Donate an idle provider key, earn credits back: a walkthrough

Most provider keys sit underutilised. A generous Gemini Pro rate limit, a flat-rate Z.ai coding plan, a Groq or NVIDIA free-tier key — they accumulate headroom that evaporates unused at the end of each month. The shared pool turns that headroom into AnyRouter credits: donate a key, the pool routes spare traffic through it, and up to 8% of each request's notional cost adds to your pending balance (8% on the Pro and Max plans, 5% on Go or with no plan) — capped at $1 per key per UTC day.

The whole flow is three steps and takes about a minute. Below is exactly what to click and what to expect.

Any key you've already added under BYOK can be donated, but the best candidates share one trait: idle headroom you won't miss. Good picks:

• A free-tier key (NVIDIA NIM, Groq, Hugging Face) whose rate limit you rarely hit.
• A flat-rate or subscription plan (Z.ai coding, Gemini Pro) where extra tokens cost you nothing at the margin.
• Any key for a provider AnyRouter can route to (the donate toggle only appears there) — that's an operational compatibility check, not a Terms of Service review, so confirm your own provider's terms permit sharing the key before you donate.

If you don't have a key yet, add one first — the Hermes and NVIDIA guides walk through getting a free provider key and attaching it as BYOK in a couple of minutes.

Open the BYOK page, find the key, and flip the toggle. Enrolment requires a one-time, on-record acknowledgement that other users' requests may be routed through your key — nothing is enrolled automatically.

1. Go to https://dash.anyrouter.dev/byok and open the key you want to donate.
2. Enable the Donate to pool toggle and confirm the one-time consent prompt.
3. The key status changes to Donating right away. If the key later fails three consecutive upstream requests, it's auto-paused and drops out of the pool until it's healthy again.

Every request the pool serves through your key adds to a pending balance right away — no batch delay. Claim pending credits into spendable balance whenever you like from the BYOK page, or turn on auto-claim to sweep them in automatically. Rewards are capped at $1 per key per UTC day; a key that hits the cap pauses earning until the next day. Your donor view shows aggregate counters only: total requests served, total tokens, and credits earned. Your reward rate is tiered by plan — up to 8%: 8% on Pro and Max, 5% on Go or with no plan. To give a sense of scale, three illustrative daily scenarios at both rates:

Once claimed, credits spend on any pay-as-you-go inference — including models where you have no BYOK key. Donating one working key also unlocks the Go plan for free, for as long as that key stays active. The reward is up to 8% of the same notional cost used for standard billing (5% on Go, 8% on Pro/Max), unaffected by how you use AnyRouter yourself.

The pool runs on reciprocity: to draw from it you must keep at least one active donated key of your own. Remove your only donated key and pool access closes until you donate again — the gate is live and enforced on every request.

When a user routes a request to a pool-backed model (a provider prefixed with -pool), the gateway selects an available donated key using a least-recently-used strategy, sends the request upstream on that key, and returns the response. In the background it computes the token cost and adds the donor's tiered share (up to 8%) to their pending balance. Your own key is never routed back to you — the selection skips self-matches.

sequenceDiagram
participant U as Pool user
participant GW as AnyRouter
participant K as Donor's key
participant P as Provider
participant D as Donor's balance
U->>GW: POST /v1/chat/completions (pool model)
GW->>K: pick least-recently-used donated key
GW->>P: request on donor key
P-->>GW: 200 OK + usage
GW-->>U: response (streamed)
GW->>D: +pending reward, up to 8% (background)

The donor never sees individual request content — only the aggregate counters. No prompt, no completion, no user identity is ever exposed.

Donating a key never changes who owns or controls it. The protections in place:

• Your call on ToS. Eligibility just means AnyRouter has somewhere to route the provider's traffic — it isn't a claim that the provider's Terms of Service permit sharing your key. Review your provider's terms before donating; you're responsible for that decision.
• Explicit consent. Enrolment requires a one-time, on-record acknowledgement. Nothing is enrolled automatically.
• 429 auto-pause. Consecutive 429s from the upstream pause the key immediately and stop routing to it; you see the status in the dashboard and can reactivate once your quota resets.
• Aggregate stats only. The public listing and your donor dashboard show total requests, total tokens, and credits earned — no user IDs, request content, or email addresses.
• Opt out instantly. Toggle the donate flag off and your key leaves the pool with no pending requests.