ChatGPT shopping: how it works for merchants

ChatGPT now answers shopping questions with product cards, prices and links to buy. OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week, and it said in late 2025 that hundreds of millions use it to find, understand and compare products. This guide explains how ChatGPT shopping works today, from the shopper’s question to the merchant’s checkout, and what any store, on any platform, can do to be part of it.

How does ChatGPT shopping work?

When a question suggests buying intent, ChatGPT shows product options with images, details, prices and links to sites that sell them. It picks products from merchant feeds, catalogs such as Shopify’s and other web sources. OpenAI’s merchant page says purchases now complete on the merchant’s own site or app.

OpenAI’s shopping help page describes the basic flow. A shopper asks something like “help me find costumes for my dog.” ChatGPT shows a set of products it judges relevant, with a short description, a price and links to merchants. The shopper can ask follow-up questions, narrow by budget or compare two options.

Here is the path from question to purchase, step by step:

From a shopper's question to a purchase in ChatGPT

1. 1 A question with buying intent

   The shopper asks for a product, a gift idea or a comparison. ChatGPT reads the question and any context it holds, such as Memory or custom instructions.

2. 2 Product data is gathered

   ChatGPT draws on structured product data from first-party and third-party providers, merchant feeds sent to OpenAI, catalogs such as Shopify Catalog and other public product information.

3. 3 Products are picked and described

   ChatGPT shows the products it judges relevant, with titles, descriptions, labels and review summaries it may write itself from the data it received. Not every available product is shown.

4. 4 Merchants are listed

   When the shopper opens a product, ChatGPT may list merchants that sell it, ranked on factors such as availability, price, quality and whether the merchant is the maker or main seller.

5. 5 The purchase happens on your site

   The shopper clicks through and buys on the merchant's own site or app. For Shopify stores, the checkout opens inside ChatGPT's in-app browser, or in a new tab on the web.

OpenAI says shopping is currently live for ChatGPT users in the US, and that there are no fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT. The bigger change of 2026 was checkout: OpenAI’s merchant page says it is moving away from a standalone Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT, though its shopping help page still mentions an Instant Checkout option for some eligible products and merchants. Our guide to ACP and UCP covers what changed and why.

Can you use ChatGPT for shopping?

Yes. Users in the US can ask ChatGPT for products and get product cards with prices and merchant links. For bigger purchases, shopping research asks follow-up questions and returns a buyer’s guide. The purchase itself happens on the merchant’s site.

What a shopper can do today:

• Ask and compare. Ask for products by need, budget or use, then compare options side by side in the chat.
• Research. Use shopping research for a longer, guided comparison (covered below).
• Click through to buy. Open a merchant’s page from the product card and check out there.
• Use retailer apps. Some large retailers have launched their own apps inside ChatGPT. Walmart, for example, introduced an in-ChatGPT app with account linking, loyalty and Walmart payments in March 2026.

Product details in ChatGPT are not always the merchant’s own words. OpenAI says ChatGPT may generate simplified titles and descriptions, and that labels such as “Budget-friendly” are its own, not verified statements. Prices come from third-party providers and can lag behind a merchant’s updates. Review summaries are written by the model from reviews on public websites, and OpenAI says it does not verify reviews or ratings.

That has a practical consequence. OpenAI’s own list of inputs includes third-party product data and other third-party content, so ChatGPT’s summary of your product can rest on what other sources say, and the shopper sees that summary before your page. Checking how ChatGPT describes your products is as important as checking whether it shows them.

How to use ChatGPT shopping mode?

The closest thing to a shopping mode is shopping research. Select one or more products in a chat and choose Research. ChatGPT asks follow-up questions, such as preferred brands, then returns a buyer’s guide after a few minutes, with top picks, comparisons and links to merchants that sell them.

OpenAI’s shopping research help describes it as an interactive way to explore and compare products. At launch, OpenAI made it available to logged-in users on the Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans, and named electronics, beauty, home and garden, kitchen and appliances, and sports and outdoor as its strongest categories.

Three details matter to merchants:

1. Where the data comes from. Shopping research uses merchant product data provided through the Agentic Commerce Protocol, publicly available product information and other retail sources.
2. Who gets included. OpenAI says results are organic. Merchants who want to appear can follow an allowlisting process described in OpenAI’s help center.
3. Who gets skipped. Some retailers block automated access to their sites. When that happens, shopping research skips them or uses other sites.

OpenAI also says chats in shopping research are never shared with retailers.

How does ChatGPT choose products?

ChatGPT shows products it judges relevant to the shopper’s intent. It weighs the question, the shopper’s context such as Memory, structured product data like price and description from merchants and third parties, its own knowledge and OpenAI’s policies. It does not show every available product.

OpenAI lists three inputs on its shopping help page:

1. Structured metadata from first-party and third-party providers, such as price and product description, plus other third-party content.
2. ChatGPT’s own model responses, generated before it considers any new search results.
3. OpenAI’s safety standards and product policies.

Which input matters most depends on the question. OpenAI’s example: if a shopper names a budget, ChatGPT focuses more on price, and if price is not mentioned, it may weigh other things instead. Personal context counts too. OpenAI’s Memory help adds that Memory can shape the search query ChatGPT runs, which is why your own checks should run with personalization off.

For merchant rankings, the same page names availability, price, quality and whether the seller is the maker or primary seller of the item.

What is not on the list matters too. We found nothing in OpenAI’s description that lets a merchant pay for a place in these results. That leaves your product data, your pages and what other sites say about your products as the inputs you control. Our guide to ChatGPT recommendations goes through each one.

Knowing whether ChatGPT picks your products takes measurement. That is what we built SourceVision to do across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: we ask your shoppers’ questions many times over and report how often your products appear, with the range across runs, then draft what each product page is missing from facts you confirm. Nothing is written without your approval. One of our users, the Shopify skincare brand Jericho, was recommended in 1 of 225 answers (0.44%) when we first measured it in September 2026. See how it works.

SourceVision is in an invite-only beta.

Request an invite

Are there ads in ChatGPT shopping?

ChatGPT has ads, but OpenAI keeps them apart from product results. Ad testing began in the US on February 9, 2026, for Free and Go users. Ads appear below a response, labeled as sponsored, and OpenAI says they do not influence answers. Shopping research results are separate from ads.

OpenAI’s ads help page sets the rules:

• Who sees them. Users on the Free and Go plans. There are no ads on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu, or for users under 18.
• Where they appear. Below the end of a response, labeled as sponsored and visually separated.
• What they cannot do. Advertisers cannot shape, rank or alter ChatGPT’s responses, OpenAI says.
• How ads are picked. Among ads, OpenAI ranks by relevance and advertiser bids. Ads do not appear in temporary chats or on sensitive topics.

The shopping pages say the same in their own words: product results “are not ads,” and shopping research results are separate from ads. In OpenAI’s product feed, ad eligibility is a separate flag, described as independent of search eligibility.

So for a merchant, ads and organic shopping visibility are two separate budgets of effort. Buying ads does not put a product into the organic answer, and skipping ads does not remove it.

How do you get your products into ChatGPT shopping?

If you sell through Shopify or Etsy, OpenAI says your catalog is already integrated. Other merchants can apply to share a product feed with OpenAI and join a waitlist. On every platform, let OpenAI’s search crawler read your pages, and keep product data complete and current.

The route depends on your platform:

• Shopify. Shopify’s ChatGPT help page says the channel is on by default for eligible stores, with no extra step for products to be discovered. Your products must be eligible for Shopify Catalog, your terms of service, privacy policy and refund policy pages must be filled in, and you must accept Shopify’s agentic storefronts terms. Your store must sell to customers in the US, but it can be based elsewhere. Shoppers buy through your normal checkout.
• Etsy. OpenAI says Etsy catalogs are already integrated.
• Any other platform. Apply to share a product feed. OpenAI says applicants join a waitlist, and that a self-serve merchant portal is planned. Feeds can also reach OpenAI through third-party providers.

If you send a feed, OpenAI’s feed specification requires nine fields for every product:

Field	What it holds
item_id	Your unique product ID
title	The product name
description	The product description
url	The product page
brand	The brand
seller_name	Who sells it
image_url	The main image
availability	Whether it is in stock
price	The price

OpenAI’s upload guide recommends refreshing the feed at least daily, pushed by SFTP, and the spec asks you to update it when a sale starts or ends.

Whatever your platform, check that OpenAI’s search crawler can read your product pages. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers:

AI crawler access checker

Check whether 15 AI crawlers, from GPTBot to PerplexityBot, may read your site's pages.

Your website's address

For example yoursite.com.

Check my site

A quick check confirms you are a person, not a bot.

Descriptions checked 2026-10-13. We do not save the address or the result.

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Getting listed makes you eligible. It does not make you recommended. To know whether ChatGPT actually names your products, ask the questions your shoppers ask, many times, and count how often you appear.