You asked Claude for a page, a calculator or a proposal, and now a client, a teammate or an investor needs to open it without being in your Claude account. If that reader matters, host the same HTML on Hostus: the link stays stable while you edit, it can be private or email-gated, you see which sections were read, and any form in the page already works. The Publish button is fine for a page nobody important will open. This guide covers the official Publish steps, what the public link cannot do, and five ways to share with someone who has no Claude account.
How do you publish and share an artifact in Claude?
Everything here comes from Anthropic's help article Publish and share artifacts; we describe only what it says.
- Navigate to the artifact in the conversation.
- Make sure the version you want to share is selected.
- Click Publish.
- Copy the public link and send it.
Publishing makes the artifact publicly available: anyone with the link can view and interact with it, and people without a Claude account can do so without signing up (an account is only needed for the advanced AI features some artifacts use). After publishing, Get embed code produces an embed for a site you control; you must list the allowed domains, separated by commas.
Plan requirements. Public publishing is available on Free, Pro and Max. Artifacts created on Team or Enterprise accounts can only be shared within the organization and cannot be published publicly; the flow there is Share, then Share & copy link, to authenticated members with access to the project, if any.
Unpublishing. Once you unpublish, you cannot publish that same artifact again, and its associated storage data is permanently deleted. A viewer with a Claude account can copy the code into a new chat and build on it; their copy does not affect yours.
Is the Publish button enough?
For a throwaway, yes. A demo, a toy, a quick visual for a friend: publish from Claude, send the link, done. It is free, instant, and the viewer needs no account.
For anything else, no. The moment a client, an investor or a team will open the page, the public link costs you five things. There is no gate, so anyone who gets the link can read it. There is no record of who opened it or what they read. The help article does not describe editing a published link, and unpublishing is permanent. A form in the page has nowhere to send its data. And whether the link can be indexed by search engines is not documented.
Hostus gives you all five for the same file, with nothing to change in the HTML: edit in place with version history, Private or Email-gated access, reading time by section, forms that store their responses, and Claude can update the page through the connector. That is our recommendation whenever a reader matters. The rest of this page shows the comparison and where each alternative still fits.
What can a published Claude artifact not do?
The official article has no limitations section, so here is one. Hostus is listed first because it is the option we recommend for a page with a reader who matters. "Not documented" means the help article does not mention it; third-party limits were verified on their own pages on 2026-09-06.
| Need | Hostus | Claude Publish | GitHub Pages / Netlify Drop | Static.app / Tiiny.host | Stacktree / ShareDuo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Password or gate | Yes: Private or Email-gated. Identifies readers, does not encrypt. | No; anyone with the link | No | Static.app: not on free. Tiiny: yes, check tier. | Yes (Stacktree also email-domain check) |
| Analytics | Yes, cookieless, including reading time per section | Not documented | No built-in | Static.app: paid only. Tiiny: opens, referrers, device. | Yes (views, opens; Stacktree heatmap) |
| Edit after sharing, same link | Yes, in the browser, with version history | Not documented; unpublishing is permanent | Yes, redeploy | Yes, re-upload | Yes (versioning / republish) |
| Expiry | No timer; instant revocation instead | Not documented | No | Check pricing page | Yes (ShareDuo 1h to 7d free; Stacktree scheduled, burn after read) |
| Search indexing | Public docs noindex by default; gated docs never render to crawlers | Not documented; see July 2026 thread | Indexable by default | Check docs | Stacktree: unguessable URL |
| Custom domain | No | No (embed with allowed domains instead) | Yes, free | Paid tiers | Paid tiers |
| Forms store responses | Yes, any form with named fields; 100 per month free | No backend; a plain form posts nowhere | Netlify Forms yes; GitHub Pages no | Static.app: paid. Tiiny: check. | Not listed |
| Who read which section | Yes, per heading, per reader on gated docs | No | No | No | Stacktree: heatmap |
Are published Claude artifacts private, or can Google find them?
A published artifact is public by definition: anyone with the link can view it. Whether search engines list those links is a separate question the help article does not address.
On 27 July 2026 a Hacker News thread (26 points) discussed a TechCrunch report that shared Claude chats and artifacts had appeared in Google results; one commenter pointed to a site: search as evidence. Some said a public link is public and users should expect it. Others said a person who pastes a link into one email does not expect it to become searchable, and that a noindex tag or X-Robots-Tag header is the standard platform-side fix. We do not restate Anthropic's current behaviour because the help article does not describe it.
What you can act on: if the artifact holds anything a stranger should not read, host it on Hostus, where public documents are noindex by default and Private or Email-gated documents are never served to crawlers, because readers identify themselves before the page opens.
How do you share a Claude artifact with a client who has no Claude account?
All five work for a viewer without a Claude account. First get the HTML out: open the artifact, use the code view in the lower right corner, then copy or download it (both controls are in the artifacts help article). If Claude gave you a React component, ask it to rewrite the artifact as one self-contained HTML file first. Hostus is first because it is the option we recommend; the other four are listed with the case where each still fits.
1. Hostus. Our recommendation for any page with stakes: a proposal, a report, a page with a form in it. Drop the HTML on hostus.io, type your email, and you get https://your-slug.v.hostus.io with SSL in seconds; no password, no card, and the reader needs no account. Edit headings, paragraphs, table cells and list items in the browser without changing the link, with full version history and restore. Set the document to Public (noindex by default), Private (invite-only, magic link) or Email-gated (list, domain, or open), and see who opened it and when, with instant revocation. Analytics are cookieless and include reading time per section, per reader on gated documents. Any form with named fields stores its responses in an inbox on the document and emails you each one, with no backend to wire. Claude can publish and update the page through the Hostus connector. Free: 20 documents, 2 MB of HTML total, 100 responses a month, every feature. Paid: $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year. No custom domain; desktop-only editor. Details on the Claude artifacts page.
2. Claude Publish. Pick it if nothing rides on the page. Free, instant, no extra account. Public, no gate, no analytics, no stored form responses, and unpublishing is a one-way door.
3. GitHub Pages or Netlify Drop. Pick it if you are a developer and want your own domain. GitHub Pages is free with a custom domain; sites may be up to 1 GB with a soft limit of 100 GB bandwidth a month. Netlify's docs say you can drag a folder to app.netlify.com/drop without logging in and the files are published as-is; Netlify Forms captures a form on a Netlify site. Neither is private or tells you who opened the page.
4. Static.app or Tiiny.host. Pick it if you want a quick public page with a dashboard and are willing to pay for analytics or forms. Static.app's free plan is 1 website, 50 MB and a subdomain; analytics, forms and custom domains start at $5 a month. Tiiny.host lists password protection, analytics and custom domains; we could not load their pricing page, so check it for the free tier.
5. Stacktree or ShareDuo. Pick it if you want a link that expires or self-destructs and nothing more. ShareDuo: passwords, view counts, expiry from 1 hour to 7 days free, longer plus custom domains on a $4.99 a month Plus plan. Stacktree: unguessable links gated by password or email domain, scheduled expiry, burn-after-read; one free publish, then from $19 a month. Neither lists stored form responses or in-browser editing.
Good to know before you switch
Hostus has no custom domain: every document lives at a v.hostus.io subdomain, while GitHub Pages does custom domains free and the others offer them on paid tiers. It hosts single HTML files, optionally with a folder of images, video and fonts, not PDFs or compiled React builds; ask Claude for a self-contained HTML file, or deploy a build folder to Netlify or GitHub Pages. Free is 20 documents, 2 MB of HTML in total and 100 form responses a month; paid is $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year. There is no expiry timer (revocation is instant instead), no team seats or co-editing, and the editor is desktop only.