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BYOK
Part of the Unbiased glossary: the vocabulary of LLM pricing and infrastructure, defined with receipts instead of adjectives.
Bring Your Own Key means using a gateway's interface while authenticating with your own provider API keys, so providers bill you directly and the gateway never holds your balance. OpenRouter's BYOK tier is free for the first million requests each month, then charges 5% of what usage would have cost.
Why it matters
BYOK separates two things gateways usually bundle: the integration convenience and the billing relationship. Teams with negotiated provider rates, compliance requirements on payment flows, or existing credits keep their own billing while gaining the multi-model surface.
The fee math, concretely
At one million monthly requests, OpenRouter BYOK is free where its credit path would fee your top-ups 5.5%. Past the threshold the 5% usage fee makes the paths nearly equivalent, and a flat-fee control plane ($49/month) undercuts both above roughly $900/month of spend. Run your own numbers in the fee calculator.
Common questions
Does BYOK expose my API keys?
The gateway necessarily handles your key to forward requests; whether it stores keys, and how, is a per-vendor security question worth asking directly. Self-hosted gateways keep keys entirely in your infrastructure.
Does BYOK change rate limits?
You keep your own provider rate limits and tier, which is often the point: negotiated enterprise limits survive the gateway.
Is BYOK cheaper than credits?
Under the free monthly threshold, clearly. Above it, roughly a wash against credit fees, and both lose to flat-fee options at higher spend.