HACKER Q&A
📣 ShamelessC

Why does OpenAI's API require purchasing "credits" now?


Title says it all. I received an email explaining that all API fees must now be paid with “credits” which must be purchased in advance.

This is less convenient and also seems a little greedy to me? I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt but I also noticed that these credits expire after a year which feels very “gift card adjacent”. I obviously doubt that I purchase credits and don’t use them for a whole year, but someone will and the only reason I can think of for that is to effectively get free money for some percentage of credits that expire.

I know other online services do this, but usually there is a way to automatically refill credits, and I don’t typically see any sort of expiration dates.

What gives? Just profit-minded business strategy or is there a specific reason they want to switch to this purchasing method?

  👤 rany_ Accepted Answer ✓
They don't want people creating accounts with credit cards that have very low limits. This is very reasonable and actually means that it will be cheaper for you because other (legit) clients don't have to subsidize criminals that don't pay. DigitalOcean and other IAAS need to jack up prices because of those crooks... it wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't pay-as-you-go.

Before you say that they could just verify that the credit card works by charging and then refunding it, it doesn't actually work because the crooks just change the limit afterwards.

> I know other online services do this, but usually there is a way to automatically refill credits

OpenAI does actually have this option, check https://community.openai.com/t/new-billing-model-auto-top-up.... It's available as an option when you're topping up.

👤 siva7
Purchased credits expire after only 6 months so they hope you will forget about your purchase. It's a similar business model with gift cards.
👤 bunbun69
Personally I think this is the best method, and I hope the entire online SaaS world switches to it. If I only want to spend $5, I add $5 to my account. Period. If I want the service to continue working in case of peaks, I enable auto recharge with a limit.

OpenAI is ahead of competitors, believe it or not.

👤 jaggs
It's a backward step from Pay as You Go, and just a money grabbing exercise. I think it's probably in response to the increase in use of Anthropic products.
👤 Pokerface777
It's probably like gift cards, they hope that you won't spend them...