🧠CustomGPTs vs. Projects:What You’re Not Being Told

Confused about the difference? You’re not alone — let’s clear it up.

May 21, 2025

👋 Hello there,

If you've opened ChatGPT lately and found yourself wondering,

"Wait… what’s a Custom GPT?"
"And how’s that different from a Project?"

You're in good company. These two features might look similar at first glance, but they’re built for very different goals.

So in today’s newsletter, we’re settling the score once and for all:
Custom GPTs vs. ChatGPT Projects — what's what, and when should you use each?

Let’s get to it 👇

✅ The ChatGPT Showdown: CustomGPTs vs Projects

🤖 What Are Custom GPTs?

Think of Custom GPTs as your very own AI mini-app — built on top of ChatGPT, trained for a specific task, and tailored with files, instructions, and preferences.

You can:
✔️ Upload documents
✔️ Define behavior
✔️ Set tone and personality
✔️ Add tools like web browsing, code interpreter, and image analysis
✔️ Share your CustomGPT with others easily (requires a ChatGPT Plus or API plan)
✔️ Monetize it through the GPT Store

Real Users, Real Examples:

Here’s what Redditors are doing with Custom GPTs:

🎁 Birthday Reminder GPT – Generates personalized birthday messages so you don’t ghost your friends.
🪑 Interior Design Assistant – Upload Pinterest images, define your aesthetic, and let GPT rate your marketplace finds.
👗 Fashion Stylist GPT – Uses outfit photos to give wardrobe advice, suggest occasions to wear items, and identify seasonal fits.
📊 Work Report Optimizer – Analyzes internal reports, creates QBRs, and aligns outputs to your company strategy.
🛒 Mini Business Coach – Uses an Excel sheet to analyze your product listings, audience engagement, and marketing strategy.

💡 Why this matters: Custom GPTs are great for repetitive tasks, team-specific responses, or building a smart chatbot for clients — no coding needed.

⸻

🗂️ What Are ChatGPT Projects?

While Custom GPTs are single-purpose bots, Projects are your organized workspace inside ChatGPT.

With Projects, you can:
📁 Group related chats and files in one place
🧠 Add long-term memory specific to that project
🔁 Return to complex workflows without losing context
🧹 Rename, archive, or delete files for a tidy structure
🤖 Use multiple models (including GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and beyond) — not just GPT-4 Turbo

Real Users, Real Examples:

Here’s what Redditors are doing with ChatGPT projects:

📚 Personal Tutor Assistant
A student created a project that organizes study materials, quizzes, and flashcards, providing a structured learning path for exam preparation.

🧠 Mental Health Companion
One user developed a project that offers daily mood tracking, coping strategies, and mindfulness exercises to support mental well-being.

📈 Financial Planning Advisor
A finance enthusiast built a project that analyzes spending habits, suggests budgeting strategies, and forecasts savings goals.

🎨 Creative Writing Coach
An aspiring author designed a project that assists in brainstorming ideas, structuring plots, and providing feedback on writing style.

🛠️ DIY Project Planner
A hobbyist developed a project that helps plan home improvement tasks, offering step-by-step guides, material lists, and timelines.

💡 Why this matters: ChatGPT Projects help you stay organized, switch contexts, and build long-term knowledge inside one contained folder.

🧠 BONUS: Which one should you use?

Feature

Custom GPTs

ChatGPT Project

🎯 Purpose

Designed for specific, focused interactions.

Built for handling complex, multi-step tasks or workflows.

🗃️ Organization

No folder system (scroll in sidebar)

Full folder and memory management.

🤝 Shareable

Yes

Not shareable (yet)

⚙️ AI Model

GPT-4 Turbo only

Use GPT-4.5, GPT-4o, more

🔁 Reusability

High (build once, use often)

Project-specific memory improves over time

💭 Final Scoop!

✨ Use Both — But Use Them Smartly

👉️ Use Custom GPTs when you want to scale or automate a repetitive task.

Think: Client support, writing, outreach, reporting, content repurposing, style-based recommendations, etc.

👉️ Use ChatGPT Projects when you need organized, long-term collaboration.

Think: Personal knowledge vaults, multi-phase research, evolving business strategies, and structured experiments.

💡 Bonus Tip: You can even add your Custom GPTs into your Projects — for the best of both worlds. 💰️ 

👀 ICYMI

👉️ How I Used ChatGPT to Design My Personalized Masterclass - One super prompt. Zero fees. Your own expert-led course, generated by AI.

👉️ The only AI tools you need for marketing - I test hundreds of AI tools—here are the few that actually save you time, money, and deliver real marketing results in 2025.

AI Roundup

☎️ Yelp’s Smart Agent Takes the Call
Yelp is rolling out AI-powered voice agents using OpenAI’s Realtime API to help businesses handle customer calls, reservations, and FAQs—without missing a beat.

🩺 Google Launches MedGemma for Smarter Medical AI
Unveiled at I/O 2025, MedGemma blends text and image smarts to power next-gen healthcare tools—open, multimodal, and ready for developers.

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Until next time,
Team DigitalSamaritan

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