Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)
BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) lets you plug your own provider API keys into Magister. When a BYOK key is set, Magister routes requests to the provider directly using your key instead of ours, and you pay the provider instead of drawing against your Magister credits.
Supported providers
- Anthropic — Claude models
- OpenAI — GPT models
- Google (Gemini) — Gemini models
All three providers contractually prohibit training on API data, which is why Magister only supports these providers for BYOK.
How to add a key — Settings → Team Settings → API Keys. Paste the key and save. Keys must be at least 10 characters.
Where your key is stored — encrypted server-side in the gateway. The full key is never shown back to you after you save it; the UI displays the last 4 characters so you can recognize it (e.g. ••••a1b2).
Removing a key — click Remove next to any saved key. The key is deleted from storage and Magister goes back to using its own infrastructure (and your credits).
BYOK and model availability — your plan still determines which models show up in the picker. What BYOK changes is the billing side: when you use a model and a BYOK key is set for its provider, Magister routes the request directly to the provider with your key, and the request doesn't draw against your Magister credits.
BYOK and credits — requests that use a BYOK key show as $0 in your Magister usage breakdown. Your actual spend is on the provider's bill, not Magister's.
Combining BYOK and credits — if you have a BYOK key for one provider but not another, requests are routed accordingly: BYOK-provider requests use your key, other requests use Magister credits.