LLM Gateway BYOK on Critique: Same $8 Harness, Broader Model Surface
Critique now supports LLM Gateway alongside OpenRouter and CrofAI. Save one key in Settings, keep the same review and chat flow, and let LLM Gateway bill the model calls directly.
The original BYOK story on Critique was simple. If you wanted the product system but not Critique carrying every model invoice, you could bring OpenRouter. Then we added CrofAI for teams that wanted a more OSS-first billing path.
That still left a gap. Some teams want a broader OpenAI-compatible gateway without changing how Critique review policies, sandbox runs, and chat sessions already behave. LLM Gateway is that lane.
Why add LLM Gateway instead of just saying “use OpenRouter”
Because BYOK is not one market. Some teams want frontier model routing and already centralize budgets on OpenRouter. Some want direct OSS-host billing on Crof. Others want a wider multi-provider OpenAI-compatible gateway while keeping the same product harness for sandboxes, OpenCode review turns, GitHub checks, retrieval, and usage ledgers.
Critique should not force those three intentions through one provider if the rest of the product can stay constant. The point of the harness is to keep the review system stable while the upstream billing lane stays flexible.
The product workflow stays the same. The upstream bill, catalog shape, and best-fit use case are what move.
| Lane | Upstream bill | Best fit |
|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter BYOK | OpenRouter account | Teams already standardizing frontier and mixed-provider spend on OpenRouter. |
| CrofAI BYOK | CrofAI account | Teams optimizing around OSS-hosted model economics and Crof-native routes. |
| LLM Gateway BYOK | LLM Gateway account | Teams wanting a broad OpenAI-compatible multi-provider gateway without changing Critique review flow. |
All three use the same Critique harness. The harness fee covers orchestration, not model tokens.
What changes technically when LLM Gateway is active
The important part is what does not change. You do not learn a new review surface. You do not rewrite policy just because the bill moves. Critique keeps the same model picker, the same review and chat orchestration, the same sandbox path, and the same usage ledger.
Under the hood, Critique strips OpenRouter-specific prefixes and route suffixes from request model ids, sends the normalized id to https://api.llmgateway.io/v1, and omits OpenRouter-only headers. That is why the feature can behave like a gateway swap instead of a second product.
The honest limits
This is a billing and routing feature, not a promise that every model listed by LLM Gateway suddenly appears in every Critique dropdown. Today Critique exposes 35 review-capable models in its own catalog. LLM Gateway publishes a much larger provider surface than that.
That distinction matters. The gateway is broader than the current product catalog. The product catalog is broader than what some provider-specific lanes expose. We are not pretending those are the same thing.
It also does not replace BYOA. Saving an LLM Gateway key changes which account pays for review and chat inference. It does not replace Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, or other external fix-agent execution lanes.
Set it up in five minutes
- 1Subscribe to the BYOK harnessUse the $8/month Critique harness if you want Critique to keep running orchestration while your provider bills the model calls.
- 2Create an LLM Gateway API keyGenerate the key in your LLM Gateway account and apply whatever spend limits or provider policy you want there.
- 3Save the key in CritiqueOpen Settings → Agents → Bring your own LLM Gateway key, paste the key, and save it encrypted. The browser only keeps a hint after save.
- 4Run one chat turn and one reviewVerify that Usage shows the model calls as externally billed where applicable and that the workflow feels identical from the operator side.
- 5Know the fallback orderIf you also keep CrofAI or OpenRouter keys saved, LLM Gateway wins until you remove it. No review-policy rewrite is required.
Add the key and keep the workflow
If your team wants Critique to stay the review system while LLM Gateway carries the model invoice, the path is now live in Settings.
Open Settings →