specification: API Commons Plans
specificationVersion: '0.1'
provider: ZotGPT (UC Irvine)
providerId: zotgpt
generated: '2026-07-28'
method: searched
source:
  - https://zotgpt.uci.edu/services/gateway/
  - https://zotgpt.uci.edu/services/gateway/clients/
  - https://zotgpt.uci.edu/services/api/
  - https://zotgpt.uci.edu/services/chat/
created: '2026-07-28'
modified: '2026-07-28'
reconciled: false
tags:
  - Generative AI
  - Higher Education
  - Credits
  - Budget
description: >-
  ZotGPT is not sold. It is an internal campus utility, and its "pricing" is an
  entitlement model driven by affiliation plus a credit budget drawn against
  token usage. Every interactive product is free to the whole UCI community; the
  developer planes hand out starter credits and then tier up on justification
  rather than on payment. Undergraduates are the one group without a default
  developer entitlement — they need a sponsoring PI.
currency: USD
plans:
  - name: Chat / ClassChat / Creator / Prompt Library / Academy
    type: free
    audience: All UCI students, faculty, and staff
    price: 0
    description: >-
      "Free for all UCI community members." No credit card, no seat license, no
      per-seat vendor subscription. UCI OIT estimates the value to a student at
      roughly $100/month, against the ~$20/month thousands of students were
      already paying for commercial AI subscriptions.
    limits: Governed by campus acceptable-use and the P3 data protection standard.
  - name: Gateway — Free Tier
    type: free
    audience: >-
      Affiliation-based. Faculty, staff, and graduate students qualify directly;
      undergraduates require a sponsoring PI.
    price: 0
    credits: 50
    credits_note: '"$50 free credits for testing."'
    description: >-
      Entry tier on the ZotGPT Gateway. Self-service virtual key issuance after
      UCInetID sign-in, with per-key spend limits.
  - name: Gateway — Standard Tier
    type: budgeted
    audience: UCI faculty, staff, and researchers with a funding source
    price: chargeback
    description: >-
      "Higher usage budgets with KFS validation" — the campus Kuali Financial
      System account is validated, so consumption is charged back to a real
      departmental or grant fund rather than to a personal card.
  - name: Gateway — Advanced Research
    type: budgeted
    audience: Validated research use cases
    price: chargeback
    description: >-
      "High-limit access for validated use cases." Intended for research
      workloads that exceed standard budgets.
  - name: API (Deprecated) — Azure-managed
    type: free-with-credits
    status: deprecated
    audience: UCI faculty and staff
    price: 0
    credits: 200
    credits_note: '"$200 in initial API credits to get started."'
    description: >-
      First-generation developer API, access granted per-request through
      ServiceNow. New signups are frozen; keys are being disabled at the end of
      the migration window.
notes: >-
  No public per-token rate card is published. Credits are denominated in dollars
  and drawn against model usage, which means the effective price varies by which
  model and which cloud a caller routes to — a deliberate consequence of the
  multi-model design, and the lever the campus uses to steer demand toward
  cheaper or more sustainable models.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com