Sign in with ChatGPT: The scope that spends your users' plan

OpenAI’s Sign in with ChatGPT plan usage feature allows Plus and Pro subscribers to authorize third-party apps to spend from their existing ChatGPT allowance through the OAuth scope `chatgpt.tokens.use.direct`, combining identity permissions with a user-controlled spending grant. Announced at DevDay 2026 with launch partners including Devin, Notion, Vercel, and several coding tools, the feature is primarily documented for open-source and locally hosted applications, while many commercial hosted products must request access separately. Users can set per-app weekly caps, disconnect apps through ChatGPT settings, and optionally allow purchased credits after included usage is exhausted, though apps are not notified directly of changed caps or disconnections and must infer connection health from failed requests or refreshes. Plan-funded requests face product constraints, including required streaming and disabled storage, unavailable tools, limited request parameters, and ambiguous 429 errors that may indicate an app cap, shared Plus usage window, or total plan exhaustion. The arrangement can reduce trial inference costs for developers, but it also makes an app’s reliability, pricing, rate limits, and support burden dependent on each user’s personal subscription state, especially because personal Plus or Pro grants can fund work-related activity outside an employer’s administrative controls. The discussion argues that developers should treat this authorization as supplemental, volatile infrastructure by tracking granular connection states, revoking tokens on logout, providing independent billing fallbacks, carefully handling credit-related charges, and recognizing that a spending permission differs fundamentally from conventional OAuth access to static profile data.

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