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For the complete Netlify documentation index, see llms.txt. Markdown versions of this page are available by appending .md to the URL.

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Project visibility

For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt

Project visibility controls who can reach your deployed project. A project can be public (anyone with the URL can view it), private (only your team and people you invite can view it), or password protected (public, but requires a shared password to view). This page focuses on public and private projects. See Password Protection to set a shared password for a project.

We recommend setting your project to private to restrict project visibility for your team only.

This feature is available on Credit-based Free, Personal, and Pro plans only. On a Free and Personal plan, private projects can only be seen by the Team Owner. On Pro plans, you can add unlimited team members to your project or team to view a project.

Private projects are enforced with Netlify login: only your team and people you invite can view a private project. To let anyone view the project, make it public.

Private by default for new projects

Section titled “Private by default for new projects”

On Credit-based plans, new projects start private by default when this setting is enabled for your team. Nothing is public until you make an intentional choice to make the project public.

You can configure visibility defaults for all projects on your team or adjust visibility for each project, with separate settings for production deploys (intentionally published versions of your project) and previews. You can move a project between public and private at any time.

This applies to new projects, no matter how you add or create them:

Whether the Default project visibility setting is set to public or private for your team’s projects depends on when your team was created. For details and how to adjust the setting, check out set default project visibility for your team.

Private previews

Section titled “Private previews”

Previews stay private unless you change the preview visibility setting. This includes Deploy Previews, including those generated by agent runs, and branch deploys.

Previews follow your team’s default project visibility, and you can override it for an individual project. See Set default project visibility for your team.

Make public

Section titled “Make public”

When you’re ready to share a private project, select Make public to make the project public. This button brings related steps into one place:

  • Make the project public, or invite people to keep collaborating while it stays private.
  • Change the project name, which also updates the netlify.app subdomain.

Making a project public exposes its production deploys, meaning that anyone or any bot that visits your project at its URL can access your project (unless you added additional authentication). Previews stay private unless you also change their visibility.

Make public is available once your project has at least one successful production deploy.

You can also change a project’s visibility in a project’s settings:

  1. In the Netlify UI, go to your project and select Project configuration General Visitor access Project visibility.
  2. Choose whether the project is public, password protected (only available on Pro), or private. You can set production deploys and previews separately.
  3. Save your changes.

Invite users to a private project

Section titled “Invite users to a private project”

Instead of making a project public, you can keep it private and invite specific people to collaborate. Inviting someone grants them a role, which controls what they can do and see in the Netlify dashboard as well as which deploys they can view.

  • On Free and Personal plans, projects are single-seat. To invite others, upgrade to Pro.
  • On Pro, you can invite unlimited members and grant them access to a single project or the whole team. See Share a private project.

Who can change project visibility

Section titled “Who can change project visibility”

The following roles can change a project’s visibility:

Internal Builders cannot publish to production, so they cannot make a project public.

Set default project visibility for your team

Section titled “Set default project visibility for your team”

Team Owners can set the default visibility:

  • Private for new projects: New projects start behind team login. Existing projects keep their current visibility, and Owners and Developers can still make individual projects public.
  • Private for all projects: New projects start behind team login and every existing project is locked to team login too. Individual projects cannot be made public.
  • Public for new projects: New projects are public by default. Existing projects keep their current visibility, and Owners and Developers can make individual projects public. Password-protected projects are unaffected. Choose preview access separately.

To change your team default, go to Team settings General Visitor access Default project visibility.

What visitors to your project will see

Section titled “What visitors to your project will see”

For a private project, people or agents who visit will see one of two things depending on whether they have access:

  • Users with access see the project, plus a banner noting the project is private and only members can view it, with a link to manage the project in Netlify. The banner appears on all private deployments, not only production.
  • Users without access see a Netlify-branded page explaining they don’t have access and prompting them to ask the owner for access.

Known limitations

Section titled “Known limitations”

A private project isn’t reachable by unauthenticated requests, which affects a few patterns:

  • Third-party webhooks. A private project cannot receive webhooks from services like Slack or Stripe. Receiving third-party webhooks requires the project to be public.