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

gptel

Simple, extensible LLM client for Emacs that works in any buffer

Website Source code

Category:

Coding Assistants

Pricing:

Open Source

Open source:

Yes (GPL-3.0)

Self-hostable:

Yes

Local-first:

Yes

Platforms:

Library/SDK, Self-hosted, Docker

AI providers (bring your own key):

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral, Perplexity, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, Ollama, Together AI, Custom / OpenAI-compatible

API key storage:

User controls deployment

Key risk level:

LOW

Trust score:

86/100

gptel is an open-source LLM client for Emacs that lets you chat with and use models from any buffer, with rewrite/refactor commands, dedicated chat buffers, multimodal context (files/images), tool-use, and MCP support. It is bring-your-own-key: users supply their own provider API key by setting gptel-api-key directly, pointing it at a function, or reading it from ~/.authinfo or environment variables. It talks to most major providers and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint via gptel-make-openai with custom host/endpoint, and supports fully local runners (Ollama, Llama.cpp, GPT4All). Actively maintained, GPL-3.0, ~3.4k GitHub stars.

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.