Hey guys - I know that there was (sometime ago) the possibility of getting your hands on some free credits for OpenAI api. I want to start working with n8n and I'm quite strapped for cash now.
I haven't seen any kind of new offers on the OpenAI chat and I was wondering if the promos are off the table or are available in some dark corner of the internet?
Thanks!
EDIT: Thank you all for your great inputs!
Hey there,
I recently discovered Microsoft for Startups, it's pure gold for early stage Saas founders, and it looks like most of us don't know it even exists!
The context*:* I'm building droone.co , a Saas that helps product manager and Saas founders to put their competitor monitoring on auto-pilot.
e.g. 🚨 "Competitor X shipped Y new feature", 100% automated
We heavily rely on LLMs, and notably on GPT4 to train our models. And as an early stage founder, I searched for way to reduce my costs. And I found Microsoft for Startups Founder hub.
It's a Microsoft program that provides ton of helps and free services for early stage startups. I recently applied with droone.co and was accepted. I now have access to:
$2500 openAI credits for free
$25K fee-frees (it's only for new clients, so don't burn this joker too soon)
Tons of Azure credits
A lot of others things, such as LK premium with huge discounts, github enterprise and 20+ others benefits
I don't know if it's hard to be accepted, but here is the exact process that helped me to join the program, if it can help 🙏
1 - Go to https://www.microsoft.com/fr/startups and apply with LinkedIn.
2 - Fill the form with sharp answers. Here are mine
tell us about your founder journey
I have been a Saas product manager for 2 years, in what could be a great example of what “red ocean” means: the sales automation apps.
A context where your competitors can ship 10x more than you, and reduce price even more, just to steal market shares.
And after discussing with multiple fellow product people in other areas, I realized that we are all bad when it comes to competitor monitoring. While it's key to understand our competitive landscape.
I’m here to help them change that :-)
provide a description of your startup of project
Droone is the first automated competitor monitoring tool for Saas product teams. We rely on AI and multiple-source monitoring to notify our users when their competitor do something important: ship a new feature, fundraise, start hiring, change their pricing...
We put competitor monitoring on auto-pilot, to help product people focus on their priority task without living in an unknown competitors world.
Share a product demo
I shared this link => https://vimeo.com/907038123
(this video took me 1 hour to realise, I can make a step-by-step guide, tell me if you are interested!)
TL;DR
Microsoft Founders hub provides ton of helps and free services for early stage startups. I think it's a big missed opportunity to not join it, especially for Azure, openAI and Stripe benefits (which are used by I think 90% Saas projects overall).
It can make a huge difference and can definitely help you launching a Saas without spending money, hence reducing risks.
I hope it will help!!
Videos
I'm not sure if it's available to everyone but OpenAI offers free daily credits for some of their models if you opt in to data collection: https://platform.openai.com/settings/organization/data-controls/sharing
"In December 2024, we introduced a program offering free daily tokens to organizations that opted to share inputs and outputs with OpenAI. Participants can receive up to 1 million tokens per day (250,000 for Usage Tiers 1–2) shared across a set of larger models, and up to 10 million per day (2.5 million for Usage Tiers 1–2) shared across a set of smaller models. The program includes usage on the following models:
Large models group: o1 (including o1-preview), o3, gpt-4.1, gpt-4.5-preview, gpt-4o
Small models group: o1-mini, o3-mini, o4-mini, gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4.1-nano, gpt-4.1-mini
Originally set to conclude on April 30, 2025, we’re pleased to share that the free tokens program is being extended. OpenAI will provide 30 days’ notice prior to the program’s end."
I saw something that said if I make an account I’ll get some free credits to experiment with before I start paying and in the billing part it says free trial but I haven’t received any credits, after looking about some people said they may have discontinued it is this true?
They offered me 250,000 tokens per day for premium models and 2.5 million for the rest in exchange for me turning data sharing on (so they get to see all inputs and outputs) and I did.
So… what can/should I do with them?
Any profitable ideas?
Hey everyone,
Just wanted to put this out for anyone who still doesn't know about the Microsoft for Startups program with which you can get $5000 in Azure Cloud services for FREE. The signup form is pretty straight forward and they usually review it in 2-3 days.
Also since Microsoft owns a very large part of OpenAI the credits are also available for the ChatGPT API. Amazing news for everyone building ChatGPT wrappers :)
Now, the program mentions you can get up to $150k, but they are tiered in different levels and personally just started out with the first level so not sure how one could access the rest.
If anyone has experience with the program would love to hear how it worked out for you.
I read somewhere Open AI provided $2500 free credits to startups. Is this true?
I don't remember creating my OpenAI account, but apparently I was given $18.00 in free credits that I was unaware of and didn't use, or barely used ($0.00 out of $18.00 used).
Now, I can't even try out a a single thing at your website.
Can you throw me a dollar so I can at least try your website out?
I thought about ugrading to paid membership, but why would I when I can't even try anything out once?
Maybe a small amount of trial credits that don't expire would help people trying your website out.
When I created OpenAI account I got $5 free credit, can I use this with AutoGPT?
Did openAI stopped giving free 5$ trails? I’ve been creating new accounts with new emails and phone numbers and use my credit card to add another 5$ so i get 10$ and can use GPT4, but now no matter what i do they stopped giving me the free 5$ trail, i even tried creating the new account with another phone and new number from one member of my family but the moment i create and account it says 0$ credit grant. Does anybody know if they stopped giving them to new accounts for good? Or is it a temporary thing?
Did I miss something while reading the pricing? Because I'm supposed to have $18 worth of free credits. My usage page says I've used up $0.00/$0.00 of my free trial usage, and it's definitely been less than three months since I created the account. Thoughts?
People kept asking how I got all the free AI credits for my app, so I put everything in one place.
I kept seeing people say “use free credits” and never saw an actual list, so I spent way too long hunting them down. Sharing so you can skip the rabbit hole.
quick hits first, links right there so you do not have to google anything:
Microsoft for Startups - Founders Hub solo founder friendly, no investor needed at the beginning, gives you Azure credits you can use on Azure OpenAI plus GitHub etc https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups
AWS Activate startup focused AWS credits, smaller chunks if you are independent, bigger if you get into an accelerator or have a VC, having an LLC and real site helps a lot https://aws.amazon.com/activate/
Google Cloud AI Startup Program for AI first startups that already raised (seed/Series A), huge Google Cloud credits if you qualify, good if you want to live on Vertex AI and Gemini https://cloud.google.com/startup/ai
ElevenLabs Startup Grants if you are doing voice or conversational audio this is crazy useful, big pool of free characters for TTS and voice cloning for early stage teams https://elevenlabs.io/blog/elevenlabs-startup-grants-just-got-bigger-now-12-months-and-over-680-hours-of-conversational-ai-audio
Cohere Catalyst Grants API credits for research, public good and impact projects, especially if you are in academia or doing civic / nonprofit stuff https://cohere.com/research/grants
MiniMax free AI voice, music and LLM testing, you get a chunk of free monthly credits on the audio side so you can try voices and music before paying, defintely worth a spin if you need sound https://www.minimax.io/audio
if you want a bigger list of recources, sites like CreditForStartups keep updated directories of tools and credit bundles from clouds, dev tools, etc, but the ones above are the stuff I would hit first
I am using this whole free credit stack to build my app Dialed. it helps ADHD brains actually start tasks with short personalized pep talks instead of staring at the screen. a bit over 2,000 people are already using it to get themselves moving. if you deal with task paralysis or ADHD inertia, search Dialed on the App Store and try a pep talk next time your brain refuses to start something.
In online courses to learn about building LLM/ RAG apps using LlamaIndex and LangChain, instructors ask to use Open AI. But it seems, based on the error message that I get, that I need to enter my cc details to pay at least 5$ if not more to get more credits. Hence, I wonder if everyone is paying OpenAI while taking the courses or is there an online course for building LLM/RAG apps using ollama or alternatives.
Thank you in advance for your input!
Hi, so recently, in the official tweet of OpenAI Developer, they said the Plus users can get 5$ credits for free for 30 days. Can I ask how can we obtain them because I'm not sure how to get them.
My Difficulties: I was going to start the codex with another LLM api after my last semester gets ended. but I don't know much on how it works for OpenAI API because it's hard to know the pricing on the portal. So appreciate if someone gets me a heads up or a tutorial on API credits.