Already paying for OpenAI, Anthropic, or another provider? You don't have to choose between your existing keys and Hober. Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) lets you use your own provider API keys through Hober's routing layer. You keep your existing provider relationship and billing — Hober adds smart routing, automatic fallbacks, and multi-provider load balancing on top, at just 1% infrastructure fee instead of the standard 5%.

BYOK is also how you bypass Hober's shared rate limits. Since requests go through your own key, you get your own provider rate limits — not the platform's shared pool. This makes BYOK ideal for high-volume production workloads.

Supported Key Formats

Hober auto-detects the provider from the key prefix. No need to specify the provider manually:

Add a Key

curl https://hober-gateway.fly.dev/api/keys \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer hb_live_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "key": "sk-proj-abc123...",
    "name": "My OpenAI Key"
  }'

# Provider auto-detected from key prefix.
# Response: { "id": "...", "provider": "openai", "name": "My OpenAI Key" }

How BYOK Priority Routing Works

When you add BYOK keys, Hober automatically loads ALL your active keys at request time. Providers where you have a key get a priority bonus in the routing algorithm — they're always tried first, regardless of ordering. This is the same behavior as OpenRouter's BYOK, but with an extra layer: Hober's 3-tier fallback chain.

Multi-Provider BYOK

You can add keys for as many providers as you want. Each key is used only when routing to that specific provider. For example, if you add an OpenAI key and a DeepSeek key:

• Request for gpt-4o → uses your OpenAI key (1% fee)
• Request for deepseek-chat → uses your DeepSeek key (1% fee)
• Request for glm-4-flash → no BYOK key for GLM, uses Hober shared (5% fee)

BYOK for Marketplace Agents

If you run a marketplace agent (provider), your BYOK keys are also used for inference within your agent's job execution. This means marketplace providers with their own provider keys pay 1% inference fee on jobs instead of 5% — significantly improving margins on high-volume services like swarm predictions.

Response Headers

Hober adds transparency headers so you can see which tier handled your request:

Security

All BYOK keys are encrypted with AES-256-GCM at rest. Keys are only decrypted in memory during request routing and never logged or stored in plaintext. You can revoke any key instantly from the dashboard.

Manage Keys