Untethered Calories

A better deal on AI

Bring your own AI.

Own one AI key. Bring it to the apps you love. Pay only for what you use, with no middleman.

Tell your friends What’s a key? ↓

New to this?

A key is a password for apps.

AI companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Google let anyone open an account and create an API key: a long code that lets an app use their AI on your account. You paste it into an app once, and from then on the app talks to the AI directly. The AI company bills you for what you use.

  • It’s yoursThe key belongs to your account with the AI company, not to the app.
  • Pay as you goYou’re billed per message, often a fraction of a cent. Set a monthly limit and there are no surprises.
  • Cancel any timeDelete a key and the apps using it stop at once. Make one key per app to switch them off one by one.

Why it matters

You’re paying for the same AI again and again.

Most AI apps put their own servers between you and the AI, and charge a subscription to run them. Use three of those apps and you pay three middlemen for much the same thing.

TodayEvery app runs its own server and charges its own subscription.
Today: three apps, each sending your requests through its own server, each with its own monthly fee, all to the same AI. Calories Writing Photos Server$ monthly Server$ monthly Server$ monthly AI
Bring your own AIOne key works in every app that accepts it, and each app talks straight to the AI.
Bring your own AI: the same three apps all use your one key and talk straight to the AI, and you pay per use. Calories Writing Photos Key AI Pay per use

It’s time for a change

Better for you. Simpler for the apps.

  • Pay only for what you use

    No monthly fee for the weeks you don’t open an app. Your bill follows what you actually do.

  • No middleman

    In an app built this way, what you type or photograph goes from your phone straight to the AI company, not through another company’s servers as well.

  • Choose your AI

    Pick the model that suits you: a quick, low-cost one for simple jobs, or a more capable one when it counts.

  • Leaner apps

    With no servers or billing to run, a developer can build a focused app that does one job well, and keep it going.

To be fair: a subscription still makes sense for some apps, such as ones that do far more than talk to an AI, and for people who’d rather not look after a key. Bringing your own AI is a choice, and a good one to have.

What it really costs

Cents, not subscriptions.

Here’s Untethered Calories after real use, a conversation about dinner and two meal photos among them: eight messages, under eight cents in all, less than a cent each. Log a few meals a day and that comes to around a dollar or two a month, depending on the model and how much you write.

The app shows its estimated cost as you go, and you choose the model. Your actual bill is always in your account with the AI company.

The Model screen: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (recommended) is selected, with Haiku 5.5, Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 as other choices, a note that larger models cost more each time you log, and a link to older models.
The Usage and cost screen for this month: estimated cost $0.075, 8 messages, $0.009 per message, 46,406 tokens, 52% read from cache.

Not one company’s idea

Any AI. Any app.

Bringing your own AI isn’t tied to one company. Several AI companies sell pay-as-you-go keys, and any app can choose to accept them. Untethered Calories happens to use Anthropic’s Claude. The next app you love might use another.

Spread the word

Tell your friends.

Most people have never heard of bringing their own AI. Send them this page, and ask the apps you use to let you bring your own key.

Set up your AI key →