Hello everyone,
I’m inquiring about possibly setting up an owner/manager account for a new ChatGPT Team subscription without having that ‘manager’ account take up a seat.
This arrangement would be ideal for maintaining a business management structure with elevated permissions within the organization while simultaneously freeing up a seat that could be allocated to an employee.
Thank you so much!
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I do not have a ChatGPT Team account so can only infer from the official documentation.
In reading, What is the difference between different roles on my ChatGPT Team workspace? it notes 3 users but the names are Member, Admin and Owner.
In reading, What is the process of adding, changing, or removing members to my team’s ChatGPT Team workspace? it shows how to change the role of a user as an owner.
It seems that it is possible to change the second user to a Member based on how I interpret your question.
Please correct me if this is wrong. 
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Thank you, but my question is about the first user.
He will surely be the owner, so he will be able to manage the workspace, add other users as members and, in case, promote them as admin (or transfer the ownership, I suppose). He will be in charge of the economic management of the account (more seats, more costs)
But my question here is:
Can the first user (the owner) not have access to Chat GPT?
I want him to have only a management role (like a company supplier office) without using the service.
So the two seats will be used for two real employees without wasting money.
I hope that it is more clear now.
TY
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Thanks for clarifying. That was so out of anything I considered it did not cross my mind.
As I do not have access to a ChatGPT Team account, I find this to be valuable feedback.
As a moderator I will do what I can to get this noticed by the OpenAI staff.
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You definitely deserve one! 
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The owner does count as a seat. 
I can confirm as of writing, I paid for 2 seats in ChatGPT Team (in March 2024).
I have three ‘members’ in my ChatGPT Team:
- Member
- Member
- Owner
Under the billing information it stats Seats 3/2 seats in use.
I would very much like this changed. As I use the ‘owner’ account on a service email address for security reasons, also for least privilege this is good too.
I do not want my daily use account ChatGPT account to have elevated privileges. However, I am being charged an additional $25/month + tax just to follow least privilege security model 
A little to akin to managing an Atlassian account imo!
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Same problem here, as owner, I only want to manage my team’s seats and do not need a seat for this. The automatic seat for the owner was not made clear in the FAQs.
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Is there a new thread for this issue? As IT director of a small organization that only needs a Team plan, for compliance with our security standards, we need to ensure that we have an owner/root user/global admin account that is separate from the users and other admins. Please allow the workspace Owner account to manage billing and user provisioning without consuming a paid seat.
Why this matters:
- Separation of duties and least‑privilege principles in NIST SP 800‑53 AC‑6, SOC 2 CC6, and ISO 27001 6.1.2 expect an administrative account to be isolated from day‑to‑day use.
- Many SaaS peers provide a non‑licensed global‑admin role.
- Small teams on the Team plan cannot spare—or justify billing for—a seat that exists only for billing and access control.
Is there an updated thread or roadmap item for this change? I would appreciate any guidance or timeline the OpenAI team can share. The owner account should be used to manage billing and add and remove users, not to perform day-to-day tasks and occupy a seat.
Why am I not surprised that Open AI is still completely opaque about this topic. They’re hoping you buy a team account with your internal admin email, and get stuck paying for an extra seat for a year. Shame on you Open AI, this is predatory.
Same here. We use a non-human identity to run ownership and security admin on company owned subscriptions and cloud accounts. Said identity does not need to use ChatGPT, only used to run user management and configuration. We do not require this account to consume a licensed seat, as it will never interact with ChatGPT itself.
Same here. Wasting an extra seat for the admin.
+1
What does it even mean when it says “3/2 seats in use”?
I paid for two seats but I still can use three or they will charge me for one additional month later?
Sorry for the kick but i have the same question.
We have ChatGPT Business subscriptions (formerly called Team subscriptions) and we’re now paying a monthly 29 euro for nothing because our admin account, which we use to manage users, payments, invoices etc. is taking up a seat. I’ve been already asked to use the admin account as my personal / daily driver account by my staff so we can ditch one seat (my personal account).
Besides the fact that i don’t want to share my personal chats with my IT team (which will happen when i’m forced to use the admin account), it’s also not in compliance with several security standards to use an admin account as personal / daily driver account.
Please consider changing this. There are tons of cloud/service providers that won’t charge you for an admin account as that is common practice. If you need to revoke chat access for the admin account than that’s perfectly fine.