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 up to a $25,000 monthly allowance measured at list-price inference cost, then charges a 5% fee on usage above it.
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
The BYOK allowance is measured in list-price inference dollars, not request count, so request volume alone does not determine when the 5% fee starts. Below the allowance BYOK costs nothing beyond list price; a flat-fee control plane ($49/month) beats the 5% overage only past roughly $25,980 of monthly list-price inference. Run your own numbers in the fee calculator.
BYOK on three common gateways
The phrase covers three different setups. On a hosted aggregator, your key rides through the vendor's service and the vendor takes a fee above an allowance. On a hosted control plane, the vendor stores your keys and charges for logs and governance, not tokens. On a self-hosted proxy, your keys never leave your own servers.
| Gateway | Where your key lives | What the gateway charges |
|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter | OpenRouter's hosted service | $0 to $25,000/mo list-price inference, then 5% |
| Portkey | Portkey key management | $49/mo for 100K logs, then $9 per 100K |
| LiteLLM | Your own servers | $0 (MIT core), plus hosting |
OpenRouter: the $25,000 monthly allowance applies to pay-as-you-go and is measured at list-price inference cost; Enterprise allowances are custom. The 5% is charged on what the same model and provider would cost on OpenRouter and is deducted from your OpenRouter credits, so a BYOK account still keeps a credit balance. Portkey: Production plan, overage up to 3M requests; a free Developer tier records 10K logs a month. LiteLLM: code under enterprise/ is licensed separately. Sources: OpenRouter FAQ, OpenRouter pricing, Portkey pricing, LiteLLM licence. Verified October 24, 2026.
What the fee looks like at real spend
OpenRouter's BYOK fee is 5% of everything above $25,000, so it is zero until your monthly list-price inference passes $25,000 and grows in a straight line after that. Portkey's base charge does not move with spend; it moves with how many requests you log.
| Inference / month | OpenRouter BYOK fee | Portkey base |
|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | $0 | $49 |
| $25,000 | $0 | $49 |
| $40,000 | $750 | $49 |
| $100,000 | $3,750 | $49 |
Inference is monthly spend at list price. OpenRouter fee = 5% × (monthly list-price inference − $25,000), floored at $0. The Portkey column is the Production plan base, excludes log overage ($9 per extra 100K requests) and is the same at every spend level. Neither column includes the inference itself, which your providers bill you directly under BYOK.
When BYOK is the wrong tool
BYOK keeps your provider contracts, rate limits and credits, which is why teams with negotiated rates choose it. It does not lower the token price: you pay each provider's rate, and choosing a cheaper model for each request is still your job. If the goal is a lower bill rather than a billing relationship, compare cost per task across models first; the price index lists every rate with its source.
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?
On OpenRouter, yes. Credit purchases carry a 5.5% fee ($0.80 minimum) on the whole amount, while BYOK adds nothing on the first $25,000 of monthly list-price inference and 5% only on the excess. A flat-fee gateway such as Portkey's $49/month Production plan costs less than either once those fees pass $49 a month, before log overage.
Can I use Pareto through a gateway I already run?
Yes. Pareto is an OpenAI-compatible model you call with your Unbiased API key, so a self-hosted LiteLLM proxy takes it as one more entry in config.yaml (setup), and OpenRouter lists it as unbiased/pareto-26.10 (guide). Direct from Unbiased it costs $0.80 per million input tokens and $3.20 per million output tokens.
Compare any two models
List rates and dated competitor measurements: prices and measured bills. Preliminary Pareto 26.10 benchmark costs per task from October 1, 2026 are on the model card. Verbosity: Edition 2.
Try it on one part of your codebase
Set Pareto up in the coding agent you already use and give it a week of real work. Pareto starts at $10 a month.
Read https://unbiased.ai/glossary/byok/ and tell me what matters for my setup. If Pareto fits, read https://unbiased.ai/works-with/agent.md, find the coding agent I use on this machine, and set it up to use Pareto. Ask before changing any file, and never ask me to paste my API key into chat.
It asks before changing files and never needs your key in chat. Read the agent runbook
