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Who can see it?

One ladder, tightest to widest. Every sharing option lands somewhere on these five rungs — and no single tool holds all of them. Each option page's "Who can get in" names the rungs that tool can hold, so you can match the audience you want to a tool that can actually keep it that tight.

Last verified: 2026-06-07 · Confidence: high — this is a framing page, not a per-tool claim.

The five rungs

From tightest to widest:

  1. Just you. Nobody else can open it. A private draft, a file only you can reach.
  2. Named people you invite. A specific list — you add and remove each person. They sign in as themselves; strangers are locked out. This is the only rung that's both shareable and genuinely private.
  3. Everyone in your org. Anyone inside your company/team workspace, nobody outside. Bounded by who's on the account, not by a list you keep.
  4. Anyone with the link (unlisted). Not posted anywhere, not in search — but anyone who has the link is in, no sign-in. A forwarded link, a screenshot of the URL, a logged proxy: all let new people in. This is not private.
  5. The whole internet (public). Listed, searchable, open to all. No link to guard — it's meant to be found.

Two things that catch people out

"Anyone with the link" is not private. It feels private because nothing's listed publicly — but the link is the key, and a link travels. One forward, one shoulder-surfed URL, one share into a group chat, and someone you never chose is in. Treat an unlisted link as "anyone who ends up holding this string", not "the people I sent it to". For real privacy you need rung 2 (named people, who each sign in) — never rung 4. Don't put anything on rung 4 you'd mind a stranger seeing.

"Org-only" is a rung many tools can't hold. It sounds basic — just my team, nobody outside — but plenty of options jump straight from "named people" to "anyone with the link", with no clean company boundary in between. A plain website deploy and Claude Artifacts often can't hold rung 3 at all; on some tools it's a paid feature, on others it doesn't exist. (A deployed website can reach rungs 2 and 3 — by putting a login wall in front of it — but only if you add one; see Gated website.) If "everyone here, nobody out there" is your requirement, check the option's "Who can get in" before you commit — it's the rung most likely to be missing.

Revoking cuts the live thing, not the copies. On every option here, removing someone (or flipping a link back to restricted) blocks their next load — but a copy they already downloaded, saved, or cloned is theirs to keep. Deletion never reaches a clone on someone else's machine. Plan for it: don't share anything you'd need to claw back.

How to read each option's "Who can get in"

Every option page has a "Who can get in" section ending in a line called "Which rungs it can hold" — it lists exactly which of the five rungs above that tool supports, and which it can't.

  • A GitHub repo holds rung 1, 2, 3, and 5 — every rung except anyone-with-the-link. See GitHub repo.
  • A deployed website holds rungs 4 and 5 on its own — public or unlisted. Put a login wall in front of it and it also holds rungs 2 and 3: visitors sign in with Google, and only the emails (or org domain) on your allowlist get through. See Deploy a website and Gated website.
  • A Claude Artifact holds rung 1, 3, and 5 — but no named-people list, and its public link is open to anyone who clicks. See Claude Artifact.

The shape of an option is which rungs it holds. Pick the audience first, then the tool that can keep it there.

A separate question: who's the host?

The rungs above are about who you let in. There's a second question they don't answer: the company hosting the thing can technically see it too, regardless of which rung you pick — and some train AI on what you upload, or keep it after you delete. That's covered separately in Can you trust the company?. Worth a look before you put anything sensitive on rung 1 or 2, where you'd assume it's just you.