Error message "billing_hard_limit_reached" when curling https://api.openai.com/v1/images/generations

General API discussion
1

Hi all I have a free account for research purpose
I am generating images via curling
https://api.openai.com/v1/images/generations
e.g.:

curl https://api.openai.com/v1/images/generations \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "prompt": "a white siamese cat",
    "n": 1,
    "size": "1024x1024"
  }'

It was working fine on Friday morning but in the evening I start getting error:
StatusCodeError: 400 - {"error":{"code":"billing_hard_limit_reached","message":"Billing hard limit has been reached","param":null,"type":"invalid_request_error"}}

I just started using the API and I shouldn’t already reached credit limit, and I didn’t do more than 50 images per minutes.

I created another account and use a different API Key but I still get the above error.

Anyone could help me with this matter?

At the following is the full payload and response:

curl https://api.openai.com/v1/images/generations \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-...................." \
  -d '{
    "prompt": "a white siamese cat",
    "n": 1,
    "size": "1024x1024"
  }'

{
  "error": {
    "code": "billing_hard_limit_reached",
    "message": "Billing hard limit has been reached",
    "param": null,
    "type": "invalid_request_error"
  }
}

Thank you.
Best regards,.

3

Hey @klosezhang, out of curiosity, have you checked your usage limits? There is a hard limit you can set there which mentions that once you surpass it, every subsequent request will get rejected

4

Thank you for the reply.
After investigation, it is confirmed that the free trail account is running out of free credit. Even I created another account later on, however, as the mobile number I use to create the account is the same, hence I didn’t get free credits for my 2nd account, hence the new API key generated for the 2nd account does not work neither.