Bring your own AI key.
Generation runs on your provider's account at their prices instead of the AI included with your plan. Here's exactly what that changes — and the two things it doesn't.
Connect your own AI provider and ScoutRival generates on your account, at your provider's prices, instead of on the AI included with your plan. You keep the same app, the same brand context and the same output — only the engine underneath changes.
It takes about three minutes and it isn't tied to a plan. Any account can connect a key.
What actually changes
One thing, and it's worth being precise about it: which AI account the generation runs on.
- Without a key — Compose posts and BlogCraft articles are written by ScoutRival's included AI. You never see a provider bill.
- With a key — the same requests go to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or OpenRouter under your own API key. You pick the model. Your provider bills you directly, usually cents per post.
Everything else is unchanged. Your brand voice, your services, your competitor intelligence and your platform rules are all still applied the same way — they're built by ScoutRival before the request is ever sent. Your own model is doing the writing, not the thinking about your market.
Connecting a key does not switch your credits off. ScoutRival still meters the actions it meters. The one exception is rendering an image with your own image model, which is genuinely free. Read How credits work before you assume otherwise.
The four providers you can connect
| Provider | Text | Images | Best known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter | Yes | Yes | One key, hundreds of models, one balance |
| OpenAI | Yes | Yes | Strong all-rounder, GPT plus GPT Image |
| Anthropic (Claude) | Yes | No | Long-form articles and nuanced writing |
| Google (Gemini) | Yes | Yes | Speed, low cost, and the Nano Banana image models |
Claude is a text model. Anthropic has no image-generation endpoint, so an Anthropic connection can never render a picture — it won't even appear as an option on the Image routing row. If Claude is your writer, connect a second provider for images. How routing works →
You can connect more than one, and most people do: Anthropic or OpenAI for writing, Google for images. There's a step-by-step guide for each — OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google (Gemini).
Where your key actually gets used
Three jobs can be routed to your own model. They line up exactly with the three routing rows on the AI Models page:
- Text — the posts Compose writes for you, and the image prompts it writes.
- Blog — the body of a BlogCraft article.
- Image — rendering an actual picture from an image prompt.
The rest of the product — your Daily Brief, competitor analysis, SEO audits and AI-visibility checks — always runs on ScoutRival's included AI, whether or not you have a key connected. That's the intelligence layer, and it's ours.
What it does to your credits
Be clear-eyed about this, because it's the thing people most often get wrong.
- Rendering an image with your own image model is free — zero credits. ScoutRival never pays to render a picture, so it never charges you for one.
- Compose messages and BlogCraft articles are still metered when you're on your own key. The prices are the ones on the cost list.
The honest summary is that a key changes whose AI account is billed for the generation, not whether ScoutRival meters the action. If credits are what you're trying to solve, read How credits work first.
Getting started
Get a key from your provider
Follow the guide for the provider you want. Each one covers signing up, adding billing, and where the key lives.
Paste it into AI Models
Open AI Models in the sidebar, click Connect on the provider, paste the key and pick a default model. We test the key against the provider before we store it. Connecting a provider →
Point a routing row at it
Nothing runs on your key until you assign it. Set Text, Blog or Image to your new connection. Routing →
Claude for long-form, Gemini Flash for speed and cost, GPT as the all-rounder, Google's Nano Banana for images. The full breakdown →