Using paid AI without a credit card or an ID check

There are plenty of reasons not to put a card into an AI vendor's checkout. Your bank may block foreign subscriptions. You may not have a card at all. Or you may simply not want a billing name and address attached to the account that holds your chats. None of those is unusual, and none of them should stop you using the tools.

What does matter is how you get around the card. Some routes are clean and leave you with a normal plan on your own account. Others look cheaper and end with a banned login and a lost history. This guide sorts one from the other.

Route 1: vendors that take Bitcoin themselves

The simplest answer is a vendor that accepts crypto at its own checkout. A few AI services do:

• Kagi, the paid search engine with an AI assistant, takes Bitcoin and Lightning through OpenNode with no KYC. The payment becomes prepaid credit. See Kagi.
• Venice, a private AI chat, takes Bitcoin through BTCPay on its yearly plans and says its crypto checkout needs no KYC or phone number. See Venice.
• Proton Lumo can be paid in on-chain Bitcoin from Proton's account settings, though not at sign-up, and Bitcoin payments don't renew on their own. See Proton Lumo.
• OpenRouter sells API credits for many models and takes USDC, but not Bitcoin. See OpenRouter.

None of the big three, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, takes crypto. Nor do xAI or Perplexity. For those you need one of the next routes.

Route 2: official gift links

Some vendors sell their plans as gifts. A gift is bought by someone else, and the recipient redeems it on their own account. No card is linked to you, and nothing renews.

• Claude gifts are redeemed at claude.ai/gift/redeem on the web, for Pro or Max. You need a free Claude account and nothing else. See Claude Pro or Max in Bitcoin.
• X Premium and Premium+ can be gifted for a year to any @handle that doesn't already have Premium. Premium+ includes SuperGrok.

We buy these gifts and sell them for Bitcoin. You give us nothing but, for X, your public handle.

Route 3: activation on your own account

ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity don't have gifts for every plan and country. For those, we prepare the plan for the country your account is in, and you switch it on yourself with step-by-step instructions on your order page. It ends up as a normal subscription on your own login, with your history where you left it. We never sign in as you and never ask for your password. How it works shows the whole flow, from checkout to the activation steps.

A few plans, such as Perplexity Max yearly and SuperGrok Heavy yearly, are sold only at the vendor's own checkout. For those, you open the checkout on your own account, paste its payment link into your order page, and we pay it at the vendor's price.

Route 4: prepaid vendor gift cards

Some vendors sell prepaid or digital gift cards that turn into account credit. Proton sells $20, $50 and $100 digital gift cards that pay for any of its plans, including Lumo Plus. Replit sells gift cards that become credit for its paid plans, and we sell those for Bitcoin. Either way, the credit sits on your own account and no card of yours is involved.

What to avoid

Shared accounts. Offers of "ChatGPT Plus for $5" are almost always a seat on someone else's login. The owner, and everyone else on it, can read your chats. It breaks the vendor's terms, and it ends the day the account is flagged.

"Lifetime" or "pre-activated" accounts. No major AI vendor sells lifetime plans. These are accounts made with stolen or disposable cards, and they tend to vanish with a chargeback.

Anyone who wants your password. A legitimate seller never needs to sign in as you. If a service asks for your login, it's either using your account for something else or about to.

Team seats you don't control. A workspace admin can see, export and delete what you do in it.

Crypto debit cards don't remove KYC

Crypto cards from exchanges convert your coins at the moment you pay. To the AI vendor it's an ordinary card, so it gets the same name, billing address and fraud checks. The card issuer runs full identity checks before it gives you the card, and it sees every merchant you pay. If your goal is fewer people holding your details, a crypto card adds one.

The KYC that does matter: where your bitcoin came from

Paying us in bitcoin takes your name away from the AI vendor and from us. It doesn't erase your bitcoin's history. If you bought the coins on a regulated exchange, that exchange knows who you are and records where each withdrawal went. Bitcoin transactions are public, so anyone who ties an address to you can follow it.

A few habits help:

1. Pay from your own wallet, not straight from an exchange account.
2. Don't reuse addresses, and keep a separate wallet for purchases.
3. Consider where you source coins. Earning bitcoin, or buying it person to person on peer-to-peer markets, leaves no exchange record. Check what's legal where you live.
4. Pay on-chain from that wallet. The Bitcoin guide shows how, wallet by wallet, and how to pay covers the other coins.
5. Use Monero for the payment if you want the amount and both sides hidden on-chain. We compare the two in Monero or Bitcoin for a private purchase.

What we ask for, and keep

No name, no account and no ID. An email is optional; if you leave one, it's stored encrypted and erased 14 days after delivery. Codes and gift links are wiped a week after the first time you reveal them. A finished order is erased after 30 days, an unpaid one after 48 hours. No IP addresses are logged. Analytics load only with your consent, never on order pages, and every page works in Tor Browser without JavaScript. The privacy page has the full list.

Claude

Anthropic

starts at $56.10 fees included

Pro $20 · Max 5x $100 · Max 20x $200per month · 1, 3, 6, 12 months

Longer plans save up to 30%

Your Claude account, wherever you are

Pick a plan for Claude

ChatGPT

OpenAI

starts at $56.10 fees included

Plus $20 · Pro $100 / $200 / $500per month · 1, 3, 6, 12 months

Longer plans save up to 30%

Accounts based in the US, UK, Canada, Australia or EU

Pick a plan for ChatGPT

X Premium

X · Grok included

starts at $64.68 fees included

Premium $84 · Premium+ $395per year

Longer plans save up to 30%

An X account with no Premium yet, anywhere

Pick a plan for X Premium

Payment privacy is not chat privacy

Whichever route you take, the AI vendor still sees your account email, the IP address you connect from, and everything you type or upload. Turn off model training in the app's data settings if you don't want your chats used for it, and keep anything truly sensitive out of cloud AI altogether.

Questions about AI without a card

Can I use ChatGPT Plus without a credit card?

Yes. Pay us in Bitcoin or another coin, and Plus is activated on your own ChatGPT account with steps on your order page. See buying ChatGPT Plus with Bitcoin.

Do AI vendors require ID to subscribe?

Not for personal plans. They need a payment method, and the payment method is where identity comes in. Remove the card and the vendor has only your account and email.

Are shared ChatGPT or Claude accounts legal?

They break the vendors' terms of service, and the vendors close them. Beyond that, the person who owns the login can read everything you do.

Is buying through a reseller allowed?

Gifts are made to be bought by one person for another, and activation on your own account is a normal subscription. What vendors forbid is account sharing and reselling access to one account, which we don't do.

Sources

• Anthropic Help Center: How to redeem a Claude gift subscription
• X Help Center: X Premium gifting
• Kagi: payment methods
• Venice: paying for AI with crypto
• Proton: pay with Bitcoin
• Bitcoin.org: protect your privacy