OpenAI is giving away up to $500 a month in free API money

OpenAI has started handing ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers real money for its API. Not a discount or a trial, but credits on a developer account that arrive every month along with the subscription renewal. The announcement went up on the OpenAI forum on the evening of October 28 US time, and the docs already have a dedicated page with the rules.

The amount depends on the plan. Pro at $100 gets $100 a month in API credits, Pro at $200 gets $200, Pro at $500 gets $500. Business is counted per seat: $20 for every paid Standard seat and $100 for every Premium seat, capped at $500 a month for the whole workspace. Plus subscribers, free accounts and trials are left out, and so are Enterprise and Edu.

Claiming it is simple. In ChatGPT you open Settings, then Billing, find the API credits benefit and link it to an organization you own on the API platform. The email on ChatGPT and on the API has to match, and the paid subscription has to be at least 7 days old. No payment card is needed on the API side. After that the credits land automatically at every renewal, and the first month is prorated.

There is a catch. Credits expire at the end of the billing period and do not roll over. They cover the regular APIs: text, agents, real-time voice, image generation, web and file search. Codex through an API key is not included, and the benefit does not raise ChatGPT or Codex usage limits. When the free balance runs out, requests start failing with a 429 error unless you add your own money.

In effect OpenAI is turning its expensive subscription into a starter budget for building apps and agents. If you already pay for Pro, that is a free $100 to $500 a month, and it would be silly not to take it.