OpenAI

To get your OpenAI API key, you need to:

• Go to https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys
• Create an account or log in with your existing one
• Add a payment method to your account
• Go to https://platform.openai.com/api-keys to get a key.
• You will need to set the following environment variable to your key, or you can set it to user_provided for users to provide their own.

OPENAI_API_KEY=user_provided

• You can determine which models you would like to have available with OPENAI_MODELS
  • When OPENAI_API_KEY is set to user_provided → only the models put in this list will be available
    • ⚠️New models won't automatically show up; you'll need to add them to this list first
  • When OPENAI_API_KEY is set to the actual API key value → as long as OPENAI_MODELS is left commented-out, it will do an API call to find out what models are available, which should include any new ones

OPENAI_MODELS=gpt-5,gpt-5-codex,gpt-5-mini,gpt-5-nano,o3-pro,o3,o4-mini,gpt-4.1,gpt-4.1-mini,gpt-4.1-nano,o3-mini,o1-pro,o1,gpt-4o,gpt-4o-mini

Notes:

• Internal OpenAI defaults include the current frontier catalog, including gpt-5.5, gpt-5.5-pro, chat-latest, gpt-5.4, gpt-5.4-pro, gpt-5.4-mini, gpt-5.4-nano, gpt-5.3-codex, and gpt-5.2. Deprecated legacy defaults are no longer included unless you add them explicitly with OPENAI_MODELS.
• Selecting a vision model for messages with attachments is not necessary as it will be switched behind the scenes for you. If you didn't outright select a vision model, it will only be used for the vision request and you should still see the non-vision model you had selected after the request is successful
• OpenAI Vision models allow for messages without attachments
• OpenAI endpoint supports all Shared Endpoint Settings via the librechat.yaml configuration file, including streamRate, headers, titleModel, titleMethod, titlePrompt, titlePromptTemplate, and titleEndpoint