I am experiencing an issue while using the fine-tuning feature on the OpenAI platform.
Despite having sufficient credits and quota available, I keep receiving the following error message:
Creating this fine-tuning job would exceed your hard limit, please check your plan and billing details.
Cost of job ftjob-QlRcgFshJQZIWmhDWpkcoyMN: USD 94.57.
Quota remaining for your project proj_hxdbk9eu8QWK1F7Bk0UmoOeT: USD -580.24.
I have already increased both the organization and project limits, but this issue has persisted for over two days.
Could you please look into this and advise on how to resolve it as soon as possible?
Check “billing”. See your credit balance. It must be positive, a considerable balance to cover all possible costs of a fine-tuning job.
Review project limits and models and API key endpoints. Generate a new API key … if not a whole new project.
Use your own complete set of hyperparameters. Notably, set n_epochs to a fixed number like 2, for two passes through the training file (for twice the total tokens in billings, plus the validations run). Otherwise, the API may guess the maximum “auto” possible as the funding needed. Images and functions also consume extra tokens, especially image tokens that can be large, up to 768 × 1152 px → 1105 tokens x epochs. (or 36835 tokens for a foolish tuning of gpt-4o-mini)
Thanks for the suggestions! I checked my billing and have $1,000 in credits with a $5,000 usage limit. I’ve waited 24 hours since the update of credits. I also generated a new API key and set n_epochs=1 for a minimal gpt-4.1-mini fine-tuning job, but I’m getting this error:
“Creating this fine-tuning job would exceed your hard limit. Cost of job ${job_id}: USD 8.63. Quota remaining for your project {project_id}: USD -69.54.”
My training data has no images or functions. Any idea why my quota shows negative or what I might be missing?
In the platform site’s organization limits, see if your tier hasn’t been upgraded. A prepayment of $1000+ total into the system (and not promo/research credits) after 30 days since your first payment should have you at tier 5. (or $5 to bump and recalculate)
It is nowhere to be found in documented limits, but I think there might also be fine-tuning stealth limits based on tier. ($5000 should imply tier-4).
Try to train “You are Bob” for 10 examples of “say hello” at n_epochs: 1 – see if absolutely nothing will go through on gpt-4o-mini. If using the UI and not submitting by API call, ensure the right organization → project is upper-left.
Nobody but OpenAI can fixed a messed-up organization.
There’s a few things you can try. It could be that the now “gone” org hard limits are still set, you can save a new “edit budget” value here:
Very sorry for the delayed response. If you’d like to share your specific instance of this, please send as much information as possible to support@openai.com and we can take things from there.
I have enough credit/limit ($393.77 with usage tier 4) but it always shows me the quota is less than the cost ($314.68), and stops my DPO fine-tuning job. I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me solve the issue.
Given the nuance here regarding your specific credit/limit, please contact support@openai.com sharing this and anything else that you believe is relevant.
