core
BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)
Pricing model where users plug in their own provider API keys, the tool pays no per-token cost.
Definition
BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) is the pricing model where the SaaS tool is just the orchestrator + UI, and the user supplies their own OpenAI / Anthropic / Perplexity API keys. The user pays each provider directly. Tools using BYOK can price the platform flat — no per-token markup — which is structurally cheaper.
Example
Profound charges $499/mo for ChatGPT-only probing because they pay OpenAI per request. VectorCite ships multi-engine Deep Probe at any tier because users bring their own keys; we pay nothing per probe.How to optimize
If you're an agency: prefer BYOK tools — your monthly bill becomes the underlying provider cost, not a 10x markup. VectorCite is BYOK-native at /app/byok.