Bring your own API keys
Live benchmarks ask the real AI assistants your buyers use — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity — and that happens on your own API keys. You pay each provider directly for exactly what your runs use; Cypress never resells AI usage or marks it up.
Simulated runs are free and need no keys — they’re for exploring the product. Live runs are where the real answers come from.
Get a key from each provider
Section titled “Get a key from each provider”Each model in a run needs its provider’s key. Add them in Settings → ai keys — keys are validated the moment you save them.
| Provider | Models benchmarked | Create your key at | Key looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI (ChatGPT) | GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4 mini | platform.openai.com/api-keys | sk-... |
| Anthropic (Claude) | Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5 | console.anthropic.com/settings/keys | sk-ant-... |
| Google (Gemini) | Gemini 3.5 Flash, 3.1 Flash-Lite | aistudio.google.com/apikey | AIza... |
| Perplexity | Sonar Pro, Sonar | perplexity.ai → Settings → API | pplx-... |
Every provider requires a funded account (or active free tier) for API usage. You only need keys for the providers you want benchmarked — start with one and add more anytime.
What a run costs you
Section titled “What a run costs you”Live models answer with web search enabled — that’s the point: you see which answers are grounded in live web results (and which sites they cite) versus answered from the model’s training memory.
Rough per-answer cost: $0.01–$0.03 including the provider’s web-search fee (about a cent per searched answer) plus model tokens. A typical benchmark — 16 buyer prompts across all four providers’ flagship models — lands around $1–2 total, spread across your four provider accounts. Cheaper models (Haiku, GPT-5.4 mini, Flash-Lite, Sonar) cost a fraction of that.
How your keys are handled
Section titled “How your keys are handled”- Encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; never returned to your browser after saving (you’ll only ever see a masked prefix).
- Used exclusively for the live benchmark runs you launch — nothing runs in the background without you pressing the button.
- Removable anytime in Settings; runs in flight will error their remaining cells rather than use a removed key.
- Cypress’s own API key is used only for onboarding (drafting your profile and prompts) and for the per-answer judge that scores recommendation strength — never for your benchmark answers.