Bring your own OpenAI + Anthropic key for meeting notes

"BYOK" — bring your own key — is one of those acronyms that gets shorter every year while the software space it names gets larger. This post is what it actually means for AI meeting notes, why it matters, and how the cost math works against the subscription tools you're probably comparing against.

What BYOK means for meeting notes, concretely

A modern AI notetaker does two AI-heavy things: transcribe the meeting (usually via Whisper, sometimes via native Meet/Zoom captions) and summarize + answer questions about it (via a large language model — Claude, GPT, Gemini, or similar).

In a non-BYOK product like Otter or Fireflies:

• The vendor runs transcription on their own Whisper (or self-hosted equivalent).
• The vendor runs summarization on the LLM they picked.
• The vendor pays the raw AI providers, marks it up, and charges you a per-seat monthly subscription.

In a BYOK product like AI Assist:

• You paste your own OPENAI_API_KEY into the extension options.
• You paste your own ANTHROPIC_API_KEY into the extension options.
• Every call to Whisper (transcription) and to Claude (summaries + Q&A) is billed by OpenAI / Anthropic directly to your account.
• AI Assist charges a one-time desktop license ($3) for the software itself. That's it.

You keep two things you'd otherwise give up: control (you can rotate keys, revoke them, pin models, upgrade models the moment they ship) and trust boundaries (audio and transcripts route through vendors you already have an audit relationship with, not through a middleman).

Why per-seat vendors avoid BYOK

The commercial model of SaaS AI notetakers depends on capturing the margin between raw AI cost and per-seat pricing. If you brought your own key, that margin evaporates. Otter Business at $19.99/user/mo has a real cost of a few dollars per user in AI calls, tops. The rest is orchestration, storage, feature development, and profit.

That's a legitimate business model when the vendor is adding real orchestration value on top. It's also the reason nobody in the top tier of the market offers BYOK — doing so would cut ~80% of their revenue per user overnight. This is why the BYOK slot is open for a smaller player.

Cost math — heavy Google Meet user

Numbers for a knowledge worker with roughly 30 meetings per month averaging 45 minutes, using AI Assist with your own OpenAI + Anthropic keys:

Comparison against the same volume on Otter Business at $19.99/user/mo (US Business plan, as of July 2026): Otter is cheaper on paper for a single user, but the price gap disappears the moment you factor in:

• Otter caps meeting duration at 90 min on Business — a 2-hour standup workshop gets truncated.
• Otter's Q&A ("OtterPilot Chat") is metered, with overage charges at higher tiers.
• Otter Business requires an annual contract; AI Assist's cloud sync is monthly cancel-anytime and the desktop license is perpetual.
• Your team doesn't need to individually agree to have their audio processed by a third party — AI Assist's audio never leaves your device.

Setup — from zero to first captured meeting

1. Get an OpenAI API key

Go to platform.openai.com/api-keys, click "Create new secret key", copy the resulting sk-... string. Save it in a password manager — OpenAI will not show you the full key again.

2. Get an Anthropic API key

Go to console.anthropic.com/account/keys, "Create Key", copy the sk-ant-... string.

Both are free to create. You'll pre-load $5-10 of credit and get billed as you use it. First-time OpenAI accounts often need to add a payment method before Whisper is available.

3. Install AI Assist

Download the macOS or Linux helper, install, and add the Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store link on the landing page.

4. Paste keys into the extension Options

Right-click the AI Assist icon in your browser toolbar → Options. Paste both keys. They're stored locally in chrome.storage.local; they never touch AI Assist's servers.

5. Pair to the helper

The extension will prompt you to pair. Click the link, and the local helper on 127.0.0.1 authenticates the extension to itself. First real meeting captures immediately.

What can go wrong

• Whisper rate limits: OpenAI's default account tier caps Whisper at ~50 requests/minute. If you're in three parallel meetings on the same key (why?), you might hit it. Solved by upgrading your OpenAI tier or spacing meetings.
• Model deprecation: When Anthropic sunsets a Claude version, you'll need to bump the model ID in AI Assist's Options. The helper's auto-updater keeps the defaults current for new installs.
• Cost surprise: A very long meeting can rack up $2-3 in a single call. Set spend limits on both OpenAI and Anthropic accounts — both providers have per-month caps you can enforce.