Back to Playlist · VidFarm Walkthrough Tutorial

Part 6 of 33Introduce VidFarm5 min read

Plans & keys

Free vs paid & bring-your-own-key perks

The free tier is $0 and runs on your own computer. The paid plan is a flat $30 for unlimited cloud with your own AI keys. Here's exactly what each includes, and how the five provider tiers change what you can make.

Copies the whole guide — prompts, next steps & all — for your AI agent

Watch this chapter

A tour of the two plans and the Add AI Key dialog: picking a provider, pasting a key, and seeing which features light up on free vs paid.

Key takeaways

Free tier = $0, local-first: run the whole agent on your computer and render locally for free.
Bulk Cloud = a flat $30 for unlimited cloud usage — bring your own AI keys and burst to the cloud.
BYOK keys are never billed by VidFarm — you're only ever charged for compute.
Five provider tiers: OpenAI / Gemini / OpenRouter are full keys; Nvidia is clipping-only and ElevenLabs is audio-only — neither counts as a qualified AI key.

Two plans, one philosophy

VidFarm is built to scale to zero: run it free on your own machine, and only pay when you want the cloud to do the heavy lifting. That gives you two starting points.

Free Tier — $0 — "Enjoy VidFarm FREE on your own computer." The whole agent runs locally and renders locally for free (via vidfarm serve, local ffmpeg, and keyless local engines — Kokoro-82M for TTS and whisper.cpp for transcription). No wallet, no account required to render on your own machine.
Bulk Cloud — $30 — "Unlimited VidFarm usage with BYOK." A flat monthly $30 unlocks unlimited cloud usage; you plug in your own AI keys and burst any job to the cloud.

Illustration

Free · $0Paid · BYOK

Local render✓ free✓ free

Cloud render—✓ from $0.01

Discover feed100-item capUnlimited

Editor & toolsLimitedFull

Pre-decomposed viral library—✓

Bring your own AI keys✓✓

Free runs locally at $0; the paid plan adds cloud, the viral library, and full features.

What unlocks on a paid plan

The free tier is genuinely useful — you can view and edit your Settings , add AI keys, and browse. What a paid plan adds is the cloud side of the house:

A fundable wallet. Free users see a $0 wallet they can't top up — the button reads "Upgrade to add credits →" instead of opening checkout. Paid users fund a real credit wallet and see full billing history.
My Files upload. The upload/explorer card in Settings → Profile only renders for paid accounts.
The full app surface. Free caps the discover feed at 100 items (with a swipe paywall) and makes /library/raws read-only; /chat, /tools/*, /calendar, and the Library (approved / files / logs) are paid-gated behind an upgrade modal.
The pre-decomposed viral library and the scale-learned prompt harness. On free, you decompose a reference video by hand; paid accounts get templates that are already decomposed, so forks skip that step.

What it costs Even on paid, you're only charged for compute — your own AI keys are never billed by VidFarm. And the cheapest edits stay cheap because they lean on the first paintbrush (raw clips) . The full money model is in your wallet, explained .

Bring your own AI keysBYOK — the five provider tiers

Bringing your own AI keys (BYOK) is how you turn on the smart features on any tier — and because those keys are never billed by VidFarm, it's how you keep costs near zero. But not every provider is equal, and two of them trip people up.

From the Settings → Developer card: keys are "Stored per workspace. OpenAI, Gemini, or OpenRouter power clip tagging, recaption, image/video generation, and Swipe — BYOK, never billed by vidfarm." Here are all five:

OpenAI — a full, qualified AI key. Powers the core features: clip tagging, recaption, image/video generation, Swipe, and chat.
Gemini — full, qualified. Same core-feature coverage.
OpenRouter — full, qualified. Its partnered free tier keeps costs near zero.
Nvidia (clipping only) — a lite key (minimax-m3). Great for AI clip hunting and usable for chat and tool calls, but it cannot generate images or video and it's "less smart," so pair it with a full key for the core features. Its partnered free tier is near-zero cost.
ElevenLabs (audio only) — powers music, voiceover, and transcription. It does not count as a qualified AI key. With no ElevenLabs key, music and speech simply run on VidFarm's key and bill your wallet (use_wallet_credits).

Heads up The two most common mix-ups: Nvidia is clipping-only (no image or video generation) and ElevenLabs is audio-only (not a qualified AI key). Both are deliberately limited — always add a full OpenAI, Gemini, or OpenRouter key alongside them for the core features.

Add an AI keyTurn on BYOK

Adding a key works the same on free or paid and takes about thirty seconds:

Open the Developer tab

Go to Settings → Developer and scroll to the "Bring your own AI Keys" card.

Open Settings → Developer
Click "Add AI Key"

The gold "Add AI Key" button opens a dialog titled "Add AI Key" — "Bring your own key — stored per workspace and never billed by vidfarm."
Pick a provider and paste the key

Choose a Provider from the dropdown — OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Nvidia (clipping only), or ElevenLabs (audio only) — add an optional Label, paste the API key, and click "Add AI key". It appears in the list with an "active" pill; remove any with "Remove".

The 'Add AI Key' dialog open over the Developer settings tab, with the Provider dropdown expanded showing all five options: OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Nvidia (clipping only), and ElevenLabs (audio only). Below are a Label field and a masked API key input, with Close and gold 'Add AI key' buttons. — The Add AI Key dialog. The provider dropdown spells out the limits: Nvidia is clipping-only, ElevenLabs is audio-only.

New to a provider? These short walkthroughs show exactly where to create an API key for each of the three full, qualified providers — expand the one you're using:

OpenAI ChatGPT (Recommended)

Create an OpenAI API key and paste it into the Add AI Key dialog.

Google Gemini

Create a Google Gemini API key and paste it into the Add AI Key dialog.

OpenRouter

Create an OpenRouter API key and paste it into the Add AI Key dialog.

🤖 AI Agent · devcli

Add your keys by asking an agent

With the vidfarm skill installed and VIDFARM_API_KEY set, your agent can add and audit provider keys for you:

Paste to your AI agent

Using the vidfarm skill, set up my AI keys:
1. Add my OpenAI key so clip tagging, recaption, and image/video generation work.
2. Add my ElevenLabs key for music and voiceover.
3. List my provider keys to confirm they're stored.
4. Tell me plainly what still runs on my wallet vs. on my own keys — especially for audio.

Or run the raw devcli steps yourself

Terminal

# authenticate first
export VIDFARM_API_KEY=<your key from Settings → Developer>
vidfarm whoami

# add your own keys (never billed by vidfarm)
vidfarm add-provider-key openai sk-...
vidfarm add-provider-key elevenlabs <eleven-key>

# confirm what's stored
vidfarm provider-keys

Note Free-tier accounts can still reach Settings , add these keys, and see a $0 wallet — you just can't fund the wallet until you're on a plan. When you're ready, the full account-setup path is the register & setup chapter.

Where to go next

That's the plan and provider landscape. Next, get your account and keys set up properly, or dig into how the money actually works:

Start free, upgrade when you burst

Run VidFarm free on your own machine, add your own AI keys, and only pay the flat $30 when you want unlimited cloud. Either way, your AI keys are never billed by VidFarm.

Open Settings → Developer