OpenAI adds up to $500 in monthly API credits to eligible ChatGPT plans

• Eligible Pro subscribers can claim $100, $200 or $500 in monthly API credits, matching their tier, according to OpenAIDevs.
• Business credits pool at $20 per paid Standard seat or $100 per paid Premium seat, capped at $500 per workspace monthly, as the published credit table shows.
• Plus is excluded and Codex usage limits stay unchanged, as one launch summary notes.

Annually prepaid Business workspaces can receive up to $6,000 in one grant. A Business owner leaving the workspace removes its API link if they activated the benefit; neither side can be relinked until the current billing cycle ends.

OpenAI added the benefit in its October 28 release notes. Full-period allowances, also outlined in reach_vb's announcement, are:

• Pro $100 tier: $100 per monthly billing period.
• Pro $200 tier: $200 per monthly billing period.
• Pro $500 tier: $500 per monthly billing period.
• Business Standard: $20 per paid seat, pooled for the workspace.
• Business Premium: $100 per paid seat, pooled for the workspace.
• Business cap: $500 monthly across both seat types.

The monthly Business formula is min(20 × Standard seats + 100 × Premium seats, 500). OpenAI's worked example gives five Standard seats plus three Premium seats a $400 allowance.

Five Premium seats alone exhaust the cap, a stingy ceiling for larger workspaces.

The eligible paid subscription must have been active for at least seven days, according to OpenAI's activation policy. Availability also depends on country and rollout cohort.

The activation requirements are:

• Plan exclusions: Plus and free trials do not qualify; Enterprise, Edu and legacy Codex seats are outside the offer.
• Pro ownership: The claimant owns both the subscription and receiving API organization.
• Business ownership: The claimant owns both the ChatGPT workspace and receiving API organization. Workspace membership or an admin role alone is insufficient.
• Account matching: ChatGPT and API accounts use the same email address.
• Billing permission: The claimant can manage API organization billing; a custom billing role alone does not replace ownership.
• One-to-one linking: One subscription or workspace links to one API organization, which can have only one active benefit link.

Owners can activate through ChatGPT billing or API Platform billing, using the two paths in the developer guide. A ChatGPT Business seat does not automatically grant API organization or project access.

OpenAI promotes the Developers plugin for API-key setup inside ChatGPT and Codex.

OpenAI highlighted GPT Live, Image 2.5 and Decisions in reach_vb's follow-up. The grant covers the following API usage:

• Responses and Chat Completions.
• Agents and Decisions.
• GPT-Live and Realtime.
• Images.
• Built-in tools, including applicable usage and storage charges.

Codex usage through API keys is excluded. ChatGPT and signed-in Codex usage allowances also remain unchanged.

Credits renew automatically after activation while the subscription remains eligible and the benefit remains available, under OpenAI's renewal terms.

• First grant: Prorated for the remaining paid billing period, so a mid-cycle claim can be smaller than the advertised allowance.
• Expiration: Monthly grants expire at the monthly billing-cycle end; annual Business grants expire at the annual cycle's end. Unused credits do not roll over.
• Upgrades: Higher Pro tiers, added Business seats and upgraded seat types can generate additional prorated credits, subject to the cap.
• Seat changes: Reductions affect the next billing cycle. Reassigning an existing seat creates no additional credits.
• Cancellation: Future grants stop when the subscription ends or becomes ineligible. Already issued credits remain usable until the current billing cycle ends.
• Pro-to-Business moves: The Pro link ends. A Business owner can establish a new link after the workspace's paid subscription has been active for seven days.

An active promotional grant requires no API payment method. Promotional credits are consumed before purchased credits, under OpenAI's billing rules.

• Purchased credits remain: Requests continue using the paid balance after the promotional grant runs out.
• No credits remain: Requests fail with HTTP 429 and error code credit_balance_exhausted.
• Credits remain: Request-rate, token-rate, model, organization and project limits still apply.

Reported API cost can differ from cash charged, because usage reports and credit-grant records track different things.