Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK) on Scriptube: What It Is and How It's Charged

BYOK — Bring Your Own Key — lets you connect your own ElevenLabs and Google Translate accounts to Scriptube instead of relying entirely on Scriptube's. It's available on Pro and above; Free and Starter don't have the option.

The two keys BYOK supports

One important caveat up front: AI transcription for caption-less videos is coming soon — it is not live yet, with or without your own ElevenLabs key. Adding an ElevenLabs key today sets you up for when it ships; it doesn't unlock anything to run it against right now. The Google Translate side is live today, since translation itself already works on Starter and above.

Why bring your own key at all

Two reasons come up most:

• Your own vendor relationship. If your company already has a Google Cloud or ElevenLabs account with its own billing, volume pricing, or compliance terms, routing those calls through your own credentials keeps that usage inside your existing vendor contract instead of Scriptube's.
• Translation quality or language settings you've already tuned. A Google Cloud account with custom glossaries or specific regional settings behaves differently from a default call — BYOK means translation runs through your configured account, not a generic one.

How charging changes with BYOK

The base rule doesn't change: processing a video always costs 1 credit, whether the transcript comes from your key or Scriptube's. What BYOK removes is the service-specific charge layered on top for that one step:

• Translating to English through Scriptube's own Google key costs 12 credits per 1,000 characters (Starter+). Translating through your own Google Translate key under BYOK means Scriptube isn't the one paying Google for that call, so that per-character credit line doesn't apply — you pay Google directly, at whatever rate your account has.
• The same logic will apply to ElevenLabs once AI transcription ships: a video transcribed with your own ElevenLabs key won't carry Scriptube's ElevenLabs credit charge, because you're the one paying ElevenLabs for it.

What BYOK does not change: the 1 credit/video processing charge or the fact that credits are the only limit on your batches. BYOK swaps who pays for one add-on service — it isn't a discount on the core product.

Where to add your keys

From your dashboard, open the Credits page — the BYOK section lives there alongside your balance and transaction history, and it's only shown on Pro and above. Paste in:

• An ElevenLabs API key, from your ElevenLabs dashboard
• A Google Cloud Translate service account JSON or API key

Keys are stored encrypted and validated against the provider before being saved — an invalid ElevenLabs key, for example, is rejected at save time with the reason, rather than failing silently the first time a batch tries to use it.

What happens if your key stops working

A BYOK key that's expired, revoked on the provider's side, or out of quota doesn't silently fall back to Scriptube's own key and bill you differently without warning — plan for your own key management the same way you'd manage any production API credential: rotate it before it expires, and watch for failures tied to translation specifically if you're running BYOK unattended.

Removing a key or dropping to a lower plan

If you remove a BYOK key, or your account drops below Pro, BYOK-dependent processing simply stops being an option — Scriptube falls back to its own key for translation on any plan that otherwise supports it (Starter and above), charged at the standard per-character rate. Nothing about your stored transcripts changes; only the key used for the next translation request does. There's no transition step to manage beyond removing the credential itself.

Validate before you rely on it

Because keys are checked against the provider at save time, a quick way to confirm BYOK is actually wired up correctly is to watch for the validation message when you first add a key — an ElevenLabs key returns its account tier on success, which is a useful confirmation that Scriptube reached your account and not a typo'd key. For Google Translate, the service account JSON or API key is checked the same way before it's stored.

Is BYOK worth setting up

If you're a Starter or Free account, there's nothing to decide yet — BYOK isn't available until Pro. If you're already on Pro or above and only translate occasionally, the 12-credits-per-1,000-characters rate through Scriptube's own key may simply be simpler than managing a second vendor credential. BYOK earns its setup cost once translation volume (or, later, AI transcription volume) is high enough that routing it through your own vendor account meaningfully changes your bill — see scriptube-credits-explained-estimate-before-you-pay to estimate a batch's cost before deciding either way, and translate-youtube-transcript-to-english for how the translation flag works independent of BYOK.

Either way, BYOK is an optional switch, not a requirement for anything else on the plan — translation and, eventually, AI transcription both work fine on Scriptube's own keys if you never touch the BYOK settings at all. Most accounts never need to think about it; it exists for the specific case of a team that already has its own vendor billing to route through.

Check which plan includes BYOK: /ui/pricing.