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Where to buy a ChatGPT gift card and what it covers

OpenAI’s ChatGPT gift cards are digital cards sold through participating US retailers, and OpenAI names Best Buy as one of them. Unless a retailer says otherwise, cards come in amounts from $15 to $250, and a redeemed balance pays for ChatGPT subscriptions, renewals, upgrades and credit purchases on the ChatGPT website, but not for purchases billed through Apple or Google, and not for the API.

Everything below comes from OpenAI’s help page on gift cards and its page on gifting credits, both current as of late September 2026.

Where to buy one

OpenAI describes the card as a US dollar, non-reloadable, stored-value card sold through participating authorized retailers, and says cards are currently available for digital purchase at select retailers. Best Buy is the one retailer OpenAI names, with a note that this is not a complete list and that availability, physical versus digital cards, timing and denominations vary by retailer.

Three restrictions matter before you buy. The cards are sold and redeemed only in the United States, for accounts billed in US dollars, and OpenAI says plainly not to buy one for someone who cannot meet those requirements, because sending the card abroad does not make it usable there. The retailer, not OpenAI, handles delivery, activation and refunds of unused cards, so if the email with the card never arrives, you go back to the store. And the card is a separate product from OpenAI’s gift credit links, promotional codes, free-trial invitations and API prepaid billing, each of which has its own rules.

What the balance pays for

Redeeming a card adds its full value to the wallet balance on one ChatGPT account. From there it can pay for a subscription purchase, an upgrade, a renewal or a one-time credit purchase on ChatGPT web. Eligible plans are Free, Go, Plus and Pro, plus Business workspaces when the owner redeems into the workspace balance.

For scale, OpenAI’s pricing documentation lists Go at $8 a month, Plus at $20 and Pro at $100, $200 or $500, and the Pro tiers article confirms all three Pro prices. A $25 card covers a month of Plus before tax, and a $250 card covers a year of it with change left over.

The balance is applied automatically. You cannot choose how much of it to use on a given purchase; OpenAI applies the available gift balance first and charges the rest to the payment method on file. Renewals work the same way, so a subscription funded by a gift card needs either enough balance or another payment method when the renewal comes due, or it may lapse. Trials and promotions may still ask for a payment method even when the balance covers the price.

What it will not cover

The balance does not pay for subscriptions billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Someone whose Plus plan is billed by Apple has to cancel there, wait for that subscription to end, then resubscribe on the web before the balance applies. It does not fund API prepaid billing, which is a different account and a different product. And it does not pay for purchases billed in a currency other than US dollars, even while traveling.

Redeeming a card does not start a subscription and does not change your plan by itself. It also does not add Codex or ChatGPT Work usage credits by itself: OpenAI’s credits article says the usage-credit balance is separate from the wallet. You can spend wallet funds on a one-time credit purchase where checkout offers it, and credit auto-reload draws on the wallet before charging a card, but the money sits in the wallet until you buy something.

How to redeem

  1. Go to chatgpt.com/redeem on the web and sign in to the account that should receive the money. Check the account and workspace first. Once redeemed, the value cannot be moved to another account, and a card cannot be split between two accounts.
  2. Enter the gift card PIN. The full value is redeemed at once; partial redemption is not possible.
  3. Confirm, then open Settings, then Billing, to see the wallet balance and a transaction history entry labeled Gift card.

You can redeem more than one card, subject to account-balance and daily loading limits that the help page does not quantify. If a redemption fails with a temporary error, OpenAI’s advice is to wait and try again.

Rules on expiry and refunds

The cards do not expire. Once redeemed, the balance cannot be refunded to the card, converted to cash or moved to another payment method. If you later get a refund on a purchase that used gift funds, the gift portion returns to your wallet rather than to a card or bank. Treat the PIN like a password; if a card is used fraudulently, OpenAI support will ask for the 19 or 20 digit serial number, which is different from the PIN.

The other way to give ChatGPT: a credit link

OpenAI also sells gift credits, which it says are rolling out gradually. A purchaser on a personal Free, Go, Plus or Pro account buys a credit amount and receives a one-time claim link to email or paste to the recipient. The recipient must redeem within 30 days or the purchase is refunded to the buyer. Redeemed credits expire 12 months later, and they pay only for credit-based features such as Codex and ChatGPT Work, not for ordinary chat. Business and Enterprise workspaces can neither buy nor receive them, the recipient’s account must use the same billing currency, and anyone holding the link can claim it, so send it privately.

For a recipient who uses more than one AI, Brass sells prepaid packs of $10 to $250 spendable across Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek, sent as a link; paid credits never expire, and an unclaimed gift returns to the sender after 90 days (US only, 18 and over).

The expiry rules for every OpenAI credit type, including these, are collected in Do OpenAI API credits expire?

Sources

  1. OpenAI: Buying and redeeming OpenAI gift cards
  2. OpenAI: Gifting credits in ChatGPT
  3. OpenAI: Using credits for flexible usage in ChatGPT (personal plans)
  4. OpenAI: ChatGPT and Codex pricing
  5. OpenAI: About ChatGPT Pro tiers

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