Glossary

BYO LLM key

BYO LLM key is short for bring your own large language model key. A team signs up with an AI provider directly, gets an API key, and the product runs its AI features on that key, so the usage bill lands on the team's own provider account at the provider's own rates. Some products require one to offer AI at all. In Glitch Team Zone it's optional: every plan includes AI work in the price, and connecting a key removes every limit and puts the provider relationship in the team's own name.

The appeal is ownership. A brought key keeps the meter and the vendor relationship in the team's own hands: the bill is readable at the source, and switching providers is a key change, not a product change. The alternative at its worst is a black box, an AI add-on fee with no way to see the real cost underneath or leave without leaving the product.

In Glitch Team Zone, nobody needs to bring a key. Every plan includes a monthly amount of Glitch's work, extra passes through at exactly what the provider charges with no markup, under a limit an admin sets, and the free plan starts on one-time credits. Connecting your own key is the ownership option: the whole org runs on it and there's no limit from us at all.

A connected key is encrypted at rest, scoped to the org, and never appears in logs, error messages, or audit payloads. Either way, on Glitch's keys or yours, the daily digest and cost meter report what the AI is spending in plain numbers instead of leaving usage to guesswork.