BYOAIK — Bring Your Own AI Key: a directory of AI tools that run on your own API key.
Qwen Code
Open-source terminal coding agent (Gemini-CLI fork) that runs on your own API key for any OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini-compatible endpoint.
- Category:
- Developer Infrastructure
- Pricing:
- Open Source
- Open source:
- Yes (Apache-2.0)
- Self-hostable:
- Yes
- Local-first:
- Yes
- Platforms:
- CLI, Self-hosted, Docker
- AI providers (bring your own key):
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter, Ollama, Custom / OpenAI-compatible
- API key storage:
- Configured by environment variable
- Key risk level:
- LOW
- Trust score:
- 90/100
Qwen Code is an open-source, Apache-2.0 AI coding agent that lives in your terminal, forked from Google's Gemini CLI and tuned for Qwen3-Coder models. It supports an "API Key" authentication method that lets users bring their own provider API key: the docs explicitly cover connecting to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter, ModelScope, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, or self-hosted endpoints (Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio) via OpenAI-compatible protocols. Credentials are supplied through environment variables referenced in ~/.qwen/settings.json (envKey) or a .env file, and are never persisted in settings (read at runtime from process.env). Multiple providers can be configured and switched at runtime with the /model command. The previously free Qwen OAuth tier was discontinued on 2026-04-15, explicitly steering users toward bring-your-own-key or paid plans. The CLI itself is free and open source; only provider/inference costs apply. Installable via npm (@qwen-code/qwen-code), currently at v0.18.4, actively maintained with ~25.4k GitHub stars.
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.