Hi,
I am unable to use the generated API KEY to access GPT-3 or GPT-3.5 models/engines when I am on a free trail. I am also assigned $0
You’ll likely need to just enter billing info. The free trial is limited in time and there’s basically no customer support to help you if you think you should have more trial or not. If you want to use it today, you’ll need to start paying.
Is this the case even for using the API to access GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 turbo as I assume only the GPT-4 can be used by the paid customers?
- Accounts may be granted a free trial credit when someone signs up, but it is expired after three months even if it took you that long just to discover the word API.
- You can instantly use gpt-3.5-turbo and other legacy models and even whisper (speech-to-text) and images once you have input a payment method that is billed at end of month.
- Because of limited resources, there is a waitlist to sign up for and be granted GPT-4 - and it helps in your sign-up if you are already a API purchaser, industry developer, and not a casual user (still waiting…).
Thanks for the explanation. But I have signed up and generated by API key in the month of June, not even one month passed since I signed up. Can I not use gpt-3.5 turbo and legacy models for free ideally ?
I would like to know the reason why I was not assigned some credits when I first signed up?
Go here: https://platform.openai.com/account/usage
At the bottom, see the expiration of your trial grant, the amount, and the amount used.
You could also have used it up, or even put your API key into some dumb stealer app online that was exploited for all of $5.
Only the first account on a phone number gets any credits.
(and maybe providing technical support for a multi-billion corporation should earn a few also…)
These are community forums so no one can really answer that question. All we know is if you do get credits, they are from when you first signed up with OpenAI. Many people don’t seem to get them or they expire without usage. You can try contacting customer support at help.openai.com but that will likely take weeks to get a response and no guarantee they’ll actually give you credits. So if you want to use the API today or soon, you’ll need to pay for your usage (charged per request, some are fractions of a penny, no minimum).
May be as @novaphil said, some don’t seem to get the free quota of credits. And I trying to use the API key for my internal project, so no chance of exploitation 
.
Thanks for the answer
One other possible explanation – if you previously used your phone number to sign up for a different OpenAI account, you won’t receive free API credits on the new account. This is a fraud prevention mitigation. If that’s what happened, you’ll need to set up payment on the new account to start using any models int he API.
I have signed up for a single OpenAI account using my phone number. It is just that I created multiple API keys. But, I don’t still understand why I didn’t receive the free credits
Nobody here can access your account. There’s just authoritative guessing. You can just send a support email and wait.
It is sufficient to say that if you are resistant to inputting a payment method to have an instant solution to your problem, and are annoyed over $5, you are unlikely to be a conversion to a paying customer anyway.
There’s people wanting to spend $2000 that aren’t getting timely responses.