Published: 29 October 2026
On 28 October, OpenAI began giving eligible ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers a monthly credit for its API, the paid service developers use to build apps and agents. Pro subscribers get $100, $200 or $500 a month, the same amount as the price of their Pro tier. Business workspaces get $20 per Standard seat and $100 per Premium seat, pooled up to $500 a month.
The credit only pays for API use. It does not raise your limits in ChatGPT or Codex, and it expires at the end of each billing cycle without rolling over. ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise and Edu are not eligible, and a new subscription has to be at least seven days old. These conditions come from OpenAI’s help article on the benefit, as quoted by Superpower Daily and 36Kr.
If you already spend at least your plan’s price on OpenAI’s API every month, a Pro subscription now effectively pays for itself.
A Business workspace reaches the $500 ceiling at 25 Standard or five Premium seats
The amounts per seat match the annual price of each seat. OpenAI charges $20 a month for a Standard seat and $100 for a Premium seat on annual billing, or $25 and $125 when you pay monthly. A workspace with five Standard and three Premium seats gets $400. Once a workspace reaches $500, extra seats add nothing.
Workspaces that pay for a year up front get the whole year in one grant of up to $6,000, which expires at the end of the annual cycle. The first grant is prorated, so if you claim it halfway through a billing period, you get about half.
Only the owner of both the subscription and an API organisation can claim it
You claim the credit in ChatGPT’s billing settings on a Pro plan, or in the workspace billing settings on Business. You then choose the API organisation, your account on OpenAI’s developer platform, that receives it. That organisation must belong to the person who owns the subscription or workspace, under the same email address. A Business admin role is not enough.
Each subscription can fund one API organisation, and each organisation can take credit from one subscription. You need no payment method to spend it. The free credit is used before any credit you bought, and when both run out, requests fail.
Can you spend the credits on Codex?
Not through an API key. The credit covers regular API work such as agents, voice and image generation, according to 36Kr’s summary of the help article. Codex usage billed to an API key is excluded. Your Codex and ChatGPT limits stay the same.
That matters for Pro 200 subscribers. From 30 October, OpenAI halves the Codex and ChatGPT Work usage included in that plan, as The Next Web reported when OpenAI announced the change in September. The new API credit does not make up for that cut.
OpenAI matched Anthropic’s Claude offer almost number for number
Anthropic introduced API credits for its Claude Max and Team plans in early October. Side by side, the two offers differ only at the top of the individual plans, where Claude offers no $500 credit for one person.
| Monthly API credit | ChatGPT (OpenAI) | Claude (Anthropic) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry individual plan | $100 (Pro 100) | $100 (Max 5x) |
| Middle individual plan | $200 (Pro 200) | $200 (Max 20x) |
| Top individual plan | $500 (Pro 500) | None |
| Standard team seat | $20 | $20 |
| Premium team seat | $100 | $100 |
| Cap per team or workspace | $500 | $500 |
| Wait after subscribing | 7 days | 7 days |
OpenAI’s figures come from its developer forum announcement and help article. Anthropic’s come from its own API documentation.
Link the credit to a company-owned API account before anyone builds on it
For the small and mid-sized organisations DataNorth works with, the Business credit is a free pilot budget that renews every month. A 25-person team on Standard seats gets the full $500, enough to build and test a first agent on real work without a new budget line. For a workspace with hundreds of seats, the same $500 is a test budget, not a way to fund production.
The ownership rule is the part to settle first. If a developer links the credit to a personal API account, the keys and the spending sit outside your company’s control. Teammates also need their own access to the receiving organisation, because your ChatGPT workspace members and settings do not carry over to the API.
Claim the credit with the account that owns your workspace, link it to a company-owned API organisation, and keep automatic top-ups off until a pilot has proven itself. Then pick one process to automate, because credit you leave unused this month is gone. If your developers already work with Claude Team, Anthropic gives them the same budget, so let the use case decide which API you build on.
For more information, visit the official announcement of the ChatGPT API credits benefit on the OpenAI Developer Community forum.
