What do you think about a "bring your own keys" pricing model?

[summersunshine1217]

For a B2C business, why not have a low-tier option that lets users bring their own API keys?

You can charge a fair subscription price without worrying about power users, and API usage is transparent to everyone.

Of course, this wouldn't work if you need to use features tied to your account (e.g., fine-tuned models, vector store, etc.). But if most of your added value is in the prompts and app layer, then it seems like a reasonable idea.

Am I missing something?

 

[cachep0013]

@summersunshine1217 Value proposition still rather vague. And ime those with API keys tend to be affiliated with a business in some regard.

So overall it sounds like You’d be catering to a niche set of power users. Im probably not getting the whole idea though.

 

[summersunshine1217]

@cachep0013 I subscribe to OpenAI, so if a wrapper were to use OpenAI under the hood, I could enter my own API key instead of effectively paying double for OpenAI.

It's like how a lot of Hugging Face examples have you enter your own key.

 

[jayne]

@summersunshine1217 Most large businesses seem to dislike this model as they need mostly defined costs to allocate against a budget. Small businesses probably don’t have technical support knowledge or skill to implement. Mid-market would have skills and technical ability but again goes against budget allocation.

Obviously a service like AWS is an outlier here. For most “platforms” it’s easier to pay the subscription fee and be set up from the get go.

 

[obadiahhaidabo]

@summersunshine1217 Exposing implementation details to users is almost never ideal. What happens when you want to change providers behind the scenes? Or improve the product with fine tuning? Or any number of other changes? It can work if you’re just making a tool but if you’re trying to make a company you don’t want to be confined like that

 

[summersunshine1217]

@obadiahhaidabo Yes, this pricing model is probably more for a tool or side project, not really meant to make a legitimate company.

 

[otgermous]

@summersunshine1217 Not every business is a chatgpt wrapper.

 

[waterwalker4]

@summersunshine1217 Ok, so my product may end up using keys, we aren't sure yet, but I'm building something open-source right now, so the reason why I'm doing that is that I don't care about pricing, it's free.

Having said that, "charge a fair subscription price" doesn't sound like a pricing strategy to me. Who says your target customers value that? Who says you are competing in the marketplace by price only? My recommendation is to figure out your financial model first, who your customers are, and then enable those people to use your product at a cost that is supported by your business strategy.

 

[summersunshine1217]

@waterwalker4 This is a theoretical marketplace of wrapper products since the only way this pricing model would work is if your product is only using the stateless features of OpenAI.

In this regard, you may well be competing on price and convenience.

 

[jayne]

@summersunshine1217 So AppSumo model + private OpenAI keys to those products?

You’re the marketplace for AI tools with discounts, you take a cut of revenue from each sale and those tools allow for private keys to be used in the softwares.

 

[waterwalker4]

@summersunshine1217 Would you share what is the product you are planning to build? You are building a "marketplace" ie a place like the apple store for developers/teams to distribute their products to customers?

 

[kevo]

@summersunshine1217 Is this about keys to access LLM apis?

Seems like added friction - they'd need to subscribe to two unaffiliated services.

It also may mean they're basically sending you their API key which is a bit of a no-no for security if it's not handled correctly. How would you send the packet created by your app alongside the api key, while keeping it encrypted such that your company is not able to snoop and see it?

 

[yungjah]

@kevo Most apps (including OpenAI and Claude) allow users to create multiple API keys, therefore a service can be "segregated" to its own API key and you can even, since a recent upgrade on OpenAI's side, have visilbility of spend at the key level.

 

[summersunshine1217]

@kevo Their would be a budget tier for bringing your LLM API key, or they can choose the next tier with everything included.

I'm sure there's a good way to secure their keys and info.

 

[kevo]

@summersunshine1217 Yeah there probably is a way - you should have better luck working on it consistently than I had thinking about it for 2 mins lol

 

[velvetyrabbit]

@summersunshine1217 For B2C I don't really see it. Wouldn't like a pay as you go plan make more sense? Let them prepay a bundle and effectively sell them tokens at a markup.

B2B I can see it work in some instances.

 

[jg76]

@summersunshine1217 This would be much smoother if you just merged with/acquired OpenAI and did a deep integration with your product

 

[hopeofgly]

@jg76 can you elaborate on what you mean?

 

[jg76]

@hopeofgly Just acquire OpenAI. Once OP controls the company, OP can force OpenAI to roll out a feature that integrates his product directly without requiring users to manually copy their keys over.

 

[julia736]

@summersunshine1217 Just track usage and if someone is a power user charge more?