# How to use ChatGPT in Slack > A step-by-step guide to putting ChatGPT in Slack: the ChatGPT app in Slack, the Slack plugin that reads your workspace, workspace agents with a Slack handle, and building your own bot with Bolt. Canonical page: https://www.heybeagle.com/guides/how-to-use-chatgpt-in-slack Last reviewed: 2026-07-29 Three OpenAI products, nearly the same name. Only one of them is what you meant. One puts ChatGPT inside Slack. One pulls Slack inside ChatGPT. One deploys an agent with its own handle. Picking the wrong one is the most common way this goes sideways. ## The short answer OpenAI ships three Slack products and they are genuinely easy to confuse. The ChatGPT app in Slack puts a ChatGPT conversation inside Slack, and it needs both a paid Slack plan and a paid ChatGPT plan. The Slack plugin runs the other direction, letting ChatGPT search and act on your Slack workspace from chatgpt.com - and it does not need a paid Slack plan at all, only a paid ChatGPT one. The ChatGPT Agents app in Slack is the closest thing to a teammate: you build a workspace agent at chatgpt.com, give it a Slack handle, and deploy it to channels where it can auto-respond and run on a schedule, but that one is Business, Enterprise or Edu only. Note that none of these is the 2023 ChatGPT app for Slack, which was quietly discontinued - OpenAI reused the name in October 2025 for a different app on a different architecture. ## At a glance - **Is there an official app?**: Yes, three of them. The ChatGPT app in Slack, the Slack plugin that reads your workspace, and the ChatGPT Agents app in Slack. All shipped from October 2025 onward. - **ChatGPT app in Slack needs**: A paid Slack plan and ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business or Enterprise/Edu. The Slack plugin must be enabled first. - **The plugin needs**: Only a paid ChatGPT plan. No paid Slack plan required, though without Slack Business+ or Enterprise+ you get keyword search rather than semantic search. - **Workspace agents need**: ChatGPT Business, Enterprise or Edu - not Plus or Pro - plus a paid Slack plan. Agent runs moved to token-based pricing in July 2026. - **Availability catch**: The ChatGPT app in Slack is geo-blocked for Plus and Pro users in the EEA, Great Britain and Switzerland. Business and Enterprise are unaffected. - **What it will not do in Slack**: Deep research, agent mode and model switching are not available inside the Slack app. Web search and other connected apps are. - **Build-your-own stack**: Slack's Bolt framework plus OpenAI's Responses API, which OpenAI recommends for all new projects. Chat Completions still works and is not deprecated. ## Side by side Three OpenAI products and two alternatives. The first two rows separate them faster than any amount of prose. | Capability | ChatGPT app in Slack | Slack plugin | ChatGPT Agents app | A bot you build | Beagle | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Answers inside Slack | Yes | No (Reads only) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Replies on its own in a channel | No (You start the chat) | No | Yes | Yes (You build it) | Yes | | Works on a free Slack plan | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | | Available on ChatGPT Plus and Pro | Partly (Not in EEA, GB or Switzerland) | Yes | No (Business and up) | Yes (API key only) | Yes (No ChatGPT plan needed) | | Free to try | No | No | No | Partly (Pay per token) | Yes (1,000 credits, no card) | | Starts work unprompted | No | No | Yes (On a schedule) | Partly (You build it) | Yes | | Reaches your other tools | Partly (Connected apps) | No | Partly (Connected apps) | Partly (You build it) | Yes (~3,200 apps) | | Self-serve, no admin needed | No | Partly (Off by default on Enterprise) | No | No | No (App install) | ## What each one actually is The names overlap badly, and OpenAI has renamed this surface twice - connector, then app, then plugin. Match the product to the outcome you actually want. | Approach | What you get | Where it stops | | --- | --- | --- | | The ChatGPT app in Slack (Minutes. Two paid plans) | A ChatGPT conversation living inside Slack, with the chats syncing one way into your ChatGPT sidebar so you can pick a thread back up later. | Needs a paid Slack plan and a paid ChatGPT plan. No deep research, no agent mode and no model switching inside Slack. One Slack workspace per ChatGPT account at a time, and Plus and Pro users in the EEA, Great Britain and Switzerland cannot use it. | | The Slack plugin (Minutes. Paid ChatGPT plan only) | The other direction: ChatGPT searches your Slack channels, DMs and files from chatgpt.com, in chat, deep research and agent mode. It can also take a few actions - joining a channel, setting a reminder, uploading a file. | You are working in ChatGPT, not in Slack. Semantic search over your workspace needs Slack Business+ or Enterprise+; below that it falls back to keyword search. | | The ChatGPT Agents app in Slack (An afternoon. Business plan and up) | The closest thing to a teammate. Build a workspace agent at chatgpt.com, give it a Slack handle, and deploy it to channels where it can auto-respond and run on a schedule. | ChatGPT Business, Enterprise or Edu only - not Plus or Pro - and a paid Slack plan. Your workspace has to allow all members to create user groups, and Enterprise Grid needs approval at both org and workspace level. | | A bot you build (A day or more of engineering) | Slack's Bolt framework plus OpenAI's API. Yours entirely, on any Slack plan, with Slack's native response streaming available so answers appear token by token. | If you plan to sell it, Marketplace approval is now effectively mandatory: since 2025 non-Marketplace distributed apps get channel history at one request per minute. You also own the acknowledgement timing, the retries, the hosting and the bill. | | An AI teammate that already lives there (Minutes. Any Slack plan) | A product built for this from the start: it joins your channels, connects the rest of your stack and runs whole jobs rather than answering one question. Beagle is one of these. | The model choice is the vendor's, not yours. Test it on a real job in the first week rather than on the feature list. | ## Step by step The walkthrough below is for the ChatGPT app in Slack, which is what most people mean. Steps one to five apply to any of the three OpenAI options; steps six and seven cover going further. 1. **Decide which direction you actually want** - Write the sentence out before you install anything. "I want an answer in the Slack thread" is the ChatGPT app in Slack. "I want ChatGPT to know what my team said last week" is the Slack plugin. "I want something that replies on its own in a channel" is a workspace agent. All three are called some variant of the same name. 2. **Check both plans, not just one** - The ChatGPT app in Slack needs a paid Slack plan and ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business or Enterprise/Edu. Workspace agents raise that bar to Business or above. The plugin is the odd one out and needs no paid Slack plan at all. Most stalled rollouts are a plan mismatch on one side or the other. 3. **Enable the Slack plugin first** - Installing the ChatGPT app in Slack requires the Slack plugin to be enabled on the ChatGPT side first. If you go looking for the in-Slack app before doing this, it will not be there and nothing will explain why. Where: ChatGPT settings, under Connectors or Plugins 4. **Get your ChatGPT workspace admin to open the gate** - On ChatGPT Business, apps are enabled by default. On Enterprise and Edu they are disabled by default, and an admin has to enable the app from the directory, then set user access and action control. Write actions are a separate switch from read access. Where: ChatGPT admin console, Apps then Actions 5. **Clear the Slack side too** - The Slack workspace has to permit app installation. If your organisation requires scope approval, a Slack admin must approve the app - and must approve again or reinstall whenever the app asks for new action scopes. 6. **Set the action posture before anyone uses it** - Decide up front whether ChatGPT asks before it acts. The sensible default is to require confirmation on anything that writes, and to keep read-only access on any channel carrying customer or contract data until you have watched the behaviour for a week. 7. **If you build your own, use Slack's native streaming** - Slack now has first-class streaming - start a stream, append to it, then stop it - with true delta append rather than rewriting a message repeatedly. Most guidance online still tells you to poll chat.update in a loop, which is slower, noisier and burns your rate limit. Watch for: Block Kit blocks are only allowed when the stream ends, and link unfurling is off while streaming ## What trips people up Slack plus ChatGPT has more sharp edges than it looks, mostly because the products moved faster than the documentation. - **The 2023 app is not the app you want** - OpenAI launched a ChatGPT app for Slack in March 2023 as a waitlisted beta, and reused the name in October 2025 for a completely different app on a different architecture. The old waitlist link is dead. Any tutorial written before late 2025 is describing something that no longer exists, and OpenAI never announced the original's end. - **Three names for one surface, and they keep changing** - The same integration surface has been called a connector, then an app, then a plugin - the directory itself became the Plugin directory in July 2026. If a document and your admin console disagree on the word, that is why. - **The geo gate that no guide mentions** - The ChatGPT app in Slack is not available to Plus and Pro users in the EEA, Great Britain or Switzerland. Business and Enterprise plans are unaffected. A European team on Plus will hit this after doing everything else correctly. - **The rate-limit change that kills side projects** - Since 2025, commercially-distributed Slack apps that are not approved for the Slack Marketplace read channel history at roughly one request per minute, capped at fifteen objects. Internal apps your own company builds are unaffected. If you meant to sell your bot, Marketplace approval stopped being optional. - **The three-second acknowledgement, again** - Slack wants a 2xx within three seconds on the Events API, and three seconds flat on slash commands, or the user sees a timeout and Slack retries. Every model call is slower than that. Acknowledge first, work asynchronously, and dedupe on the event ID so a retry does not answer twice. - **Slack's terms now forbid training on workspace data** - Slack's API terms were tightened in 2025: data obtained through Slack APIs may not be used to train a large language model, and distribution is restricted to the Marketplace. Worth reading properly before you build anything that stores messages. - **Compliance visibility cuts both ways** - Enterprise admins can read ChatGPT-app-in-Slack conversations through the Compliance API, and all app calls are logged. That is good governance and it is also something to tell your team, rather than let them discover. Three products with the same name is a signal. The market has not settled on what an AI in Slack should be, so buy for the job, not the logo. ## Or skip the build If you want an answer in the thread that draws on more than Slack, and work that happens without anyone typing a prompt, that is a different shape again. Beagle joins your channels and runs whole jobs across the tools around them. - **One plan, not two** - Beagle installs into any Slack workspace and starts free with 1,000 credits and no card. There is no second subscription to line up on the other side, and no geography that blocks it. - **It answers from the whole stack** - Ask about a customer and Beagle pulls the contract from the CRM, the thread from the inbox and the ticket from the tracker, then answers in the channel with the records it used, linked. - **It notices, rather than waiting** - The weekly report drafted before the standup, the renewal flagged with time to act, the account that has gone quiet. Being asked is optional. - **Nothing outbound goes without approval** - Replies, reports and updates arrive drafted and held for a human. Nothing reaches a customer on the AI's own authority. ## In your stack Teams here usually connect: Slack, Gmail, Notion, Linear, Drive, HubSpot. Beagle connects to ~3,200 tools in total - see https://www.heybeagle.com/integrations. ## FAQ **Is there an official ChatGPT app for Slack?** Yes, and confusingly there are three. The ChatGPT app in Slack puts a ChatGPT conversation inside Slack. The Slack plugin lets ChatGPT search and act on your Slack workspace from chatgpt.com. The ChatGPT Agents app in Slack lets you deploy a workspace agent with its own Slack handle into channels. None of them is the 2023 ChatGPT app for Slack, which was quietly discontinued; OpenAI reused the name for a different app in October 2025. **What do I need to use ChatGPT in Slack?** For the ChatGPT app in Slack, both a paid Slack plan and a paid ChatGPT plan - Plus, Pro, Business or Enterprise/Edu - and the Slack plugin must be enabled first. The plugin on its own needs only a paid ChatGPT plan and no paid Slack plan. Workspace agents in Slack need ChatGPT Business, Enterprise or Edu plus a paid Slack plan. **Why can I not install the ChatGPT app in Slack?** Three common reasons. The Slack plugin has not been enabled on the ChatGPT side, which is a prerequisite. Your ChatGPT admin has not enabled apps - they are on by default on Business but off by default on Enterprise and Edu. Or you are a Plus or Pro user in the EEA, Great Britain or Switzerland, where the in-Slack app is not available. **Can ChatGPT read my Slack messages?** Yes, through the Slack plugin, which searches your channels, DMs and files from chatgpt.com and works in chat, deep research and agent mode. It can also take some actions, such as joining a channel or setting a reminder. Semantic search over the workspace requires Slack Business+ or Enterprise+; below that it falls back to keyword search. **Can I build my own ChatGPT bot for Slack?** Yes. Use Slack's Bolt framework with OpenAI's API - OpenAI recommends the Responses API for new projects, though Chat Completions is still supported and not deprecated. Use Slack's native streaming rather than repeatedly updating a message. The catch to know up front: since 2025, commercially-distributed apps that are not approved for the Slack Marketplace read channel history at roughly one request per minute, so if you intend to sell it, plan for Marketplace review. **Is ChatGPT in Slack safe for company data?** It is governed, which is not the same as risk-free. Enterprise admins can read ChatGPT-app-in-Slack conversations through the Compliance API and all app calls are logged. Slack's API terms forbid using data obtained through Slack APIs to train a language model. Write actions are off until an admin turns them on. Start read-only on low-sensitivity channels and widen deliberately. ## Read next - [Claude in Slack](https://www.heybeagle.com/guides/how-to-use-claude-in-slack): The same question, the other model - [Beagle vs ChatGPT](https://www.heybeagle.com/compare/chatgpt): Where a chat tool stops - [Beagle vs Slack AI](https://www.heybeagle.com/compare/slack-ai): The AI already in your workspace Try Beagle free: https://www.heybeagle.com/signup (1,000 credits, no credit card).