BYOAIK — Bring Your Own AI Key: a directory of AI tools that run on your own API key.

ChainForge

Visual prompt-engineering environment for comparing prompts across models, with keys you enter or load locally.

Website Source code

Category:
Prompt Engineering Tools
Pricing:
Open Source
Open source:
Yes (MIT)
Self-hostable:
Yes
Local-first:
No
Platforms:
Web, Self-hosted, Docker
AI providers (bring your own key):
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Hugging Face, Custom / OpenAI-compatible
API key storage:
User controls deployment
Key risk level:
LOW
Trust score:
79/100

ChainForge is a visual programming environment, from an academic HCI project, for battle-testing and comparing prompts side by side across models. You enter your OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Bedrock credentials in a settings panel, or when running locally the app loads them from your environment, so nothing passes through ChainForge's servers in the self-hosted path. Runs as a local web app. MIT licensed, 3,025 stars, last commit about two months before review.

Why this trust score (79/100)

Trust measures how the tool treats your API key and how much of that has been verified. It contains no popularity signal.

  • Key Safety 21/25 — The key lives in a deployment you run yourself.
  • Request Routing 17/20 — Requests go straight from you to the AI provider.
  • Transparency 20/20 — Source is public under MIT, so anyone can check how the key is handled.
  • Privacy 10/15 — Can be self-hosted, so the data path stays inside infrastructure you control.
  • Maintenance 10/10 — Actively developed — commits within the last three months.
  • Verification Confidence 1/10 — Compiled from public documentation by an AI-assisted pass, not independently confirmed.

What was checked

Verification tier: RESEARCH_ASSISTED — derived from the evidence below, not set by hand.

  • [STRONG · SOURCE_SCAN] Supports a local model backend, so it can run with no cloud provider key at all. source
  • [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Ships a container definition, so it can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure. source
  • [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Most recent commit 2026-06-10 — about 2 month(s) ago. source

How your API key is handled

You self-host the app, so your API key lives in your own deployment. Requests are sent directly to the AI provider. Because it can be self-hosted, your key never has to touch a third-party backend.

Setup

Deploy it (Docker/compose), add your provider API key in the admin or environment config, then select models.