BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)

BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) is one of VizChat's core differentiators. You can plug your own third-party LLM API key into Settings, and VizChat will call models as your account — meaning BYOK usage does not consume VizChat platform credits, and you retain full control over cost, model version, and data flow.

Why BYOK

• No platform credits consumed: BYOK usage is billed to your provider account; VizChat adds zero markup;
• Access cutting-edge models: freshly released models (e.g., a brand-new reasoning model) may not yet be on the platform's hosted roster, but your own key works immediately;
• Compliance / data boundary: enterprise customers who require conversation data to flow only to their signed providers are natively supported;
• Cost control: enterprise discounts, monthly quotas, and prompt caching you negotiated apply directly.

Plan support

Starter is designed specifically for BYOK users — even though its monthly credits match Free, unlocking BYOK lets you run unlimited calls against your own key.

Supported providers (8)

VizChat currently supports these 8 mainstream providers:

Provider IDs match the OpenRouter prefix convention for easy multi-provider switching.

Setup steps

1. Go to Settings → Custom Model;
2. Find the provider you want, click "Add key";
3. Paste your API key — the platform encrypts it immediately, and the plaintext key never leaves the server;
4. After saving, the key shows in masked form (e.g., sk-****...abcd); you can update or delete at any time;
5. In the conversation's model selector, pick a model from that provider — it auto-uses your key.

Security & encryption

• All keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM;
• The key is decrypted server-side only when it's actually used — to send a request through your provider, or to compute the masked preview shown in Settings — and only for that instant;
• The list endpoint (/api/user/api-keys) returns masked values only — plaintext is never exposed;
• Deletion is a hard delete and takes effect immediately.

Billing transparency

When you use BYOK to call a model:

• VizChat side: zero platform credits deducted;
• Provider side: billed per your provider's rates (OpenAI token prices, Anthropic prompt cache discounts, etc. all apply);
• Mixed usage: within one account, you can mix BYOK models and platform-hosted models freely; each call is billed independently.

Next step

• Plans and credits
• Supported models