Guide · updated 26 October 2026

Claude artifacts vs Projects: what each one is for

Both live in Claude’s sidebar, both keep work around between chats, and the names don’t help. One is where you work with Claude; the other is what Claude makes. Here is the difference in plain terms.

Two definitions

A Project is a workspace inside Claude. It has its own chats, a knowledge base of files you upload, and instructions that apply to every chat in it. Claude uses the files and instructions as context, so you don’t repeat yourself (What are projects?).

An artifact is something Claude makes: a document, a deck, a design, a dashboard or a small interactive tool. It opens beside the conversation, you can edit it, come back to it from the Artifacts tab, and share it (What are artifacts?).

Side by side

	Project	Artifact
What it holds	Chats, uploaded files, instructions	One piece of output: a doc, design, dashboard or tool
Who sees it	You, or teammates you share it with on a Claude for Work plan	You, until you share it; viewers need a Claude account
Runs code?	No; it is context for Claude	Yes, interactive artifacts run in the browser
Keeps data?	Its files and chat history	Optionally, personal or shared storage per artifact

Sources: Anthropic’s help center on projects, artifacts and sharing, and Claude Academy’s introduction to projects.

The usual confusion

The mix-up usually comes from sharing. You share a Project when you want a colleague to work with Claude on the same material: same files, same instructions. You share an artifact when you want someone to use the thing Claude made.

A rough rule: if the other person will type to Claude, share the Project. If they will click buttons in a tool, share the artifact.

Anthropic is also rolling out a new version of projects in Claude Code, where a project is one conversation that Claude splits into parallel threads (What are projects?). The distinction above still holds: the project is the workspace, the artifact is the output.

Where artifacted fits

artifacted only deals with the second kind of thing: the tool. When an artifact has become something people outside your Claude account should use, it can get its own private URL here. The people you invite sign in with Google or Microsoft, you choose who gets in, and the data the tool saves is shared between them.

Projects stay where they are. They are how you work with Claude, and nothing here replaces that. The step-by-step version is in How to share a Claude artifact.

FAQ

Can I share a Project with someone who doesn't use Claude?

A Project is a workspace for working with Claude, so the people you share it with use Claude too. To share a tool with people outside Claude, share the artifact instead, or give it its own URL here.

Which one should I use to build a small tool?

Ask for the tool in a chat and Claude makes it as an artifact. If you build several tools from the same notes or data, putting those files in a Project saves you from uploading them again.