GPT on your own key: reasoning effort up to max, verbosity and Pro mode per request, plus hosted search, code interpreter and image tools.
1
Create an API key at the OpenAI console.
2
Paste it into Big-AGI's model settings.
3
Start chatting, or Beam it against other models and fuse the answers.
Add your OpenAI API key and use OpenAI's models at OpenAI's own API rates. Big-AGI isn't a reseller: no markup and no intermediary, so the bill comes straight from OpenAI to your account.
ChatGPT gives you one model in one box. Big-AGI runs OpenAI's models next to Claude, Gemini, Grok, and anything else you've connected, in the same conversation, something ChatGPT has no reason to offer.
It also hands you the dials ChatGPT hides: reasoning effort and verbosity are real parameters on OpenAI's API, not settings we invented. Your keys stay in your browser, not inside an OpenAI account. Big-AGI itself needs no account either, paste a key and start.
OpenAI bills per token too, so a light user can spend less in a month than a flat subscription, and a heavy user never hits an artificial cap, just a bill for tokens used. Beam parallel runs cost more tokens than a single ChatGPT reply, the honest tradeoff for comparing frontier models side by side.
Turn on Direct Connection under OpenAI's Advanced settings and the browser calls OpenAI directly, skipping the Big-AGI server, whenever your key lives client-side and OpenAI's API allows it. Your keys stay in your browser. Chats are stored locally first and sync only if you turn it on. The AI Inspector shows the exact request before it goes out: model, parameters, token counts, and a cost estimate.
Beam runs OpenAI's models against Claude, Gemini, or any other model you've connected, in parallel, then hands you Fusions: several strategies that combine, cross-check, and synthesize the parallel answers, which beats just picking the best one. Parallel runs use more tokens than a single chat.
Your key, your data, your choice of model. Big-AGI's Open branch is open source and self-hostable, so you can check exactly how OpenAI is called.
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