Hacker ApprovedDepartments

OpenAI API

Ranked 3 of 10 LLM APIs by recommenders

Recommended for strong math and agentic coding work, simple prepaid billing and cost-saving caching, though critics worry about data privacy and spending limits that don't hold.

Recommended for strong math and agentic coding work, simple prepaid billing and cost-saving caching, though critics worry about data privacy and spending limits that don't hold.

452 people gave an opinion

recommend it
166
criticize it
286
approval share
37%
Each figure is 5 people. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 13 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: recommended (month in progress)

Owned for 9 months

Median of the 7 owners who said how long they have had it.

Each square is one year.

Why it doesn’t carry the badge

  • 166 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
  • Recommended in 13 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Strong at math and proofs

    “They have a machine that is better than every human being alive at math that solves problems humans cannot even when working inefficiently.”

    Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “I know why the mathematicians weep”

    “Turning a bunch of vague research directions and exploratory prompts into a formalized proof is quite impressive on its own.”

    Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes release included a Lean 4 formal proof”

    “They have invented a magic button that can tell you the long-awaited answers to the burning mathematical questions”

    Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “OpenAI, the Partition Principle, and Mathematics”
  • Capable agents for coding and testing

    “Qwen and the OpenAI models are great, aggressive agents, but they're not as good as the anthropic models for human interaction.”

    Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8 Max now ranked as the best overall model by agentic index”

    “With absolutely no prompting they will bootstrap off information schema and extended description properties every single time.”

    Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Building Reliable Agentic AI Systems”

    “ran some profiling inside of Windows, captured a few GB of data, sifted through it, identified the guilty .dll's”

    Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “AI handles incidents, engineers lose touch with their systems”
  • Simple pay-as-you-go prepaid billing

    “Using Anthropic or OpenAI's models are incredibly straightforward -- pay us per month, here's the button you press, great.”

    Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Gemini 3”

    “For my use case it will cost like $11 a month and we already have OpenaAI keys and accounts with billing in place.”

    Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Decisions API is in public beta”

    “You can just stick a tenner in OpenAI though and it won't charge anymore than the credit you've put in”

    Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “You should write an agent”
  • Caching and flex tier cut costs

    “now that OpenAI's models are closing in, are cheaper for daily use and don't have those silly 5 hours limits”

    Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive”

    “For me, it works quite well for low-priority things, without the hassle of using the batch API.”

    Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark”

    “We find OpenAI, Anthropic and Fireworks (which we use a lot) all have higher cache hit rates.”

    Comment from 19 May 2026 in “Gemini 3.5: frontier intelligence with action”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Data privacy and retention concerns

    “If I was a company with a zero data retention contract involving OAI I would be asking for a third party audit of such claim of zero retention”

    Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem”

    “if you are a business using OpenAI models, I would highly suggest you do not because they are most likely looking at your code and IP”

    Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Apple Sues OpenAI for Stealing Trade Secrets to Build AI Hardware”

    “it seems thoroughly absurd to think that the entire world should trust those two companies to adequately monitor the plaintext”

    Comment from 6 Sep 2026 in “What is nueralese and why is it bad”
  • Agents misbehave or overconfidently wrong

    “Sometimes the agent will forget to do some piece of work or invent a new bizarre way of doing things”

    Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer”

    “Currently the major mistakes that AI makes: Improperly rotated connectors (backwards USB port)”

    Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “This PCB is brought to you by Fable 5”

    “the (at least OpenAI's) AI model is cocksure and wrong, which is infinitely more infuriating than being a bit clueless and wrong”

    Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand”
  • Spending limits and billing problems

    “the spending limit is meaningless without a hidden checkbox called “enforce spending limit,””

    Comment from 4 Oct 2026 in “We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything”

    “OpenAI has removed that option and their "Project budget" feature turned from being a hard limit into an email notification”

    Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration”

    “how convenient that they are solving their accounting problems with taking away your money instead of doing a refund”

    Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “OpenAI says my prepaid credits were consumed, refuses to show any record”
  • Identity verification for latest models

    “I just registered at platform.OpenAI.com two days ago for MCP Apps registration and had to do the Persona process! Now I could cry.”

    Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over”

    “if one wants to enable the latest models in the OpenAI api you have to submit your details to their “identity provider””

    Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control”

Other LLM APIs people recommend

The four most recommended other LLM APIs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

OpenAI API compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Mistral31424556%136 mo9 owners—
DeepSeek API1715675%111 mo9 ownersApproved
OpenAI APIThis page16628637%139 mo7 owners—
Anthropic API5812632%12——
System One Models by TypeSafe37784%2——
See all 10 LLM APIs, ranked

What people said

40 of the 503 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“I've got OAI models doing testing of banking workflows that Claude would have a full scale panic attack over.”

RecommendsComment from 1 Nov 2026 in “Anthropic blocks users for anything touching training larger models”

“OpenAI's models have a lot less false positives for me. Almost always smooth doing vuln scans”

RecommendsComment from 17 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek-v4.1-Flash-1017”

“They have a machine that is better than every human being alive at math that solves problems humans cannot even when working inefficiently.”

MixedComment from 15 Oct 2026 in “I know why the mathematicians weep”

“They have invented a magic button that can tell you the long-awaited answers to the burning mathematical questions”

RecommendsComment from 9 Oct 2026 in “OpenAI, the Partition Principle, and Mathematics”

“For my use case it will cost like $11 a month and we already have OpenaAI keys and accounts with billing in place.”

RecommendsComment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Decisions API is in public beta”

“the spending limit is meaningless without a hidden checkbox called “enforce spending limit,””

MixedComment from 4 Oct 2026 in “We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything”

“OpenAI knew that their models had on multiple occasions created message boards and bypassed what they wrongly call a “sandbox”.”

CriticizesComment from 24 Sep 2026 in “Is A.I. Above the Law?”

“Currently the major mistakes that AI makes: Improperly rotated connectors (backwards USB port)”

MixedComment from 17 Sep 2026 in “This PCB is brought to you by Fable 5”

“Turning a bunch of vague research directions and exploratory prompts into a formalized proof is quite impressive on its own.”

RecommendsComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes release included a Lean 4 formal proof”

“OpenAI provided useful replies. Then, OpenAI goes ahead and publishes work along the lines of this collaboration, without attributing the researchers.”

MixedComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math”

“Sometimes the agent will forget to do some piece of work or invent a new bizarre way of doing things”

MixedComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer”

“if you are doing any real novel work, or putting your profitable business data/workflow into these models, you're a fool.”

CriticizesComment from 9 Sep 2026 in “Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]”

“If mathematician decide to use OpenAI's model to do the work, that only reiterates how strong their models are.”

RecommendsComment from 8 Sep 2026 in “On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem”

“If I was a company with a zero data retention contract involving OAI I would be asking for a third party audit of such claim of zero retention”

CriticizesComment from 8 Sep 2026 in “On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem”

“it seems thoroughly absurd to think that the entire world should trust those two companies to adequately monitor the plaintext”

CriticizesComment from 6 Sep 2026 in “What is nueralese and why is it bad”

“If it breaks the law attempting to perform lawful tasks, as OpenAI's models have done, then there is no upside to that.”

CriticizesComment from 5 Sep 2026 in “Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board”

“ran some profiling inside of Windows, captured a few GB of data, sifted through it, identified the guilty .dll's”

RecommendsComment from 5 Sep 2026 in “AI handles incidents, engineers lose touch with their systems”

“I spent about $200 on openai tokens today to solve a seriously hard distributed systems problem”

RecommendsComment from 26 Aug 2026 in “The turbulent AI era is here”

“now that OpenAI's models are closing in, are cheaper for daily use and don't have those silly 5 hours limits”

MixedComment from 24 Aug 2026 in “Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive”

“1 million free tokens per day might sound like a lot. But that equates to something like 20 minutes of actual coding usage”

MixedComment from 8 Aug 2026 in “Muse Code and Muse Spark 1.2”

“Qwen and the OpenAI models are great, aggressive agents, but they're not as good as the anthropic models for human interaction.”

MixedComment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8 Max now ranked as the best overall model by agentic index”

“how convenient that they are solving their accounting problems with taking away your money instead of doing a refund”

CriticizesComment from 5 Aug 2026 in “OpenAI says my prepaid credits were consumed, refuses to show any record”

“neither ClosedAI nor Misanthropic will let you use their models without them watching and storing the exchanges indefinitely”

CriticizesComment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 is now live”

“if you are a business using OpenAI models, I would highly suggest you do not because they are most likely looking at your code and IP”

CriticizesComment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Apple Sues OpenAI for Stealing Trade Secrets to Build AI Hardware”

“With absolutely no prompting they will bootstrap off information schema and extended description properties every single time.”

RecommendsComment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Building Reliable Agentic AI Systems”

“openai reads your data. they store it for 30 days, but of course once it hits the disk you can keep as long as you like”

CriticizesComment from 17 Jun 2026 in “GLM-5.2 is the new leading open weights model on Artificial Analysis”

“We find OpenAI, Anthropic and Fireworks (which we use a lot) all have higher cache hit rates.”

RecommendsComment from 19 May 2026 in “Gemini 3.5: frontier intelligence with action”

“OpenAI API's auto token caching approach results in MASSIVE cost savings on agent stuff”

RecommendsComment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Opus 4.7 to 4.6 Inflation is ~45%”

“if one wants to enable the latest models in the OpenAI api you have to submit your details to their “identity provider””

CriticizesComment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control”

“I can put 10 $ on my API key, and when the key leaks, someone can use these 10 $ and that's it.”

RecommendsComment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Google API Keys Weren't Secrets. But Then Gemini Changed the Rules”

“I just registered at platform.OpenAI.com two days ago for MCP Apps registration and had to do the Persona process! Now I could cry.”

CriticizesComment from 21 Feb 2026 in “I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over”

“For me, it works quite well for low-priority things, without the hassle of using the batch API.”

RecommendsComment from 13 Feb 2026 in “GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark”

“the (at least OpenAI's) AI model is cocksure and wrong, which is infinitely more infuriating than being a bit clueless and wrong”

CriticizesComment from 26 Jan 2026 in “After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand”

“I promise you that I can show you how to reliably solve any of them using any of the latest OpenAI models.”

RecommendsComment from 30 Dec 2025 in “The Future of Software Development Is Software Developers”

“I use openai models every day for offensive work. haven't had a problem in a long time”

RecommendsComment from 18 Dec 2025 in “GPT-5.2-Codex”

“The flex tier was an underrated feature in GPT5, batch pricing with a regular API call.”

RecommendsComment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed”

“OpenAI has removed that option and their "Project budget" feature turned from being a hard limit into an email notification”

CriticizesComment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration”

“Using Anthropic or OpenAI's models are incredibly straightforward -- pay us per month, here's the button you press, great.”

RecommendsComment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Gemini 3”

“If I want to use OpenAI's models, I go to their website, look up the price and pay it.”

RecommendsComment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Gemini 3 Pro Model Card [pdf]”

“You can just stick a tenner in OpenAI though and it won't charge anymore than the credit you've put in”

RecommendsComment from 7 Nov 2025 in “You should write an agent”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.