How to Get an OpenAI API Key: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ayyaz Zafar
4 min readMar 30, 2024

OpenAI has revolutionized the world of artificial intelligence with its powerful models and APIs. If you’re looking to harness the power of OpenAI in your own projects, you’ll need to obtain an API key. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of creating an OpenAI API key and provide examples of how to use it.

Prerequisites

Before you can create an OpenAI API key, you’ll need to have an account on the OpenAI platform. If you don’t have an account yet, head over to the OpenAI website and sign up.

Purchasing Credits

To start using the OpenAI API, you need to have credits in your account. Even if you create an API key, it won’t work without sufficient credits. OpenAI may provide some trial credits for new users, but if you don’t have any free credits, you’ll need to add billing details and purchase prepaid credits.

To add credits to your account, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your OpenAI account.
  2. Click on the settings icon in the left side panel.
  3. Select the billing section.

--

--