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

Forge

Open-source terminal AI pair programmer with BYOK access to 300+ models

Website Source code

Category:

Developer Infrastructure

Pricing:

Open Source

Open source:

Yes (Apache-2.0)

Self-hostable:

Yes

Local-first:

No

Platforms:

CLI, Self-hosted, Docker

AI providers (bring your own key):

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, Groq, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, Custom / OpenAI-compatible

API key storage:

Configured by environment variable

Key risk level:

LOW

Trust score:

86/100

Forge (forgecode) is an open-source, Apache-2.0 licensed AI pair programmer that runs entirely in the terminal/shell (written in Rust). It connects directly to your AI provider of choice using your own API keys — set up via the interactive `forge provider login` / `:login` flow, or via environment variables (OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, now deprecated but auto-migrated to file-based storage on first run). It supports 300+ models across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Vertex/Gemini, xAI Grok, DeepSeek, Groq, Amazon Bedrock, OpenRouter, Cerebras, and any OpenAI-compatible custom endpoint, with the ability to mix and match models mid-session. Users can also leverage existing ChatGPT Plus / Claude subscriptions instead of separate keys. An optional, supplementary 'ForgeCode Services' layer (enhanced codebase understanding, tool-call guardrails, semantic search) exists and requires no key, but model access itself is fully bring-your-own-key. The canonical repo is github.com/tailcallhq/forgecode (the antinomyhq/forgecode URL 301-redirects there; npm package @antinomyhq/forge), with 7421 stars, 1453 forks, actively maintained (pushed 2026-06-19).

How your API key is handled

Your API key is supplied via an environment variable or local config file. 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

Install the tool, set your provider API key as an environment variable (or in its config file), and pick a model.