Migrating from OpenAI GPTs to Dify — bring your Custom GPT home

Why migrate#

Custom GPTs are fine for play but hit four walls in serious products:

1. Locked to OpenAI — no Claude / Qwen / DeepSeek
2. No public API — only inside ChatGPT, no embedding into your site or support
3. Black-box KB — no control over chunking or embeddings
4. Data goes to OpenAI — not OK for sensitive commercial use

Dify is the most direct open-source alternative — same prompts, knowledge and actions, but on your servers.

Mapping#

GPT Builder	Dify Chatbot
Name + Description	App name + description
Instructions	Prompt
Conversation starters	Opening prompts / examples
Knowledge (upload)	Knowledge Base (dataset)
Capabilities → Web Search	Workflow + tool call
Capabilities → Code Interpreter	Code Interpreter node
Actions (OpenAPI schema)	Custom tools / API nodes

Steps#

1. Export GPT config#

There’s no export API — manual:

• Open your GPT → Configure
• Copy Name / Description / Instructions / Conversation starters
• Download knowledge files
• Copy Actions OpenAPI schema

2. New Dify app#

• Type: Chat Assistant / Agent / Workflow (Agent recommended)
• Prompt: paste Instructions; prepend:

  You are a [GPT name] assistant.
  Original conversation starters: [list them]

• Model: Qwen2.5-72B or DeepSeek-V3 or keep GPT-4

3. Rebuild the knowledge base#

Dify’s KB is more configurable than GPTs:

• Upload files
• Chunking strategy (recommend parent-child)
• Embedding model (Chinese: bge-m3; English: text-embedding-3-large)
• Bind to the chatbot

4. Rebuild Actions#

Actions are OpenAPI schemas; Dify’s Custom Tools accept the same format.

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
  title: My API
servers:
  - url: https://api.example.com
paths:
  /lookup:
    get:
      operationId: lookup
      parameters: [...]

Tools → Import OpenAPI, and Dify generates a callable tool node.

5. Test and compare#

Run the same questions through both:

Question	GPT	Dify	Verdict
…	…	…	…

Dify with Qwen / DeepSeek typically lands within ±5% of GPT-4 accuracy at 70-90% lower cost.

6. Embed in your product#

Dify ships:

• Chat widget (themable)
• OpenAI-compatible API — swap base_url and existing code works
• Webhook integrations

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: 'https://dify.your.com/v1',
  apiKey: 'app-xxxxxxxx', // Dify app key
});

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'gpt-3.5-turbo', // Dify ignores this; uses your bot's configured model
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'hello' }],
});

Gotchas#

1. Conversation starters don’t map 1:1 — Dify’s opening_statement is a single line; surface the four examples in the Prompt instead
2. No drop-in Web Search — pair Dify Workflow with Tavily / Serper nodes
3. Code Interpreter needs Sandbox — Dify’s built-in sandbox is opt-in; for prod run a separate Docker

Cost#

Item	GPT Plus + Builder	Dify + Qwen / DeepSeek
Monthly	$20 + usage	$30-50 VPS + $5-50 LLM
Commercial use	Personal only	Allowed
Swap models	No	Yes
Data sovereignty	No	Yes