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

pdfGPT

Self-hosted chat-with-your-PDF app that answers with page citations, using the OpenAI key you paste in yourself.

Website Source code

Category:
Document Analysis
Pricing:
Open Source
Open source:
Yes (MIT)
Self-hostable:
Yes
Local-first:
No
Platforms:
Self-hosted, Docker, Web
AI providers (bring your own key):
OpenAI
API key storage:
User controls deployment
Key risk level:
LOW
Trust score:
71/100

pdfGPT turns a PDF, uploaded or fetched by URL, into a chatbot: it chunks the text, embeds the chunks with a Universal Sentence Encoder rather than a third-party vector service, retrieves nearest matches and asks an OpenAI model to answer with the page number cited. The interface begins with an 'Enter API Key' step, so each user supplies their own OpenAI key rather than the app pooling one. Ships as a self-hostable app with a Docker path. MIT licensed, 7,168 stars, last pushed about five months before review.

Why this trust score (71/100)

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 2/10 — Last commit was about 17 months ago.
  • 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.

  • [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Ships a container definition, so it can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure. source
  • [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Most recent commit 2025-03-03 — about 17 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.