What is BYOK (bring your own key)?
BYOK, bring your own key, is adding your own model provider API key so token usage bills straight to your provider account instead of the platform's balance.
BYOK answers a question that gets asked the moment an AI product starts metering tokens: can I just use my own account?
On WorkerKit, yes. Add an Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or xAI key and tokens for that provider bill straight to your provider account instead of drawing on the runtime wallet.
BYOK vs the wallet
| The wallet | BYOK | |
|---|---|---|
| Who bills you for tokens | WorkerKit, from a prepaid balance | Your model provider, directly |
| Token price | Provider list price, no markup | Provider list price, whatever you negotiated |
| Platform fee | 5.5% on loading, $1 minimum | None on the first 1M tokens a month, then 5% of list |
| Setup | None | One key per provider |
| Runs out how | A run is skipped before it starts | Your provider's own limits apply |
| Best when | You want it simple | You have committed spend or want one bill |
The fee, precisely
- The first 1M tokens each month carry no platform fee at all.
- Usage past that is 5% of list price, settled from the wallet.
- Removing a key returns that provider to wallet billing, with nothing to migrate.
Keys are added per provider, so a mixed setup is normal and expected: your own Anthropic key for the workers you run hardest, the wallet for everything else. That also means BYOK does not force an all-or-nothing decision, which is what makes it safe to try on one provider.
Where the crossover actually is
The instinct is that BYOK is "the cheaper option". Under 1M tokens a month it mostly is not, because both routes bill tokens at list price and neither charges a platform fee in that range.
| Monthly tokens | Wallet | BYOK |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1M | List price, plus 5.5% when you load | List price, no platform fee |
| Over 1M | List price, plus 5.5% when you load | List price, plus 5% of list past the first 1M |
Note what the two fees are charged on. The wallet's 5.5% is charged on money you load, once. BYOK's 5% is charged on usage past the first million, every month. Which is cheaper depends less on volume than on how steady your usage is: lumpy usage suits the wallet, sustained heavy usage suits a negotiated provider rate.
What BYOK buys at low volume is control, not savings.
Why teams actually want it
Three real reasons, in the order they come up:
- Existing commitments. Negotiated rates or committed spend with a provider are wasted if usage routes through someone else's account.
- One bill. Finance already reconciles a provider invoice. BYOK keeps model spend there instead of adding a second vendor line.
- Direct relationship. Rate limits, quota increases and abuse questions are between you and the provider, with nobody in between.
Enterprise accounts can bring their own provider keys or commit to capacity instead, which is the same argument at a larger size.
What BYOK does not change
This is where the misunderstanding usually sits. BYOK changes **who bills you for tokens** and nothing else:
- Runs still execute on WorkerKit's hosted runtime. There is still no machine of yours to keep alive.
- Plan limits still apply: workers, tool calls a day, schedule granularity, log history.
- The safety layer still applies, and was never tier-gated: app firewall, contact rules, redaction.
- Run receipts still record what each run consumed.
A worker like Engineering Pulse, reaching GitHub on a morning schedule, behaves identically either way. The only difference is which invoice its tokens land on.
The failure mode worth planning for
With the wallet, running out is a skipped run and a line on the receipt. With BYOK, running out is your provider's failure mode, not WorkerKit's: an exhausted quota, a rate limit, or a suspended key produces a failed run rather than a tidy skip.
That is not a reason to avoid BYOK, but it does move the monitoring responsibility to you. If your provider account has a hard spend cap, the fleet inherits it.
When not to use BYOK
- You are under 1M tokens a month and want the simplest setup. The wallet costs about the same and has nothing to configure.
- You want the yearly runtime credit to do the work. Pro yearly loads $50 and Team yearly loads $500 into the wallet, drawn before your own money. BYOK routes around that credit for the providers it covers.
- Nobody owns the provider account. A key tied to one person's personal provider login is a fragile dependency for an unattended fleet.
FAQ
Which providers can I bring a key for?
Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI, matching the models WorkerKit runs: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. Keys are added per provider, so you can use BYOK for one and the wallet for the rest.
Is BYOK cheaper than the wallet?
Not automatically. Under 1M tokens a month both bill at provider list price with no platform fee, so the difference is control rather than cost. Above 1M tokens BYOK charges 5% of list, settled from the wallet, which is worth comparing against the wallet's 5.5% load fee.
Does WorkerKit still take a cut of my tokens with BYOK?
Only past the first 1M tokens each month, at 5% of list price. Below that there is no platform fee at all, and tokens bill directly to your provider account.
What happens if I remove my key?
Removing a model provider key returns that provider to wallet billing immediately, with nothing to migrate. Workers keep running; only the billing route changes.
Does BYOK let me run workers on my own infrastructure?
No. BYOK changes who bills you for tokens, not where runs execute. WorkerKit hosts every run today, and running a worker on your own machine or infrastructure is coming later. Full pricing is on /pricing.