Accounts and costs
Service credits, BYOK and trading funds: what is the difference?
Separate software subscriptions, prepaid service credits, AI-provider usage and the funds in your own trading account.
Service credits are for platform services, not trading capital. Your trading funds stay in your own venue account. BYOK means you supply an eligible AI-provider API key and pay that provider directly. TradeTwin's optional hosted OpenRouter model is planned to use prepaid credits at verified provider cost plus a 30% service surcharge.
Keep software payments separate from deposits
Paying for software does not deposit money into a brokerage or exchange account. It does not buy an asset or fund a margin position. Likewise, a venue balance is not a TradeTwin service-credit balance. This distinction matters when reviewing a bill: software entitlement, setup work and AI usage describe services, while trade fees, market exposure and account equity belong to your own trading relationship with the venue.
What does bring your own key mean?
BYOK gives a configured private assistant access to the AI provider you select using your own API key. You remain responsible for that provider's eligibility, model access and usage charges. Questions, plan text and retrieved passages may be sent to the selected provider only with the applicable consent. Use the encrypted key settings, not a public chat message. Saving a key is not proof of model availability and does not perform an automatic paid probe.
What is the optional hosted AI model?
The planned hosted choice uses the platform's OpenRouter connection instead of a customer's provider key. Tony's confirmed pricing policy is the verified actual OpenRouter request cost plus a 30% service surcharge. Customers must have credit before a paid request. A maximum budget reservation and actual-cost reconciliation are needed; guessed token estimates must not be represented as a settled bill. Hosted activation, final tariffs and payment readiness remain launch gates.
What is available in the public pilot?
Public registration has no charge and creates a workspace request, not an active trading account. Monthly software prices and the payable setup tariff have not been approved. Payment collection is not enabled in this pilot. The planned prepaid service-credit flow must rely on verified settled payments, with clear transaction history and entitlement rules. Do not infer that seeing a billing screen means a card charge, top-up or hosted model call is already active.
What happens if AI access is unavailable?
An unavailable provider or missing credit cannot be treated as a reason to invent a new plan. New paid inference must respect its budget gate. Existing broker protection and verified position management need independent handling so model billing cannot silently remove protective orders. The exact service and account behavior must be checked before activation. A personal ChatGPT subscription is not currently accepted as a substitute for API billing in this pilot.
Questions worth asking
Can service credits be used as trading capital?
No. They are intended for platform services. They do not represent a venue deposit, ownership of cryptocurrency or permission to trade. Your account funds remain with the trading platform you use.
Does BYOK include unlimited AI usage?
No. Your provider sets availability and usage costs. Platform limits may also apply. Using an external AI through private MCP avoids a TradeTwin hosted inference call, but that external AI may charge you under its own plan.
Are subscription prices and checkout live?
No final payable tariff or public checkout is enabled in this pilot. The software-fee, setup and hosted-usage policies must be clearly presented and activated only after payment and service-readiness verification.