Guides / your own key
Your key, your quota, your terms.
The free lane is a small daily allowance on our bill. Your own key removes the cap and, more importantly, moves the data relationship to you: your text goes to your provider under your agreement, not ours.
Option A: a Google AI key
- Create the key. Sign in at aistudio.google.com/app/apikey and press "Create API key". The free tier is enough to try; a billed project gives you real headroom. Mind that the provider's free tier may use submitted text for training, under their terms.
- Open the key panel. In the tool, press Use your own key, keep the provider on Google AI, and paste the key. The model field is optional; it defaults to gemini-2.5-flash.
- Press "Use this key". The button now reads Using your key, and every rewrite rides your quota with no daily cap from us.
Option B: an Anthropic key, frontier-quality English
- Create the key. Sign in at console.anthropic.com and create an API key under Settings. This is a billed account: you pay Anthropic per token, at your own cost and under your own terms.
- Open the key panel. Press Use your own key, choose Anthropic as the provider, and paste the key. The model field defaults to claude-opus-4-8; any current model name your account can access works.
- Press "Use this key". Rewrites now run on a frontier model. This is the strongest English quality available in Offbeat; our hosted lane's English ceiling does not apply to your key.
Option C: any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
- Pick the endpoint. Choose OpenAI-compatible as the provider and set the base URL: https://api.openai.com/v1 for OpenAI itself, or any compatible server, including a local one.
- Paste key and model. Use whatever model name your endpoint expects, for example gpt-4o-mini.
- Save. Same behavior: your requests, your quota, your terms.
What happens to the key
- It lives in this browser session only; closing the tab forgets it.
- It rides each request to our server and is passed straight through to your provider. It is never stored and never written to any log.
- You can press Remove key at any time to drop back to the free lane.
If it does not work
- Immediate error on the first rewrite: the key is wrong or lacks access to the chosen model. Recheck both in your provider's console.
- "The rewrite service is busy": your own provider quota is exhausted or rate-limited; check your provider dashboard.