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OpenAI is now giving ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers free OpenAI API credits every month, worth up to $500, according to a new Help Center article. It is almost exactly the deal Anthropic launched for Claude Max and Team on October 7, down to the per-seat amounts and the $500 cap.
How much ChatGPT Pro and Business subscribers get
Each Pro tier gets its monthly price back as API credit: $100 a month on Pro 100, $200 on Pro 200 and $500 on Pro 500. Business workspaces get $20 for every paid Standard seat and $100 for every paid Premium seat, pooled into one balance and capped at $500 a month. OpenAI’s own example: five Standard seats and three Premium seats make $400, while ten Standard and four Premium would come to $600, so that workspace gets the $500 cap.
Business workspaces that pay a year upfront get the whole year’s credit in one go, capped at $6,000. Plus subscribers and free trials don’t qualify, and OpenAI says Enterprise, Edu and legacy Codex seats aren’t eligible either.
How to claim the credits, and the catches
The paid subscription must have been active for at least seven days. Pro subscribers claim from Settings > Billing in ChatGPT, and Business owners from the workspace billing page or OpenAI’s Admin Console; both can also start from the billing page of the API Platform. You have to own both the ChatGPT subscription and the API organisation that receives the credits, using the same email address on each, and one subscription can link to only one API organisation.
The first grant is prorated for what’s left of your billing period. After that, credits arrive automatically at each renewal, expire at the end of the billing cycle and don’t roll over. No API payment method is needed. They cover paid API usage, including the Responses, Agents, Decisions, Realtime and Images APIs and built-in tools such as web search, but not Codex used through API keys, and they don’t raise ChatGPT or Codex usage limits. When they run out, requests fail with an HTTP 429 error unless you have bought credits as well.
Cancelling stops future grants, but credits already issued can be used until the end of the current cycle; a full refund removes them. OpenAI also says availability “depends on the enabled cohort and country” and that the benefit “may change or be removed in the future”, so not every eligible subscriber will see it yet. It doesn’t list countries.
OpenAI vs Anthropic: the same perk, with one big difference
| Plan level | ChatGPT (OpenAI) | Claude (Anthropic) |
|---|---|---|
| $100 a month | Pro 100: $100 | Max 5x: $100 |
| $200 a month | Pro 200: $200 | Max 20x: $200 |
| $500 a month | Pro 500: $500 | No such plan |
| Team seats | Business: $20 Standard, $100 Premium | Team: $20 Standard, $100 Premium |
| Team cap | $500 a month ($6,000 a year upfront on annual) | $500 a month |
| Left out | Free, Plus, Enterprise, Edu | Free, Pro, Enterprise |
| Coding tool | Not Codex via API keys | Not Claude Code |
The big difference is the top tier: OpenAI’s $500 Pro plan, launched at DevDay last month, brings $500 of API credit, more than Anthropic gives any individual subscriber. Both companies ask for seven days on a paid plan and let unused credit expire each cycle. Our guide to claiming the Claude credits covers Anthropic’s side.
“We heard your kind feedback”: Pro limits doubled
The credits come alongside a climbdown on ChatGPT Pro usage. In September, OpenAI told $200 Pro subscribers that their Work and Codex allowance would fall from 20 to 10 times the Plus level after October 29. On that day, Tibo Sottiaux, who runs Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI, reversed it in the latest post of his daily improvement challenge:
Day 25/
— Tibo (@thsottiaux) October 29, 2026
We are doubling all usage limits for all Pro 100/200/500 tiers and Business Premium, effective today.
We heard your kind feedback and won’t be reducing usage limits for Pro 200, so your Work and Codex usage will stay the same. We’re also going to continue offering extended limits for dots for now, and usage of your dot will still continue to be separate from your default usage.
And we'll of course also keep shipping better models and other efficiency improvements that increase your effective usage over time.
OpenAI’s Pro plans help page gives the detail. Pro 100 and Pro 500 now get twice their previous Work and Codex allowance. On Pro 200, “only the lower allowance doubled”: subscribers who still had the higher allowance keep it, and those on the lower one now match them, at the same $200 a month. Plus usage is unchanged, and OpenAI warns that “a larger allowance does not guarantee twice as many completed tasks.” It doesn’t publish the limits as numbers.
Why it matters
OpenAI and Anthropic now pay their most expensive subscribers to build on their APIs as well as chat, a perk that could make a $100 to $500 plan easier to justify for developers. OpenAI matched Anthropic’s offer within three weeks and went higher at the top, while dropping a Pro cut its heaviest users had pushed back on.
Sources: OpenAI Help Center, API credits benefit for eligible ChatGPT subscriptions; OpenAI, API credits for ChatGPT subscribers; OpenAI Help Center, About ChatGPT Pro tiers; Tibo Sottiaux on X; Anthropic, API credits for subscribers.
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