BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)
A model where the customer supplies their own AI provider API key, so usage runs on the customer's account rather than the vendor's.
BYOK, short for bring your own key, is an arrangement in which a customer provides their own API key for an underlying service, and the product makes calls using that key instead of routing through the vendor's account. In the AI context, this usually means supplying a key from a model provider such as Anthropic, OpenAI, or AWS Bedrock. The customer is then billed directly by the model provider for token usage, and the product charges separately for its software rather than reselling inference.
BYOK has both cost and governance implications. It gives the customer direct visibility and control over model spend, lets them apply their own provider-side rate limits and data agreements, and keeps model usage under their own contractual and compliance terms. For vendors, it removes the need to mark up inference and shifts variable model costs off their books. Handling the key securely, scoping its permissions, and never logging it are standard requirements of a BYOK design.
See this in practice: how Kirality works for your industry, or read more on the blog.