BYOK Explained: Why Personarium Runs on Your Own Key
BYOK stands for "bring your own key" — you bring your own API key instead of buying credit from Personarium. That sounds like extra work at first. In practice, it's the foundational decision almost everything else in the product follows from.
What BYOK actually means
Personarium doesn't store or run any language models itself. For text chat you connect with one click via OpenRouter (PKCE-OAuth in the browser, no copying keys around); for images and read-aloud, optionally with fal.ai. Either way, the request goes straight from your device to the provider — Personarium sits in between as the app, not as a middleman that reads along or takes a cut.
Why we chose not to host it ourselves
A central AI proxy running on our own provider key would have been more convenient for you — no setup, one bill. We deliberately chose against it: the moment a server sits between you and the model, it inevitably sees what you write. That would contradict Personarium's core promise that your chats never leave your machine. No server in the content chain isn't an exception for us — it's a guardrail that applies to every feature.
What you get for it — and what it costs
You pay model costs directly to the provider, usually a few cents per message, with no markup from us. How much exactly depends on the model you pick — cheap models cost a fraction of what large premium models do. The Personarium membership (€4.99 a month) is entirely separate: it covers the Hub, curation, and updates, not AI usage itself. We explain our cost calculator in a separate article.
The one line we won't cross
What we will never offer: a centrally purchased or shared key that multiple users run through. That would be exactly the kind of content-chain operation BYOK is meant to avoid — just hidden behind a friendlier name. If setup feels hard, we help with guides and a setup channel. Helping means guiding, not providing.
No centrally purchased key, no shared account — helping means guiding, not providing.