[March 8+] API Error 429...check plan or billing details = Monthly Billed Accounts Switched to Prepaid

API
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1

Symptom

Error Code 429 - You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details.

No API services work without this error

Likely: monthly-billed accounts being switched to prepayment-only

Round 2 - March 8, 2024

If you have been getting a monthly bill and monthly automatic charge for using the OpenAI API, things are changing.

Your account may be cut off (as described in an email), until you now fund your account by prepurchasing account credits.

Your account may have been cut off for lack of credit funds in the account.

How to add credits to an account balance

- Visit https://platform.openai.com/account/billing/overview

This is the view pre-switch:

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You can now purchase credits which will ensure uninterrupted use. New use will employ these credits.

This is the view of an account now requiring purchase of credits:

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As you can see above, if your Credit remaining is $0.00, your account usage is shut off.

FAQ: Why?

This is the email one would receive:

We’re reaching out to share that we will be updating how we bill for your OpenAI Account starting March 8, 2024. Instead of receiving a bill at the end of the month, you will need to pre-purchase credits to use the API.

Action required: To continue using the API, please add credits to your account by visiting the billing page. It’s important to purchase credits by March 8, 2024 to avoid API requests being interrupted for your application—if your account does not have sufficient credits on this date, API requests will temporarily fail for your application until credits are purchased. If you recently purchased credits, no additional action is required.

Please note that this change only applies to your OpenAI API account. It does not affect ChatGPT Plus or Team subscriptions.

No other explanation or account target criteria is offered

FAQ: Credit Expiration? Refunds?

Prepaid credits expire after one year. Credit purchases are non-refundable.

FAQ: What if I run out of credit?

You will not be able to use API services without a credit balance to pay for services. Prepay accounts have an option to auto-recharge to an amount you set, if the balance falls below an amount you set. This is expected to be seen in account after it is fully switched to prepay-only.

5 Likes
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There are those that voiced concerns about running out of credits with this prepay system - and then the API gets shut off.

Here is a depiction of the process for auto-recharge, to keep your account topped-up. This is only shown on an account that does not still have legacy monthly billing.

Auto recharge setup

Billing overview within a prepay account.

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Enter your desired settings

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(the limitations amounts shown should be different now)

Then once configured

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4

I got same issue, which require me to pre-purchae credits. Howevet, I click add to credit balance and put amount money and click confirm payment then proceed credit card then nothing happen? Is pre-purchase service is working?

Andy

5

Payment issues that affect a large number of people get a large number of posts here within hours. That hasn’t happened, so it may be something about your client. You can try a different browser with no adblocks. Also, ensure the billing preferences are all set to match a card for future purchases, where this could have been left blank before.

6

I also enable auto-recharge and also change a new payment method, but however, I still cannot access API. Checking everything is ok, usage not over budget, auto-recharge is enable.
I cannot figure out anything else I can do… :frowning:
Andy

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7

I tried to subscribe to the API by adding my card but getting card decline error. I think there are some issues.

8

There is an error in the payments system that is preventing credits from being pre-purchased. Have tried several times to pay, with different payment options. Successfully used the same options to pay the outstanding invoice for the Jan to Feb period, but these are declined for pre-payment. OpenAI threatens to cut off API access post March 8. The Help chat option is also useless. What is the fix?

9

OpenAI may be imposing a higher level of know-your-customer and gathering tax info.

Try updating name, primary business address and tax id fields to match that of the banking used and business. This has been a solution to other payment processing issues.

https://platform.openai.com/account/billing/preferences

(We can also ponder if it was wise to switch thousands of active users on the same date, and while concurrent payment processing the monthly bills starting on the first continues through mid-month.)

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10

I do not see that you actually made an initial credit purchase.by “Add to credit balance”. I don’t know that the recharge would take effect if you are already at 0 and cannot trigger it by use of API.

11

That doesn’t seem to be the solution. The tax information had already been added. All the information has been added and is correct, but the payment method is repeatedly declined, although it worked for paying the outstanding invoice. Changed the payment method, but no luck. OpenAI doesn’t want my money.

12

I added credit and I am still getting the 429 error in my google sheet. Some load, some don’t. How long is this issue going to go on for now? First, they get rid of davinci, now they are getting rid of billing and the service isn’t working properly even after paying the credit, what’s next?

13

For those that haven’t gone into the “platform” account management for a while, there’s also two different “organizations” you now can choose from (clicking on your name at lower left) for many legacy accounts, a new one named “personal” (or that you could rename).

A problem seen before is getting API keys from the wrong organization, or as could happen here, adding funding to one different than you were previously using. That could be the case if your new balance does show - generate an API key out of the same organization (if its tier works for you…)

Also, the ability to spend might not be instant despite the balance showing, up to several hours (it seems a queue was added at some point).

14

Looks like it just needed a few hours after payment. Thanks.

15

So basically then… this has gone from “pay as you go” (which wasn’t much for me as I’m only a casual developer/user) to “pay us $6 a year min”… :(((

Admittedly it was daft for them to be bothering with a credit card payment each month for not probably less than the cost of the transaction but the expire is a sneaky low blow.

edit: OK make that $7.20 per year (tax)

16

I hate to think how much they are going to make off this this month if all devs now have to chuck a min of $6 their way to have any access to the service at all…

17

People already had to pay a $5 minimum to get access to models like GPT-4/GPT-4-Vision, so buying $5 worth of credits shouldn’t impact OpenAI’s revenue stream that much.

18

five bucks for you may not be as much as five bucks for someone on the other side of the planet :frowning:

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19

I understand it could be about 210,000 IRR for someone living in Iran, so I mentioned most people instead of all people. My post was a reply to their second post:

(I edited my post so it should be clearer what I meant)

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20

Yeh indeed while it isn’t much, it’s more for some than others. It’s kinda sad though that they went this route. Sticking any kind of annual charge on an API will cause most hobbyists to elect not to use it. Twitter was a classic for that. Lots of fun community projects simply shut down.

People will either go elsewhere or start finding local alternatives they can run ad hoc as and when they are working on something.

1 Like