup or application.
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's merchants page says a product feed is not required when ChatGPT already crawls a site, but that feeds give greater control over how products appear.
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's commerce guide excludes alcohol, nicotine, gambling, prescription-only medications and unlicensed financial products from shopping in ChatGPT.
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's Ads docs say advertisers in ChatGPT pay per impression or per click, and that conversion campaigns bill for valid clicks.
- Read 5 Nov 2026
OpenAI's merchants page says a self-serve merchant platform for feed integration is planned for later in the year, with more merchants and regions to follow.
Detail for your web team
| Read | Fact | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Nov 2026 | OpenAI's commerce guide says onboarding product feeds is available to approved partners, delivered over SFTP, with a full snapshot recommended at least once a day. | Get Started, Agentic Commerce (OpenAI developer docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | OpenAI's crawler docs say sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. | Overview of OpenAI Crawlers (OpenAI developer docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | OpenAI's crawler docs say blocking GPTBot signals that content should not be used for training, independently of the OAI-SearchBot setting, and that search takes about 24 hours to reflect a robots.txt change. | Overview of OpenAI Crawlers (OpenAI developer docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | OpenAI's crawler docs say ChatGPT-User visits pages when a user asks, that robots.txt rules may not apply to those visits, and that ChatGPT-User does not decide search inclusion. | Overview of OpenAI Crawlers (OpenAI developer docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | OpenAI's crawler docs say OAI-AdsBot visits only landing pages submitted as ads in ChatGPT, to check them against ad policies. | Overview of OpenAI Crawlers (OpenAI developer docs) |
Products and plans
| Product | What it is | Price | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopping in ChatGPT (product feeds) | Merchants share a catalog feed so products appear in shopping results; the purchase happens on the merchant's site. | Free to merchants, 0 USD. No fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT; feed onboarding by application. | 5 Nov 2026 | Power product discovery in ChatGPT (OpenAI merchants page) |
| Ads in ChatGPT | Paid placements managed through the Ads API with impression or click billing and a measurement pixel. | Auction, per impression or per click. No minimum spend published on the page read. | 5 Nov 2026 | Bidding and Budgets, Ads in ChatGPT (OpenAI developer docs) |
| Agentic Commerce Protocol | The open protocol behind product feeds and, for approved partners, checkout inside ChatGPT. | No price recorded | 5 Nov 2026 | None |
Standards it states
| Standard | Status | What the page says | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) | Supports | OpenAI's merchants page says shopping is "Built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol". | Power product discovery in ChatGPT (OpenAI merchants page) |
| AI bot rules in robots.txt | Supports | OpenAI publishes separate robots.txt tokens for search (OAI-SearchBot), training (GPTBot) and user visits (ChatGPT-User). | Overview of OpenAI Crawlers (OpenAI developer docs) |
The site's own checks
| Check | Domain | Result | Date | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare isitagentready.com keyless scan | chatgpt.com | No result: scanner could not fetch the site: HTTP 403 Forbidden | Run 5 Nov 2026 | Not stated | Source |
| Ora cached score | chatgpt.com | 47 of 100, grade D | Scanned 5 Nov 2026, read 5 Nov 2026 | GET /api/score (cached) | Source |
What it does not do
- ChatGPT does not complete most purchases inside the chat as of 5 November 2026; OpenAI says buyers finish on the merchant's site or app.
- OpenAI does not charge merchants a fee on purchases that start in ChatGPT.
- OpenAI does not use ChatGPT-User visits to decide whether a site appears in ChatGPT search.
Related pages on this site
Sources
- Power product discovery in ChatGPT (OpenAI merchants page) (chatgpt.com/merchants), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Get Started, Agentic Commerce (OpenAI developer docs) (developers.openai.com/commerce/guides/get-started.md), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Bidding and Budgets, Ads in ChatGPT (OpenAI developer docs) (developers.openai.com/ads/bidding-and-budgets.md), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Overview of OpenAI Crawlers (OpenAI developer docs) (developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots.md), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Is Your Site Agent-Ready? (Cloudflare, isitagentready.com) (isitagentready.com), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Ora cached score for chatgpt.com (ora.ai/api/score/chatgpt.com), read 5 Nov 2026.
Last reviewed