I was using my API key to run a program I’m developing. My typical usage is around $500 per month, which is covered by a combination of purchased credits and credit grants. I usually keep my balance positive by adding $5–10 whenever my available balance gets low.
Today, I received the usual billing hard limit error. When I checked my billing page, I was surprised to see my balance at -$70, even though it had been positive earlier in the day and I had also added another $10 in credits.
I reviewed my usage and billing history and found the following:
Usage from July 1–9:$142
Purchased credits: $60 (5 × $12)
Credit grants: $90 (5 × $18)
Usage for the last two days: $19 and $12
Based on those numbers, I wasn’t expecting my balance to become negative, so I’m trying to understand how the -$70 balance occurred.
I’ve already contacted OpenAI Support but haven’t received a response yet. If anyone has experienced something similar or can help explain what might have happened, I’d really appreciate the insight.
The costs organization admin API can give you a further breakdown in buckets of where your usage occurred.
Completions might be your first highly-targeted endpoint for looking at more fine-grained usage, but there are many endpoints by which credits can be consumed to also poll.
You’d have to re-assemble your own idea of “here’s the balance when the day started”, such as by credit grants line items, as there isn’t really such a view.
You may have just had an extended period of running your account into the negative without the org actually being shut off.
Thanks for the suggestion. I did consider that possibility, but the numbers still don’t seem to line up.
Based on my billing history, I had about $60 in purchased credits and $90 in credit grants, with approximately $142 in reported usage for July from the 1st to 9th. If the balance had simply gone negative because of a delayed billing cutoff, I would have expected to see roughly $70 of additional usage after the credits were exhausted.
However, my usage during that period was relatively light—about $19 one day and $12 the next—and I’m only using Sora 2. That’s why I’m struggling to reconcile how the balance ended up at -$70.
I’ve contacted OpenAI Support and am waiting for them to review the account. I’ll post an update once they determine what happened in case it’s useful to others.
Is the bigger problem the unexpected balance changes, not knowing which workload caused the spend, or preventing individual runs from going over budget?
The main issue is the discrepancy between actual usage compared to the balance. The $500 per month spending is regular, but that is usually distributed evenly with around $10-20 per day, comprised mostly of $1-2 batch requests, rather than one large request or workload.
That’s why the -$70 balance immediately stood out to me. My usage from July 1-9 was about $141, and during that period I had about $150 in available credits ($60 purchased and $90 in credit grants received on June 30), so by my calculations I should have still had around $8 left, not a -$70 balance.
I don’t think this was caused by one workload suddenly going over budget, since my usage logs don’t show any unexpected spike or an extra ~$70 in recorded usage. Right now I’m working with support to figure out why the balance doesn’t match what my recorded usage and available credits show.