API reference

Bring your own key (BYOK)

Route your traffic through your own provider API keys. The provider bills you directly for tokens, and boldrouter charges only a thin platform fee - while you keep routing, failover, metering, and analytics.

How it works

Add a provider key in the dashboard under Provider keys. Keys are stored encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) and shown only as a 4-character hint afterward.
On every request, if your account has a key for the provider a route resolves to, the gateway calls that provider with your key instead of the platform key.
BYOK is per-provider. In an auto-router, some hops can use your key and others the platform key - failover still works across all of them.
Responses that used your key carry the header x-bold-byok: true.

Billing

Because the provider bills you directly for BYOK tokens, boldrouter doesn't resell them. Instead we charge a 5.5% platform fee on the provider's list price for the route, deducted from your prepaid balance - so a positive balance is still required. (Platform-key routes carry no per-token markup; there the fee is the one taken at credit top-up.) See Pricing & billing for the full picture.

Supported providers

You can bring a key for any of these providers:

OpenAI - openai
Anthropic - anthropic
Google - google
Mistral - mistral
xAI - xai
DeepSeek - deepseek
Perplexity - perplexity
Z.ai - zai
MiniMax - minimax
NVIDIA - nvidia
Qwen - qwen
Xiaomi - xiaomi
StreamLake - streamlake
W&B - wandb
Cohere - cohere
Inception - inceptionlabs
Moonshot - moonshot
Black Forest Labs - bfl
H Company - hcompany
Reka - reka
Google Vertex AI - google-vertex
Arcee - arcee
Writer - writer
ElevenLabs - elevenlabs
DeepL - deepl
LightOn - lighton

Verifying it's in use

After adding a key, make a request to a model on that provider and check the response headers:

bash

curl -i https://boldrouter.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOLD_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "model": "openai/gpt-5.5", "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"Hi"}] }'

# Response headers:
#   x-bold-provider: openai
#   x-bold-byok: true

If a stored key can't be decrypted (for example after rotating BYOK_ENCRYPTION_KEY), the gateway fails safe and falls back to the platform key rather than erroring. Re-enter the key to restore BYOK routing.

Manage your keys anytime from the Provider keys page - add, replace, or remove a provider key in one click.