How do I submit my ChatGPT plugin for review?

What do I need before I submit?

• The right role. Owners of the OpenAI organization can submit. Other members need the plugin management permission, which an owner grants.
• A verified identity. Individual verification publishes under your own name, business verification under your company’s. The directory shows the verified name, and the ID check takes a few minutes in the organization settings.
• A project with global data residency. Projects set to EU data residency can’t submit plugins with an MCP server.
• A public MCP server on your own domain, over HTTPS. Local and test endpoints aren’t accepted.
• Four public pages: website, support, privacy policy and terms of service, all on HTTPS and all clearly from the same publisher as the plugin.

Submission is for plugins you want listed publicly. For a tool only your team will use, connect it to ChatGPT as a custom MCP server instead.

How do I submit a plugin, step by step?

1. Upload the package. In the platform, open Plugins and choose “Upload new or existing plugin”. Pick your verified developer identity and upload the plugin’s ZIP.
2. Clear the automated checks. The Metadata & Skills tab lists what the scan found. Fix the package and upload a corrected ZIP until the required checks pass.
3. Connect the MCP server. In the MCPs tab, enter the server URL and the sign-in type: none, OAuth or mixed. Prove you own the domain by serving the token you’re given at /.well-known/openai-apps-challenge. OpenAI then scans every tool. A plugin can connect one MCP server.
4. Add review information. Reviewer credentials, five test cases that should work, three that should be refused, a link to a video walkthrough, and release notes.
5. Submit for review. Confirm the policy statements: you follow OpenAI’s terms and plugin guidelines and the laws of your industry, the plugin moves no money or crypto, you have rights to the content and APIs it uses, and it suits users under 18 without targeting children under 13.

Setup errors block the Submit button. Softer findings from the scan go to the reviewers with your submission. OpenAI’s submission docs cover every field and check in detail.

What limits does the listing have?

The upload accepts longer text than the final submission does, so check these before you submit:

Thirty characters for the name and the short description is tight, and those two fields decide which directory searches show your plugin. Spend them on the words your users type, not on a slogan: how directory search picks plugins. Before you submit, run your draft through the listing checker to see the searches it would show up in.

How do I write test cases reviewers can pass?

Each test case has a scenario, the prompt, the tool you expect ChatGPT to call and the result the user should see. Reviewers run the prompts, so write them the way a user would type them and make the expected result concrete. One of ours:

• Negative cases are requests your plugin shouldn’t handle. Say what should happen instead: a refusal, or ChatGPT answering without your plugin.
• The test account needs sample data and a plain sign-in. Multi-factor prompts, email or SMS codes, magic links and office-only networks all stop the reviewer at the door.
• The video should show the same prompts working, on a link reviewers can open without asking.

You can keep test cases, the video link and release notes in plugin.json so every new version fills them in. Credentials go into the dashboard only.

How long does ChatGPT plugin review take?

OpenAI doesn’t guarantee a review time and doesn’t expedite reviews on request. When submissions grew nearly tenfold over the year, its plugin team gave this estimate:

Our own tracking gives the longer view. From the day a plugin is created in OpenAI’s dashboard to its first hour in the directory, the median is about three weeks, and about 2 in 10 plugins make it within a week. That includes the time teams spend building before they submit. See the current numbers by category.

A rejection sends you back to the queue, so the fastest route is passing the first time: the most common reasons plugins get rejected.

What happens after my plugin is approved?

• You publish it. Approval moves the plugin to “Ready to publish”. It goes live when you press Publish, so you can pick the day.
• It joins directory search. People find it by the words in its name and short description. Featured and the home page sections are picked by OpenAI, and you can’t apply for them.
• Listing changes need a new review. A new name, description, icon or skills means uploading a new ZIP.
• Tool changes go through a scan. OpenAI rescans your MCP server daily. Eligible changes go live after automated checks, and new tools wait until they’re approved. Moving the server to a new address means contacting support, and a new domain means a new plugin.
• Watch your inbox. Review emails come from OpenAI’s trust and safety or no-reply addresses, and they can land in spam.

Once it’s live, track how it ranks: how to track your plugin’s rankings and competitors.