Can ChatGPT build you a free website?

What ChatGPT Sites can do

ChatGPT Sites is the part of ChatGPT that lets you create, preview, publish and share interactive websites and small apps. You're not just getting code in a chat reply: you can publish the site with hosting included.

But Sites isn't available on Free or Go. It's available on Plus and Pro, and in Business and Enterprise workspaces. ChatGPT Plus is $20 a month. The ChatGPT Pro tiers cost $100, $200 or $500 a month.

For Plus and Pro, there's no fixed limit on the number of sites, and each site can have a 10 GB database. Building counts toward Codex usage, though, so "no fixed site limit" doesn't mean building is outside your plan's usage allowance.

That's the distinction to watch. If you want ChatGPT itself to handle both building and publishing through Sites, you're looking at a paid plan, not the free chat experience.

What you can get from the free chat

You can ask ChatGPT to write HTML and CSS on any plan. That includes Free. You can describe the page you want, ask for changes, and get code back in the conversation.

OpenAI's help center also says code blocks can preview HTML pages. That's a way to view the page, but a preview isn't the same thing as a published website with an address you can share.

The hosting is separate.

What does that leave you doing? You'll need to take the files to a host, such as GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages, rather than expecting the free chat to publish them through Sites. If you want to change the page later, you can ask ChatGPT for revised code, but you'll still be working with files and a separate hosting service.

This route fits the "write the code for me" version of the question. It isn't a no-code publishing tool, even though ChatGPT is doing the code writing.

Cloudflare Pages also has a free plan. It includes 500 builds a month, 100 custom domains per project and up to 20,000 files per site.

Here's how those routes compare with publishing through Sites or using Heya, the no-code builder behind this guide.

The choice is partly about where you want to work. With generated code, you're working in chat and then on a host. With Sites, you can build and publish through ChatGPT. With Heya, you build and publish in a no-code website builder.

What Heya gives you for free

Heya Free costs $0, with no credit card and no time limit. It includes 3 sites, up to 5 pages per site and all 68 templates.

You sign in with Google to publish. Your site gets a free yourname.heya.bio address with HTTPS, and it displays a small Made with Heya badge. You don't need to bring a domain to use that address.

For someone who wants a published website without handling HTML files, that's the reason to consider it alongside the ChatGPT routes. You're using a builder rather than asking a chat to produce files you then host elsewhere.

What changes if you need more

Heya Pro Lite is $3 a month. It includes 3 sites with up to 20 pages per site, removes the badge, and stops marking links as nofollow.

Heya Pro Standard is $6 a month. It includes 5 sites and 1 custom domain per account with HTTPS. Heya doesn't sell domains; you bring one from any registrar, and custom domain support starts on Pro Standard.

Heya Pro Plus is $15 a month. It includes 25 sites, up to 10 custom domains and the option to download your site as a ZIP of HTML files.

There are builder limits too: 40 sections per page, 60 blocks per section and 10 block types. Images can be up to 20 MB. The 6 embed types are YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, SoundCloud, Calendly and Google Maps.

For SEO settings, you can add a title of up to 120 characters, a description of up to 300 characters, a favicon and a share image.

Need a store or a form? Heya doesn't have a built-in store, checkout or form builder. You link a button to your checkout or store page, or to a Google Form or a Tally form. For bookings, you can use the Calendly embed.

Related guides: How to make a free website, Types of websites, What is a one-page website? and Website hosting cost.

More from Heya: All guides, Templates and Pricing.