Own API Key or AI Credits: How to Handle AI Costs in TYPO3

AI costs in TYPO3 build up task by task, from a few alt texts to a full translation. With the AI Universe, you decide who sends you that bill. By default you use your own API key: the access key an AI provider issues to your account. This approach is often called bring your own key, or BYOK, and the provider bills you directly. Or you pay from a prepaid balance of AI Credits that T3Planet runs for you. Your own key stays the default, and AI Credits is an optional add-on you can switch on and off.

This guide compares both on the four points that decide it: who bills you, where your content goes, what you can see, and the most you can spend. Then it shows which option suits which team.

AI costs in TYPO3 are paid in one of two ways: on your own API key, billed by your AI provider, or from a prepaid AI Credits balance bought from T3Planet. Both run on AI Foundation, T3Planet's free and open source base for TYPO3 that every AI Universe extension plugs into. You keep the same extensions in both modes and switch between them in one backend panel. We built both modes into the same extensions for you, and only voice features need your own key. What changes is who bills you and where each request travels.

One thing stays the same either way. A premium extension such as AI Assistant or AI Chatbot needs its own annual licence, and AI Credits never replace it. Credits pay for usage only.

With your own key, you keep the contract, the rates and the choice of model. You create an API key with a provider, add it once under AI Providers in AI Foundation, and every AI Universe extension on that installation uses it. Keys are encrypted at rest.

Your provider bills you at its published rates, and T3Planet never resells or marks up that usage. No T3Planet server sits between your TYPO3 installation and the provider. For the most private setup, connect a local model through Ollama, so requests stay on your own hardware. How that setup fits your data protection duties stays in your hands, depending on the model you choose. We covered this route in more detail in our post on the free AI extension for TYPO3 and where your content goes.

The trade-off is administration. You hold one more provider account, one more invoice and one more key, and for an agency that can mean one of each per client. The AI Foundation dashboard shows requests, tokens and cost for you, so you can check the monthly figure at any time.

AI Credits suits teams that want us to handle the provider side for them, with AI working today and no account with a model provider. You start with your name and email, and the balance lives on your AI Credits account. No licence key is involved.

One balance covers every AI Universe extension, every licence on your account and every environment: development, staging, local and production. So a team running three sites and a staging server tops up once, not four times.

A credit is a unit of money, not a unit of work. Each operation is priced from what it costs to run. Alt text for an image costs a fraction of a credit, and a high-quality image costs more. When AI models get cheaper, the same balance buys more. Three things never reduce your balance: a model getting more expensive, us moving a feature to a better model, or currency movement. What can change, with 30 days' notice, is how many credits an operation costs.

In this mode your requests travel through T3Planet to the model providers, so T3Planet is part of the data path. The backend shows you each operation and its credit cost rather than the model behind it, and it shows an estimate before every action.

On yearly billing you pay for ten months and get twelve, and credits still arrive month by month. Packs stack on a plan. Plan credits are always spent first, so a monthly allowance never uses up a long-life pack. There is no auto-recharge: the most you can spend is what you have already paid. If your balance reaches zero while you are working in the backend, the feature pauses and offers a top-up.

The table below shows what 1,000 credits cover if you spend them all on one kind of task. It helps you size a plan for your team before you commit to one.

A real month mixes these tasks, so the rows do not add up to one budget. A long page also costs more than a short one. For the exact figure, the backend shows an estimate before each action. The 50 free trial credits, for example, cover ≈ 230 sets of image metadata or ≈ 20 translations, which is enough to judge the output on your own content.

The right mode depends on who holds your AI contracts and who answers to your data protection officer. We set out the common cases for you below.

The provider mode applies to every AI extension on the installation, so we kept switching to one panel for you, not a change per extension.

Step 1: Open AI Providers

• In the TYPO3 backend, open AI Foundation and go to AI Providers.
• The AI Provider Mode panel shows both options.
• Your own API keys stay active until you choose otherwise.

Nothing changes until you select a mode.

Step 2: Start your AI Credits account

• Select AI Credits.
• Enter your name and email. No licence key is needed.
• You receive a link to your AI Credits account, with 50 trial credits.

Your balance now lives on that account.

Step 3: Run one task and check its cost

• Pick a task you know well, such as alt text for a few images.
• Check the estimate before it runs.
• Open the usage log: each operation is listed with its credit cost and the site it came from.

If your own keys suit you better, switch back in the same panel.

Before AI goes onto a production site, these four questions tell you most of what you need to know about how an extension charges for it.

1. Can you use your own API key, with no vendor server between you and your provider? For AI Foundation on your own key, yes. It is the default.
2. Is a credit balance optional, or the only way in? Here it is optional. Your own key stays the default and ignoring AI Credits costs you no feature.
3. Do you see what a task costs before it runs? In AI Credits mode, the backend shows an estimate before each action.
4. What is the most you can spend? With AI Credits, what you have prepaid, because there is no auto-recharge. With your own key, the limits you agree with your provider.

Ask them of us too. We will answer them together with your team and your data protection officer.

Whichever way you pay, you keep the same extensions. Only voice features need your own key. T3Planet has worked with TYPO3 for more than 15 years and is a Gold Member of the TYPO3 Association. We built AI Foundation so that this choice stays yours. Unsure which mode fits a project? Book a demo with Jürgen and we will size it with you. Or start with AI Foundation for TYPO3, which is free.