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Setting up and managing prepaid API billing | OpenAI Help Center
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Setting up and managing prepaid API billing
Setting up and managing prepaid API billing
Purchase API credits, manage automatic recharges, and understand credit expiration, payment failures, and balance limits.
Updated: 20 days ago
Overview
Prepaid billing lets you purchase credits before using the API. Your credit balance decreases as you use the API. If your account has free credits, those are used before purchased credits.
New API accounts use prepaid billing. If you already use monthly billing, you can also purchase credits in advance. Those credits offset your monthly invoice.
Purchased credits expire after 1 year.

Select
Add payment details
and complete the payment-information step.
Choose your initial credit purchase amount. The minimum purchase is $5, and the default amount is $10.
Review
Use auto-reload
before confirming your purchase. It is turned on by default during setup. Turn it off if you do not want automatic credit purchases.
If you keep
Use auto-reload
on, set the balance threshold, the balance you want to restore to, and an optional monthly reload limit.
Confirm your credit purchase.
Your trust tier, which is based on your usage and payment history, determines the maximum credit balance your account can hold.
After a successful purchase, it may take a few minutes for your balance to update.
