Donate spare rate limits, earn credits back daily

Most provider keys sit underutilised. A generous Gemini Pro rate limit, a flat-rate Z.ai coding plan, a Groq 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 and the pool routes a portion of traffic through it. After each request the pool serves, it credits 5% of the request's notional token cost to your AnyRouter balance. The heavier the key's utilisation, the more you accumulate.

When a user routes a request to a pool-backed model (e.g. a provider prefixed with -pool), the gateway selects an available donated key using a least-recently-used strategy. The request travels to the upstream provider on that key, and the response comes back — the end user gets a normal result. In the background, the gateway calculates the token cost and credits 5% to the donor.

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: +5% of token cost (background)

The donor never sees individual request content — only aggregate counters: total requests served, total tokens, and credits earned. No prompt, no completion, no user identity is ever exposed to the donor.

Pool access is not free for everyone. To use the pool you must have at least one active donated key yourself. This is a deliberate design choice — the pool is a community resource sustained by its members, not a free-rider model.

If you consume credits and want pool access, donate a key. If your donated key is your only one and you remove it, pool access closes until you donate again. The gate is live and enforced on every request.

• Authenticated users only. Pool requests require a signed-in AnyRouter account.
• At least one active donated key on your account. Paused or removed keys do not count.
• Your own donated key is never routed to you — the pool selection skips self-matches so you cannot self-serve through your own contribution.

The reward formula is simple: for each request the pool routes through your key, your AnyRouter balance receives 5% of that request's notional token cost — the same cost figure used for standard pay-as-you-go billing. Credits accumulate throughout the day and are applied to your balance after each request, with no batch delay.

To give a sense of scale, here are three illustrative daily scenarios based on different pool utilisation levels:

Credits land in your AnyRouter balance and can be spent on any pay-as-you-go inference — including models where you have no BYOK key. The reward rate is fixed at 5% and is not affected by how you use AnyRouter yourself.

Donating a key to the pool does not change who owns it or who controls it. Several protections are in place:

• ToS-safe only. A key can only be donated to the pool if the provider's Terms of Service explicitly permit third-party use of your key. Providers that are silent or prohibitive are excluded from the pool allowlist regardless of your preference.
• Explicit consent. Enrollment requires a one-time, on-record acknowledgement that other users' requests may be routed through your key. Nothing is enrolled automatically.
• 429 auto-pause. If a donated key returns consecutive 429 errors from the upstream provider, the gateway pauses the key immediately and stops routing to it. You see the status in the dashboard and can reactivate once your quota resets.
• Aggregate stats only. The public pool listing and your donor dashboard show only aggregate counters — total requests served, total tokens, credits earned. No user IDs, no request content, no email addresses are ever associated with pool statistics.
• Opt out instantly. Toggle the donate flag off in the dashboard and your key leaves the pool with no pending requests.

To donate a key, open the BYOK page in the dashboard, find the key you want to contribute, and enable the Donate to pool toggle. If the provider is currently on the pool allowlist, the key becomes active in the pool immediately. If the provider is not yet eligible (pending ToS confirmation), the toggle will be available but the key will activate automatically once that provider is cleared.

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. Credits appear in your balance after the first request the pool routes through it.

For a full walkthrough of the pool — how providers are cleared, how key selection works, and how to read your donor stats — see /pool. For background on the broader BYOK system, see /blog/bring-your-own-keys. To start donating, go straight to /donate.