Glossary

BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)

BYOK lets you bring your own LLM, STT and TTS API keys so a voice AI platform routes usage through your own provider accounts instead of billing it through the platform.

All terms

Definition

BYOK stands for Bring Your Own Key. In voice AI, BYOK means bringing your own API keys for the underlying LLM, STT and TTS providers (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepgram, ElevenLabs) so the platform uses your keys when making requests, with each provider billing usage directly to your account. It's a model some voice AI platforms offer to unbundle provider costs from their own fee. ThinnestAI prices differently — a flat, all-inclusive rate from ₹2/min with no separate provider bills to track.

BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)Glossary

1Voice AI agent

2ThinnestAI vs Sarvam AI

3Pricing

Why some platforms offer BYOK

Some voice AI platforms bundle LLM, STT and TTS provider costs into their own per-minute price; others let you bring your own API keys so provider usage is billed directly to your account, with the platform charging only its own orchestration fee on top. The appeal is provider choice and cost control — you pick the model that fits your workload and can negotiate your own provider rates at volume.

What BYOK is not

BYOK is not self-hosting. On a platform that offers it you are still building agents in that platform's own console, on its phone infrastructure and its hosting. The only thing that changes is which invoice the provider usage lands on.

How ThinnestAI prices voice AI

ThinnestAI doesn't run a BYOK model for LLM, STT or TTS providers. Pricing is flat and all-inclusive — ₹2/min on standard voices and ₹2.5/min on premium voices — with telephony and the full voice stack covered in that one rate either way, no provider keys to manage and no separate line items to reconcile. What you can still bring is your own Plivo, Vobiz, Twilio or Telnyx phone number — see BYON — so if you already have one, you keep your existing carrier relationship and DLT registration while ThinnestAI handles the AI layer.