OpenAI Billing and Usage Dashboard: How to Track Spend (2026)

Keeping tabs on OpenAI billing in your OpenAI account can save you from surprise charges and wasted credits. It’s easy to lose track when multiple projects, API keys, and models run at once.

I’ll walk you through three practical ways to read the OpenAI billing dashboard, set budget alerts, and query the OpenAI API billing endpoints directly so you don’t get hit with an unexpected charge. Teams that need centralized visibility across all their AI tools should also see how Torii tracks OpenAI spend alongside every other SaaS and AI application.

Table of Contents

• Use the OpenAI Billing Dashboard
• Use Torii for Automated OpenAI Billing Monitoring
• Query the OpenAI API Billing Endpoints Directly

Use the OpenAI Billing Dashboard

Here, you’ll use the OpenAI dashboard to view, filter, and export account usage and invoices so you can track OpenAI billing without touching the API.

Open the Usage dashboard

• Sign in to the OpenAI dashboard and go to the Usage page (platform.openai.com/account/usage).
• The page shows a cost chart and a summary of recent charges, which is the quickest place to spot spikes.

Pick the date range and basic filters

• Use the date selector to choose today, last 7 days, the current billing cycle, or a custom range.
• If you want monthly reports, set the custom range to the billing period.
• Look at the top-line totals (total spent over your selected range) to get a quick sense of where you stand.

Break down costs by model, product, or day

• Use the breakdown or filter controls to group costs by model, endpoint, or by day.
• Scan for expensive models or specific days with big jumps. That shows where to look next.
• Click a bar or row (where the UI lets you drill in) to see itemized usage for that day or model.

Export detailed usage for analysis

• From the Usage page, choose the export or download option to get a CSV of detailed usage.
• Exported CSVs typically include date, product/model, tokens or compute, and cost - use that in a spreadsheet for charts or internal reporting.
• Narrow the date range or filters before exporting if you only need a slice of data.

Review invoices and payment settings

• Open the Billing section (platform.openai.com/account/billing/overview) to find invoices and payment methods.
• Download PDF invoices for accounting and match them to your exported usage if you need line-item detail.
• Update or add a payment method from the Billing page so charges are processed cleanly.

Communicate findings and set a routine

• Save the CSV and invoice PDFs to your finance folder and share the key numbers with stakeholders.
• Run the Usage page monthly (or weekly if spending is high) and export a short report so surprises are rare.

OpenAI’s help docs point to these same OpenAI dashboard pages (Usage and Billing) as the authoritative source for monitoring and exporting billing data. Use the OpenAI billing dashboard as your starting point before moving on to the API or a third-party tool. For a comparison of tools that go beyond the native dashboard, see 8 Tools to Manage OpenAI and ChatGPT Spend.

Use Torii for Automated OpenAI Billing Monitoring

Rather than checking the OpenAI billing dashboard manually each month, you can use Torii, a SaaS Management Platform, to centralize OpenAI cost monitoring alongside every other SaaS and AI tool. Torii’s OpenAI spend management feature pulls usage and billing data from your OpenAI account and surfaces it alongside the rest of your AI portfolio, so finance, IT, and security teams share a single view.

Instead of repeating the manual steps in the OpenAI dashboard, Torii lets you automate the workflow so updates happen automatically when a specified trigger occurs. Triggers might include a new hire, an employee departure, a contract renewal, or similar events, which can save time when these changes happen often.

To monitor spending in OpenAI from within Torii, do the following:

1. Sign up for Torii

Contact Torii, and ask for your free two-week proof-of-concept.

2. Connect your OpenAI account to Torii

After your Torii account is active, link OpenAI to Torii (assuming you already have an OpenAI account). Here are the instructions for the OpenAI integration.

3. Create a Torii workflow for OpenAI

Inside Torii you can build automated workflows to track OpenAI spend. Go to the Workflows tab, define a trigger, and configure an action that monitors OpenAI costs. Whenever the trigger is activated, the workflow will run and update OpenAI so.

Query the OpenAI API Billing Endpoints Directly

Here, you’ll call OpenAI’s billing and usage endpoints to pull OpenAI API billing data and check remaining credits programmatically.

1. Choose the billing endpoints to call

• GET /v1/usage?start_date=YYYY-MM-DD&end_date=YYYY-MM-DD - gives usage totals over a date range and usually a per-day breakdown.
• GET /v1/dashboard/billing/subscription - returns plan and billing-cycle details.
• GET /v1/dashboard/billing/credit_grants - returns free-credit grants and remaining credit balances.

Use these three endpoints together to get raw spend, plan details, and any credits that reduce your net cost.

2. Make authenticated requests

Set your API key in an environment variable, for example OPENAI_API_KEY.

Example curl for usage (replace dates and your env var as needed):

curl "https://api.openai.com/v1/usage?start_date=2024-07-01&end_date=2024-07-31" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY"

Example curl for subscription:

curl "https://api.openai.com/v1/dashboard/billing/subscription" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY"

Example curl for credit grants:

curl "https://api.openai.com/v1/dashboard/billing/credit_grants" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY"

3. Parse the responses and convert units

• The usage endpoint typically returns a total field and per-day entries. Confirm the field names in the OpenAI docs for your version.
• Amounts are commonly reported in cents or smallest currency units. If the endpoint returns total_usage in cents, convert to dollars with total_usage / 100.
• If the response includes a daily list, sum that list to verify the total. Example in Python to sum per-day amounts (assumes each item has total_usage in cents):

import requests, os

headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['OPENAI_API_KEY']}"}
params = {"start_date": "2024-07-01", "end_date": "2024-07-31"}
r = requests.get("https://api.openai.com/v1/usage", headers=headers, params=params)
data = r.json()
daily = data.get("data", [])
total_cents = sum(item.get("total_usage", 0) for item in daily)
total_usd = total_cents / 100
print("Total USD:", total_usd)

4. Check credits and subscription details

• Call the subscription endpoint to see billing cycle, plan limits, and any soft limits. Use that to map usage to expected billing windows.
• Call the credit grants endpoint to see granted credit amounts and remaining credit. Subtract applicable credits from total usage to get net spend. Example:

sub = requests.get("https://api.openai.com/v1/dashboard/billing/subscription", headers=headers).json()
credits = requests.get("https://api.openai.com/v1/dashboard/billing/credit_grants", headers=headers).json()

# Inspect returned fields like granted_amount or remaining_amount per docs and apply math

5. Handle pagination and rate limits

• If the usage response paginates, follow the response’s pagination fields (for example a has_more flag or a next cursor) and request until done.
• Respect 429 responses: back off, then retry. Use exponential backoff for retries.

6. Automate daily checks and simple alerts

• Run the usage query for yesterday each morning to catch unexpected daily spikes. Fetch subscription and credit endpoints once per billing cycle or when values change.
• Calculate rolling totals (7-, 30-day) by querying the usage endpoint with different date ranges and compare to your budget thresholds.
• If totals exceed thresholds, trigger an alert from your system. The API calls above are the only OpenAI steps needed to get the data for those checks.

7. Verify results against the dashboard periodically

Use the same date ranges and compare the API totals to billing reports in the OpenAI docs or dashboard endpoints to confirm your parsing and unit conversions are correct. If numbers don’t match, re-check which fields represent cents vs. Dollars and whether credits were applied.

That’s the flow: call the usage endpoint for raw spend, pull subscription and credit endpoints to adjust for plan and grants, parse and convert amounts, handle pagination and rate limits, and run these checks on a schedule to catch surprises. For a deeper look at per-model token costs, see 8 Tools to Track ChatGPT and OpenAI Token Usage. If you want to move beyond custom scripts entirely, Torii’s AI Management Platform handles OpenAI API billing monitoring and attribution across your whole AI stack.