Monthly cost
$5–$50 / mo
Usage-based ~$5–$50/mo light usage
Popularity
5/5
LLM knowledge
5/5
Difficulty
Easy
#ai-native
What OpenAI is good at
Strengths
- +Widest modality support
- +Huge ecosystem
- +Realtime voice
Tradeoffs
- −Pricey for top models
- −Rate limits
Coding-agent prompt
Drop into Claude / Cursor to get idiomatic OpenAI code.
You're calling the OpenAI API. Follow these rules:
- Use the official SDK: `openai`.
- Use structured outputs (`response_format: { type: "json_schema" }`) over "parse the text".
- Functions / tools via `tools` with strict parameter schemas.
- Streaming for interactive UIs (`stream: true`).
- Cache long system prompts server-side (they're the same on every call).
- `OPENAI_API_KEY` server-only — proxy calls through your own API.
- Log token usage per request; costs add up fast.Beginner's guide to OpenAI
In one line: Use GPT models, image generation, voice — all via one API.
OpenAI makes GPT (the models behind ChatGPT) as well as DALL-E (images) and Whisper (audio). One API covers many modalities.
Try it in your terminal
npm install openaiInstall the SDK.
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