ChatGPT Pro and Business Now Include Up to $500 a Month in OpenAI API Credits: How to Claim Them
Pro plans get credits equal to their tier. Business workspaces get $20 or $100 per paid seat, pooled and capped at $500. Plus doesn't qualify.
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As of October 28, 2026, eligible ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers can claim up to $500 a month in free OpenAI API credits. To activate them, you link the subscription to an API organization you own. Credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, don't roll over, and can't be used for Codex through API keys.
Image: Simon Hattinga Verschure (Unsplash) / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
How much you get
| ChatGPT plan | Monthly API credits |
|---|---|
| Pro ($100 tier) | $100 |
| Pro ($200 tier) | $200 |
| Pro ($500 tier) | $500 |
| Business Standard | $20 per paid seat |
| Business Premium | $100 per paid seat |
Business credits are pooled and capped at $500 per workspace per month. OpenAI's help center gives an example: 5 Standard seats and 3 Premium seats add up to $400 a month. A workspace with 10 Standard and 4 Premium seats would total $600 before the cap, so it gets $500. Business workspaces that pay annually upfront get the full year's grant in one issuance, capped at $6,000.
Your first grant is prorated for the time left in your current billing cycle. After that, credits arrive automatically at each renewal while the benefit is available.
Who qualifies
To claim the credits, you must meet all of these conditions:
- have an active, paid Pro or Business subscription that is at least seven days old (free trials and complimentary subscriptions don't count)
- own both the ChatGPT subscription or workspace and the receiving API organization
- use the same email address on the ChatGPT account and the API account
Plus, Go, Free, Enterprise and Edu plans are not eligible.
How to claim
You can start from either side:
- From ChatGPT: for Pro, go to Settings, then Billing. For Business, go to the workspace billing settings or the Admin Console. Then find the API credits benefit and confirm which organization should receive it.
- From the API Platform: sign in with the same email, select the organization you own, open Billing, and link the eligible subscription.
New API users can link the credits to their Personal API Organization. You don't need a payment method on file to use the free credits.
What the credits cover
The credits pay for API usage billed to the linked organization, including:
- the Responses API
- the Agents API, including OpenAI-hosted sandbox charges
- the Decisions API
- GPT-Live and the Realtime API
- the Images API
- built-in tools such as web search, file search and Code Interpreter
They do not cover Codex usage through API keys. They also don't raise your ChatGPT or signed-in Codex usage limits.
When credits run out
Free credits are used before any purchased credits. If you have purchased credits, usage continues on those. If not, requests fail with HTTP 429 and the error code credit_balance_exhausted. If you rely on the API in production, set up Auto Recharge or keep a purchased balance.
Plan changes
- Upgrades: upgrading Pro, or adding Business seats mid-cycle, can add prorated credits. Reassigning an existing seat to someone else does not.
- Cancellation: canceling stops new grants, but credits already issued stay usable until they expire.
- Downgrades: downgrading to Plus, Go or Free removes the link at the end of the billing cycle.
- Pro to Business: moving from Pro to Business ends the Pro link. A workspace owner can relink after the Business plan has been active for seven days.
- Business to Enterprise: moving from Business to Enterprise removes the link.
OpenAI says the benefit may change or be removed in the future.
What to do
If you pay for Pro or Business and use the API at all, claim the credits now so they start arriving at each renewal. Then check Credit grants in API billing to confirm the amount. More AI tool explainers are in our Artificial Intelligence hub.
How we reported this
We checked every figure against OpenAI's developer guide, its help center article and the API changelog entry dated October 28, 2026. The original draft was short, so we added eligibility, plan-change and claim details taken from those same pages.
Sources
- OpenAI: API credits for ChatGPT subscribers
- OpenAI Help Center: API credits benefit for eligible ChatGPT subscriptions
- OpenAI API changelog, Oct 28, 2026.
DailyMech used AI tools to help research and draft this article; it was fact-checked by our editors.