OpenAI Opens Up to $500 in Monthly API Credits to ChatGPT Pro and Business Subscribers: Matched to Plan Tier, Expiring Each Cycle
OpenAI announced on October 28, through its developer account and Help Center documentation, that eligible ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers can now claim up to $500 per month in API credits to build applications and agents on the OpenAI developer platform, while the chat subscription and API billing systems remain separate.
Amounts follow the subscription tier: individual Pro users receive a monthly credit equal to their plan price, $100 on the $100 plan, $200 on the $200 plan, and $500 on the $500 plan. Business accounts pool credits at the workspace level, at $20 per paid Standard seat and $100 per paid Premium seat, capped at $500 per workspace for each billing period.
To qualify, a subscription must be paid and active for at least seven days, the claimant must own the subscription or Business workspace, and the ChatGPT account and the API organization receiving the credits must use the same email address. Subscribers activate the benefit through ChatGPT billing settings, or create an API key through the OpenAI Developers plugin in ChatGPT or Codex. The first grant may be prorated for the time remaining in the current cycle.
Credits do not roll over and expire at the end of each billing cycle. Free trials, Enterprise and Edu plans, and legacy Codex seats are excluded. Under OpenAI's API credits documentation, the allowance can be used across services including the Responses API, the Agents API, real-time voice through GPT-Live and the Realtime API, and image generation through the Images API.
Bundling API credit into chat subscriptions lowers the starting cost of prototyping and automation on OpenAI's platform. Industry reports note that rival Anthropic's Claude Max plans already include $100 or $200 in monthly API credit, making subscription-bundled usage another front in the competition for developer workloads.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：OpenAI 公司标识（2025年字标版）。公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Image: OpenAI logo (2025 wordmark). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
