PanelsAI: AI Without a Monthly Subscription | Pay As You Go
Stop Paying $20/Month for AI You Use Three Times a Week
PanelsAI gives you GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini on a pay-as-you-go wallet. Your first $1 gets you 2 million credits. No subscription. No monthly charge. Credits never expire.
No credit card saved. No recurring charges. Cancel nothing — there’s nothing to cancel.
Access GPT-4, Claude 3.5 & Gemini
No subscription required
Credits never expire
Start from $1
▼ Switch model
The Subscription Math Problem
You’re paying for AI whether you use it or not.
You signed up for ChatGPT Plus at $20/month because you needed it for a project. The project ended. You kept the subscription because “I’ll use it more next month.”
That was four months ago. You’ve spent $80. You used it six times.
Here’s what the AI subscription model is designed to do: charge you a flat fee that feels small, whether you use it heavily or barely at all. For OpenAI and Anthropic, that’s pure upside — they get $20/month regardless of your usage. For you, it’s a recurring line item that erodes your freelance margins one month at a time.
And if you want access to Claude and GPT-4 and Gemini? That’s $60/month — $720/year — for the privilege of choosing your model.
There’s a different model. One where you only pay when you actually use it, your credits roll over forever, and you access every major AI from the same interface.
Already sold? Start with $1 → — or keep reading.
How PanelsAI Works
Three steps. No subscription required.
Add credits to your wallet
Create a free account and add a minimum of $1 to your credit wallet. That $1 gives you 2 million PanelsAI credits — enough to run roughly 300 full AI conversations. Credits never expire. There’s no recurring billing. You top up only when you need to.
Choose your AI model
From the same chat interface, select any model: GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus, Gemini Pro, Mistral, LLaMA, and more. Switch mid-conversation if you want a second opinion. No separate logins. No API keys. No developer configuration.
Use what you use, pay for what you use
Each conversation draws from your credit balance based on the model’s actual token cost. Light month? Your credits sit there, waiting. Heavy month? Top up with another $1, $5, or $20 — whatever you need. Your balance never resets to zero at the end of the month.
Setup takes about 90 seconds.
Side-by-Side Comparison
How PanelsAI compares to the subscriptions you’re already paying for
| Feature | Best Value PanelsAI |
ChatGPT Plus (OpenAI) | Claude Pro (Anthropic) | Poe (Quora) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay-as-you-go credits | $20/month flat subscription | $20/month flat subscription | $19.99/month or annual plan |
| Monthly commitment | None — buy credits when you need them | Yes — billed every 30 days | Yes — billed every 30 days | Yes — billed every 30 days |
| Models available | GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus, Gemini Pro, Mistral, LLaMA, and more | GPT-4, GPT-4o, DALL-E 3 (OpenAI only) | Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus, Haiku (Anthropic only) | GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral (limited monthly messages per model) |
| Cost if you use it lightly (5–10 sessions/week) | ~$2–4/month | $20/month regardless | $20/month regardless | $19.99/month regardless |
| Cost if you use it heavily (50+ sessions/week) | ~$8–15/month | $20/month | $20/month | $19.99/month |
| Credits / usage rollover | Yes — credits never expire | No — monthly limit resets | No — monthly limit resets | No — message credits reset monthly |
| Minimum buy-in | $1 | $20/month | $20/month | $19.99/month |
| Free tier available | No (minimum $1 purchase) | Yes (GPT-3.5 only, rate-limited) | Yes (limited usage) | Yes (very limited daily messages) |
What People Are Saying
From people who’ve already left their subscriptions behind
“I was paying $40/month for ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro and honestly using each one maybe twice a week. I switched to PanelsAI and my last month was $3.80. Same models, same quality, no subscription guilt.”
“Finally, a way to use the best AI models without committing to another $20/month I’ll forget about. The credit wallet model just makes sense for the way I actually use AI.”
credits for $1 — enough for roughly 300 full AI conversations, 750,000 words of output, or 30+ blog drafts.
Credits never reset. Ever.
The subscription model is a bet that you’ll pay whether you use it or not. We’re not making that bet.
Start with $1. Use GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini from a single dashboard. Top up when you need to. Stop when you don’t.
No subscription. No monthly charge. Credits never expire.
Frequently asked questions
PanelsAI doesn’t offer a free trial in the traditional sense, but the minimum buy-in is $1 — which gives you 2 million credits. That’s enough for 300+ conversations across any model. If you decide PanelsAI isn’t for you, the maximum you’ve risked is a dollar. Credits never expire, so if you come back in six months, your balance is still there.
For users ready to make the switch: the pay-per-use AI guide covers how credit-based pricing works across all the top models. If you’re comparing the credit model directly against subscriptions, AI credits vs subscription pricing breaks down the math. The most common starting point is replacing ChatGPT Plus — see the full roundup of ChatGPT Plus alternatives or follow the step-by-step guide to cancel ChatGPT Plus.