I've used the API extensively over the last few weeks, and I have yet to go above $1. It's still technically more than the free ChatGPT web interface, but doesn't suffer from load balancing constraints.
My experience has been that using it this way is fairly inexpensive. You can track your expenses in real time and put spending limits on OpenAI's dashboard, so you don't get a bad surprise at the end of the month.
My experience has been that using it this way is fairly inexpensive. You can track your expenses in real time and put spending limits on OpenAI's dashboard, so you don't get a bad surprise at the end of the month.