ChatGPT Pro and Business now include up to $500 a month in API credits. How to claim them

What OpenAI announced

On October 28, 2026, OpenAI’s developer account posted: “Starting today, eligible ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers can claim up to $500 per month in API credits to build apps and agents.” The ChatGPT release notes for that day add that “The credits apply to a linked API organization and are separate from ChatGPT usage credits.”

So this isn’t more ChatGPT or Codex. It’s money for OpenAI’s API, the pay-per-token service developers build on, paid into one API organization that you link to your subscription. OpenAI’s help center says the grant “does not increase your ChatGPT or signed-in Codex usage allowance, personal usage-credit balance, or Business workspace credit balance.”

Here is what each plan gets, from OpenAI’s developer guide:

Plan	API credits each month
Pro 100	$100
Pro 200	$200
Pro 500	$500
Business, Standard seat	$20 per paid seat, pooled for the workspace
Business, Premium seat	$100 per paid seat, pooled for the workspace
Business workspace, in total	Up to $500 a month, or $6,000 a year if paid annually upfront
Plus, Go, Free, trials, Enterprise, Edu	None

OpenAI’s own Business example: five Standard seats and three Premium seats make $100 + $300 = $400 a month. Ten Standard seats and four Premium seats would make $600, so that workspace gets the $500 cap.

Who can claim them

Pro 100, Pro 200, Pro 500 and Business workspaces with paid Standard or Premium seats. OpenAI says Plus and free trials “do not qualify,” and that “Enterprise, Edu and legacy Codex seats are not established eligible plans or seats for this offer.” Downgrading to Plus, Go or Free removes the link at the end of the billing cycle.

Three conditions catch people out:

• Seven days. “Your paid eligible subscription must have been active for at least 7 days before claiming.”
• Ownership on both sides. For Pro, you claim as the subscription’s owner and an owner of the API organization. For Business, the person claiming “must own both the ChatGPT workspace and the receiving API organization. Workspace membership or an admin role alone is not enough.”
• One link each way. “One eligible ChatGPT subscription or workspace can link to one API organization, and an API organization can have only one such active link.” To change it later, you contact support.

Both accounts must also use the same email address, and OpenAI says availability “depends on the enabled cohort and country.”

How to claim them

1. Sign in to ChatGPT with the account that owns the Pro plan, or select your Business workspace as its owner.
2. Open Settings > Billing. For Business, use the workspace’s billing settings or the Admin Console.
3. Find the API credits benefit and start the claim.
4. Check which API organization will receive the credits, and pick the one you’ll build in.
5. Confirm. The credits appear in the organization’s billing overview in the API Platform, under Credit grants.

You can also start from Billing in the API Platform, signed in with the same email. If you’ve never used the API, OpenAI says you can link your Personal API Organization and “do not need to finish API onboarding before claiming.” You claim once: later grants arrive “automatically when the eligible subscription renews.”

What they pay for, and what they don’t

The credits cover “paid API Platform usage billed to the linked organization,” including the Responses and Chat Completions APIs, Agents, Decisions, GPT-Live and Realtime, Images, and built-in tools such as web search. You don’t need to add a payment method to use them.

They don’t cover Codex. In OpenAI’s words: “This benefit does not cover Codex usage through API keys. These API credits also do not increase your ChatGPT or signed-in Codex usage limits.” Your Codex allowance is still your plan’s, which on Pro 100 and Pro 500 is twice what it was before October 29.

At OpenAI’s standard prices for shorter prompts, per million tokens, GPT-6.1 Sol costs $2 in and $10 out, GPT-6.1 Terra $1 and $5, GPT-6 Astra $10 and $50, and GPT-6 Luna $0.10 and $0.50. So Pro 100’s $100 covers, for example, 10 million tokens of Sol’s output, or 2 million of Astra’s.

Three rules for the balance:

• It expires. “Monthly grants expire at the end of the subscription billing cycle. Unused credits do not roll over.” Your first grant is prorated for the time left in the cycle, so claiming sooner gets you more of this month’s.
• Free credits go first. Then any API credits you bought. With none left, requests fail with HTTP 429 and the error code credit_balance_exhausted.
• Limits still apply. “A credit balance does not remove request-rate, token-rate, model, organization or project limits.”

Using them for coding

Codex is the one coding tool OpenAI rules out by name. Its pages on the credits don’t mention any other. A coding agent that takes an OpenAI API key sends ordinary API requests, which the credits are for, but OpenAI hasn’t said how it treats coding agents other than its own, so that part is our reading, not its promise.

OpenCode, an open-source coding agent, is one that takes a key: in OpenCode, run /connect, select OpenAI, and choose “Manually enter API Key,” as its provider docs show. Use a key from a project in the organization you linked.

Enjoy runs OpenCode with the providers you set up in it, an OpenAI API key among them, beside Codex on your ChatGPT plan, and you can switch a conversation from one to the other in the middle of it. That’s one way to put the credits to work when Codex’s allowance runs low. It doesn’t make them pay for Codex itself.

How it compares with Claude’s API credits

Anthropic made the same kind of offer three weeks earlier. Its release notes for October 7, 2026 say “Claude Max, Ultra, and Team plans now include monthly API credits,” and its docs set them out:

	ChatGPT	Claude
Plans with credits	Pro 100, Pro 200, Pro 500, Business	Max, Ultra, Team
Each month	$100, $200 or $500; Business up to $500	$100 on Max, $200 on Ultra; Team up to $500
Not eligible	Plus, Go, Free, trials, Enterprise, Edu	Free, Pro, Enterprise
Wait before claiming	7 days	7 days
Doesn’t cover	Codex through API keys	Claude Code, extra usage in the Claude apps
Unused credits	Expire each cycle	Expire each cycle
Bought in the phone app stores	Not addressed	Eligible; claim on the web

Neither lab lets the credits buy more of its own coding agent. If you pay for both plans, the credits sit in two separate API accounts.

What OpenAI hasn’t said

• Whether App Store and Google Play subscriptions qualify. Since October 29, Pro subscribers who pay through Apple or Google have reported in OpenAI’s community thread that the claim option never appears, or that no grant came after their plan renewed. One said support confirmed they were eligible, with “no progress yet.” Anthropic’s docs say plans bought in its phone apps are eligible; OpenAI’s pages don’t say either way.
• Which countries. OpenAI doesn’t list them. A Business subscriber in Germany reported seeing nothing.
• How long it lasts. “The benefit may change or be removed in the future.”

What to do now

• On Pro or a Business workspace you own: claim now, since the first grant shrinks as the billing cycle runs down. Link the API organization you’ll actually build in.
• If that organization has bought credits or has Auto Recharge on: know that usage carries on at your own expense once the free credits run out.
• If the option is missing: check the plan’s age, the account you’re signed in with and the email on both sides, then contact support with your organization ID.
• On Plus, wondering whether to upgrade: the credits only help if you’ll use OpenAI’s API. For more Codex, compare the plans’ allowances instead, in our Plus vs Pro guide.

We’ll update this memo if OpenAI says more about app store subscriptions or other coding tools.