Slack Workspace Owner vs Admin: Roles and Permissions

In Slack, a Workspace Owner can do everything a Workspace Admin can, plus see billing and manage other Owners. Above both is the Primary Owner: there is exactly one, and only that person can delete the workspace or hand the role to someone else. In Slack's own permission grid, the channel permissions of Admins and Owners differ in one line: only Owners can turn a private channel into a public one.

We checked this on 3 October 2026 as the Primary Owner of our own Free workspace: the Account Types grid in the admin pages, the transfer page, and the role flags Slack's API returns.

Slack's permission grid for each role

Admins and Owners can open Admin, Roles & permissions, Account types. It lists 28 permissions for Member, Workspace Admin, Workspace Owner and Workspace Primary Owner:

17 of the 28 are allowed for everyone, members included. These are the 11 that differ, as the grid showed them in our workspace:

Three things stand out. Admins get almost every channel power Owners have. Making a private channel public is the one channel action left to Owners; the steps are in how to make a private Slack channel public. And two lines belong to the Primary Owner alone: managing private channels at the workspace level, and approving Enterprise Grid migration invites. Rows with a ... button can be changed by an Owner, so another workspace's grid may differ.

The grid covers channel and message permissions only. Billing, promoting people and transferring the workspace are not in it; those follow fixed rules in Slack's help center:

How to transfer primary ownership

Only the Primary Owner can do it, from Admin, People, Members: open the three dots next to your own name and choose Transfer Ownership. That menu has no Change account type for yourself; a Primary Owner leaves the role only by handing it over.

The new Primary Owner has to be a member already. Our workspace had no other members, and the transfer page (my.slack.com/admin/transfer) sent us straight back to Manage members with ?alone=1 in the address. With someone to pick, Slack's help center says you choose the member, confirm with your password, and the change is immediate; you become a regular Owner.

If the Primary Owner has left and cannot do it, Slack support may move the role, but only for a workspace created on behalf of a company or other organization, with a request from a senior person there, and only to a member whose email is on the company domain.

Every role in a Slack workspace

• • Primary Owner. One per workspace, at first the person who created it (how to create a Slack workspace). Through the API, our Primary Owner account returns is_primary_owner, is_owner and is_admin all as true, so a tool that checks is_admin counts the Primary Owner as an admin too.
• • Workspace Owners. Assigned by the Primary Owner. Everything except deleting and transferring the workspace.
• • Workspace Admins. Assigned by Owners or other Admins. Manage members and channels, no billing.
• • Members. Every feature except the ones above.
• • Guests, and Channel Managers. Paid plans only. Guests are limited to the channels they are added to; see Slack Connect vs guest accounts.

Enterprise plans add Org Owners, Org Admins and system roles such as Audit Logs Admin. User groups such as @designers are not roles; see Slack user groups.

How to see who the Owners and Admins are

Open your-workspace.slack.com/account/workspace-settings and click Admins & Owners. It lists every Owner and Admin with their role. The page is under account settings, not the admin pages, and Slack's help center sends members there to find the Primary Owner. We replaced the email address in this screenshot:

To make someone an Admin or Owner, an Owner opens Admin, People, Members, clicks the three dots next to the person, and chooses Change account type. What admins can read about you is a separate question, covered in can Slack admins see your DMs and can Slack admins see what you search.

FAQ

Can a workspace have two Primary Owners?

No. Transferring the role makes the old Primary Owner a regular Owner at the same moment.