Authentication-and-byok

Quick start

Authentication & BYOK

AI Gateway Authentication and BYOK

Every request to AI Gateway requires Vercel authentication. Use an AI Gateway API key or OpenID Connect (OIDC) token. Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) provider credentials control how AI Gateway authenticates to a model provider, but they don't replace request authentication.

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Go to the AI Gateway API Keys page in your Vercel dashboard
Click Create key and follow the steps to generate a new API key.
Copy the API key and add it to your environment:

export AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"

The AI SDK automatically uses this environment variable for authentication. If you are using a different SDK, you may need to pass the API key manually.

Authentication methods

API keys

API keys work anywhere, whether it's local development, external servers, or CI pipelines. They never expire unless you revoke them. To create, view, or delete keys, see API keys. To cap how much a key can spend, see Budgets.

OIDC tokens on Vercel deployments.

When you specify a model id as a plain string, the AI SDK automatically uses the Vercel AI Gateway provider and reads the API key from the AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY environment variable:

These examples use AI SDK 7 and the AI SDK for Python beta. Set AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY before running them. See API format differences for setup, request fields, and response handling.

AI SDK

See the AI SDK authentication reference for SDK configuration and usage.

TypeScript

Chat Completions

Python (beta)

Messages API

const { text } =awaitgenerateText({

});

console.log(text);

Responses / OpenResponses

prompt:"Why is the sky blue?",

import { generateText } from'ai';

model:"anthropic/claude-sonnet-5",

OIDC tokens

Vercel deployments receive an OIDC token as VERCEL_OIDC_TOKEN, so you can authenticate without creating an API key. See OIDC for setup.

// An explicit API key takes precedence over the OIDC token.

constapiKey=process.env.AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY||process.env.VERCEL_OIDC_TOKEN;

Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)

BYOK lets you use your own provider credentials. This is useful when you:

Have existing agreements: Use enterprise pricing or credits from providers
Need zero markup: BYOK requests have no additional fee
Require private access: Access provider features that need your own credentials
Want automatic fallback: If your credentials fail, requests can retry with system credentials

Next steps

Last updated September 8, 2026

Related Vercel documentation

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Create an API key in the dashboard
Set up OIDC for zero-configuration authentication on Vercel
Set up BYOK to use your provider credentials

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BYOK credentials are configured at the team level and work across all projects. See the BYOK documentation for setup instructions.

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