Originally published on boostrail.com on August 5, 2026.
Teams adopting a multi-model API usually hit the same procurement question: "We already have contracts and negotiated prices with our model providers — why would we re-buy inference through a middleman?"
Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) is the answer to exactly that. You keep your provider accounts; one API in front of them keeps the integration simple.
How it works
With BYOK on BoostRail, an organization stores its own provider API keys with the platform. When a request targets a model covered by one of those keys, BoostRail serves it with your key against the lab's official endpoint. That means:
- Inference charges land on your own provider account, at your contract prices — not on platform credit.
- Request data stays within your existing provider agreements, which matters where procurement or compliance requires a direct provider relationship.
- Your application never touches the stored keys — it keeps using one BoostRail API key, and the provider keys stay on the platform side.
What BoostRail still handles: the single OpenAI-compatible endpoint, one key for your application, the unified catalog, and platform fallback. If your own key fails, runs out of provider credit or is rate-limited, the request can continue on platform routes of the same model instead of failing; that needs a balance. Where data boundaries are strict, platform routes can be switched off per lab, and requests then fail rather than fall back.
What it costs
The free plan includes 1,000,000 BYOK requests per month. Paid plans raise the monthly quota and the number of labs you can connect, for a flat monthly fee. Inference itself is billed by your provider, so BYOK is counted in requests rather than as a percentage of what the usage would cost. When the monthly quota runs out, requests switch to platform routes at the published platform prices until the quota resets on the 1st of the month (UTC); models that run only on your own key pause until then.
Zero lock-in, by construction
Lock-in is the standard objection to gateways, and BYOK inverts it: the provider keys are yours, and your application talks to an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Leaving is pointing base_url back at a provider's official endpoint. There is no proprietary SDK and no custom protocol.
When BYOK covers a model — and when it doesn't
BYOK needs two things: the lab is on the supported list for your plan, and the model can be served from that lab's official endpoint. Models from labs without a public official API run on platform routes only. The current lab list and per-plan quotas are on the BYOK page.
Typical setups
- Contract-price teams: inference on negotiated provider prices, BoostRail for the single API and usage records, platform fallback for spillover.
- Compliance-bound teams: requests to sensitive models pinned to their own provider agreement with platform routes switched off for that lab, everything else on platform routes.
- Cost-split teams: frontier models via their own keys (where contracts are), long-tail models on platform credit — one BoostRail bill alongside unchanged provider bills.
BYOK is set up in the console at app.boostrail.com; plans and the supported lab list are on the BYOK page.
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