If you’re looking for free OpenAI API credits, we could not confirm a general free signup credit on OpenAI’s pricing and billing pages on 21 October 2026. New accounts use prepaid billing. Check your own account for any specific promotion; ChatGPT’s free plan is separate from API access.
The documented credit routes below run through Azure; free open models are a separate alternative.
1. Confirm the current state on OpenAI
Check OpenAI’s API pricing and prepaid billing guidance for the current terms. Promotions come and go and are sometimes invite-only; we never list a figure we can’t verify, so treat any third-party “free $X” claim with suspicion unless OpenAI states it.
2. Use free models through a router
The simplest free path to capable models is a router:
- OpenRouter free models — 50 free-model requests a day, and OpenRouter says its Free plan works without a payment method; one OpenAI-compatible API, so your existing code mostly just works.
- Groq’s Free plan — very fast inference on OpenAI’s open-weight gpt-oss models (30 requests a minute on gpt-oss-120b).
Both use an OpenAI-style API, so switching is usually a base-URL and model-name change.
3. Spend cloud credits on hosted models
If you specifically need OpenAI’s hosted models, the documented credit routes run through Azure. Microsoft for Startups credits apply to models “sold and billed directly by Azure”, which Microsoft says “include all Azure OpenAI models”. Azure for Students gives verified students $100 for 12 months with no card and lists Azure OpenAI among its services. The general Azure free account gives $200 for 30 days, but Microsoft’s pages don’t say whether that credit covers Azure OpenAI, so confirm on your subscription.
4. Don’t fall for “free credit” tricks
Avoid anything that asks you to fake eligibility or multi-account — it breaks OpenAI’s terms and risks your account. The legitimate free routes above are enough to build and test real projects.