I received an email from OpenAI that fine tuning of ChatGPT 4o-mini was free through 23 September. I am currently on tier 1. I fine-tuned my model yesterday but was charged. Why is this? I posted this here as I cannot access customer service.
Hi and welcome to the Forum!
Couple of questions:
- Is it possible that you exceeded the 2M free training tokens granted? Note that the number of epochs also counts, meaning number of tokens in the input file × number of epochs trained should not be more than 2M in order for the training job to remain free.
- Did you test your model, i.e. run any API requests using the model?
Possibly, I will check. Another question: it states that I am on a pay-as-you-go account, tier 1. I am wondering if I actually am eligible for the free fine-tuning?
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Yes, you are eligible for free fine-tuning 
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One more question (and thank you for your patience!):
Do the tiers simply increase automatically from teir 0 → tier 1 → tier 2 → etc? Like if I use a certain amount of funds per month? Or do I have to manually increase the tiers, by clicking the ‘increase’ button in the billing page?
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No worries The upgrade process to the next tier happens automatically once you meet the criteria, i.e. the amount of funds spend and time that has elapsed since your first payment. Occasionally, it may take a few days for the change to come into a effect. Normally you’d receive an automatic email once you’ve been upgraded.
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You have to manually increase the tiers by paying more money in the billing page. The only thing considered is how much you have paid in credit card money in the past, and it is only recalculated upon a new payment.
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