Free OpenAI API Key: What Exists in 2026, and What Works

Three facts that people often get wrong

• ChatGPT Plus does not include the API. The subscription is for the chat app. API requests have a separate bill.
• A key that costs nothing to create is not a free key. The first request needs a payment method or prepaid credit.
• Old free trial credits do not come back. If an article from 2023 tells you about $5 of free credit, that offer is not on the pricing page today.

Do not use a leaked key

Search for "free OpenAI API key" and you find lists of keys on GitHub, Telegram and paste sites. Those keys are stolen. A developer put a key in public code by mistake, and a bot copied it.

• The owner pays for each of your requests.
• OpenAI scans for leaked keys and disables them. Your app stops on that day.
• Using another person's key breaks the OpenAI terms of use, and in many countries it is a crime.
• Some "free key" sites and browser extensions exist to steal your keys and accounts.

The options below are legal, and they continue to work next month.

Option 1: OpenAI's open model, free

In 2025 OpenAI released two open-weight models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can run them. DreamPrompting sends your request to providers that serve them on free tiers, and changes to another provider when one is busy.

The API uses the OpenAI format. Keep the official OpenAI SDK. Change base_url, the key and the model name:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://dreamprompting.com/api/v1",
    api_key="YOUR_DREAMPROMPTING_KEY",  # free, from /account
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="groq/openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain an API key in one sentence."}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

The same request with curl:

curl https://dreamprompting.com/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_DREAMPROMPTING_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model": "groq/openai/gpt-oss-120b",
       "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]}'

To get the key:

1. Go to your account page and sign in with Google.
2. Copy the API key that the page shows.
3. Put it in your code as above. You do not need a card.

The limits. The free tier allows 100 requests a minute from one IP address, and 5,000 requests and 500,000 tokens in each 24 hours for one account. If your app needs more, Pro removes the daily quota for $9 for 30 days. You can also add your own provider key, which is free and has no quota here.

The honest limit. This is not GPT-6. gpt-oss-120b is a strong model for chat, summaries, extraction, code help and agents, but the newest closed OpenAI models are better at hard reasoning. Test it on your own task. Set "model": "auto" to let the gateway choose any free model that is available, or see all models.

Option 2: pay OpenAI a very small amount

If you need a closed OpenAI model, the cheapest one costs little. On 2026-11-02, gpt-5-nano cost $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.4 per million output tokens. gpt-6.1-sol cost $2.0 and $10.0.

For an app that makes 1,000 requests a day, with 1,500 input and 400 output tokens each, a month costs about $7.05 on gpt-5-nano and $210 on gpt-6.1-sol.

Use the OpenAI API cost calculator to enter your own numbers and compare every model.

Option 3: other free tiers

Some providers have their own free tier with an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Each one needs its own account and has its own limits:

• Groq: very fast, with gpt-oss and Qwen models.
• Google Gemini: a free tier in many countries.
• OpenRouter: a set of :free models with a low daily limit.

DreamPrompting puts these and other free tiers behind one key, so you do not manage many accounts. See how to get a free LLM API key for each provider.

Summary

• A free OpenAI API key does not exist, and a leaked key is not free.
• OpenAI's open model gpt-oss-120b is free on DreamPrompting, with the OpenAI SDK.
• The cheapest closed OpenAI model, gpt-5-nano, costs cents a month for a small app.