Can I bring my own API key for a specific model?

Martini's architecture pools provider API access across all users to deliver consistent rate limits, queue priority, retry handling, and cost controls. Providers like OpenAI, Google, and FAL have per-account rate limits that can be exhausted by a single heavy user; pooling smooths the variance and prevents one user's burst from breaking everyone else's experience. BYOK breaks this pooling — your key has its own rate limit, your generations queue on your key's capacity, and Martini cannot guarantee throughput.

There are operational reasons too. Martini's safety filtering, content policy enforcement, and refund logic depend on observing the request-response cycle through Martini's middleware. Routing through a user's key bypasses this layer and creates ambiguous responsibility for content moderation outcomes. For a multi-tenant platform with millions of generations, that ambiguity is not workable.

Martini's negotiated rates with providers are usually better than what a single user can get on a self-serve API account. The credit cost on each model includes Martini's volume discount; bringing your own key would not save you credits on Martini's side and might cost you more on the provider side. The credits-vs-tokens article explains the abstraction in more detail.

If your concern is cost, the better levers are: pick cheaper models for iteration (Hailuo, Luma Ray, mid-tier image models), promote to flagship models only for the final pass, and tune resolution and duration to fit the brief. These workflow changes save more credits over a project than BYOK could plausibly save by routing around platform fees.

Enterprise contracts can include custom routing arrangements where appropriate — for example, a team that already has a heavily-discounted enterprise contract with a specific provider may be able to negotiate a routing path that bills usage to their contract rather than to Martini's. This is bespoke and goes through the enterprise sales team, not self-serve. The discussion typically also covers data residency, signed processing agreements, and SLA commitments.

If you are interested, email enterprise@martini.art with your provider, your monthly volume, and the contract terms you currently hold. The team responds within one business day to scope what is possible. Outcomes vary by provider and contract — some allow it cleanly, some do not. There is no public list of supported BYOK arrangements because they are negotiated case-by-case.

Consumer-tier BYOK is on the long-term roadmap but not committed. The challenge is preserving the platform's safety, refund, and queue guarantees while letting users opt out of the pooled infrastructure. If and when a constrained version becomes available, it will likely apply to specific models where the trade-offs are clean (rate limits dominated by a single user, safety filters provided by the upstream provider, billing reconcilable per call). Watch the changelog and product announcements for updates.

In the meantime, the practical answer is no on consumer and workspace plans. Pick the models you want to use, run on Martini's pooled infrastructure, and reach out to enterprise sales if your scale or contract situation makes BYOK essential.