BYOAIK (Bring Your Own AI Key) is a directory of AI tools that run on your own API key.
Letta
Open-source platform for building stateful AI agents with long-term memory
- Category:
- Agent Frameworks
- Maintenance:
- Actively developed (last commit 7 days ago)
- Pricing:
- Open Source
- Open source:
- Yes (Apache-2.0)
- Self-hostable:
- Yes
- Local-first:
- Yes
- Platforms:
- Self-hosted, CLI, Library/SDK, Web, Docker
- AI providers (bring your own key):
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, Ollama, Together AI, Custom / OpenAI-compatible
- API key storage:
- Configured by environment variable
- Key risk level:
- LOW
- Trust score:
- 84/100
Letta (formerly MemGPT, from UC Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab) is an open-source platform for building stateful AI agents with advanced, self-editing tiered memory that persists and self-improves across sessions. It exposes a server/API plus Python and TypeScript SDKs and a CLI (Letta Code), and is fully model-agnostic. Users bring their own provider API keys via environment variables (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY) when self-hosting the Docker server, or via /connect in Letta Code. BYOK is documented as working on all cloud tiers with OpenAI, Anthropic, and OpenRouter keys. It also supports configurable OpenAI-compatible base URLs/proxy endpoints for local and alternative backends (Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio), plus enterprise backends like Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, and Google Vertex.
How this tool was scored
Key handling 88/100 (where your key rests and who sees it, comparable across any licence) and verifiability 70/100 (how much of that BYOAIK could confirm, lower for closed source). Neither contains a popularity signal.
- Key Safety 22/25: The key is supplied by an environment variable or local config file you control.
- Request Routing 17/20: Requests go straight from you to the AI provider.
- Transparency 20/20: Source is public under Apache-2.0, so anyone can check how the key is handled.
- Privacy 14/15: Local-first: it works without sending your data anywhere. Can be self-hosted, so the data path stays inside infrastructure you control.
- Maintenance 10/10: Actively developed, with 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 and not set by hand.
- [REPORTED · RESEARCH] This listing was compiled by an AI-assisted research pass over the tool's public website, README and documentation. No person independently confirmed it.
- [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Most recent commit 2026-09-10, about 1 month(s) ago. source
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.