Remember: KYSS!
Keep Your Secrets Safe
Gate/AI allows you to add 3rd party APIs (like OpenAI, Anthropic, etc) to your mobile app, without shipping any secrets.
PSA for Mobile Devs: Shipping secrets in your app is a terrible idea. Did you know it's trivial to steal an API key from most APIs, especially AI providers?
Avoiding BYOK is now even easier with the new advanced, token-based rate limiting we just rolled out. You can tie rate limits to your end-users' subscription period. That's the last piece of the puzzle for keeping AI costs tied to a fixed percentage of what you bring in.
Bring Your Own Key - BYOK - is user hostile.
It actively prevents conversions to paying customers. It's a hassle no normie wants to go through. (Nor could they even with a 20 step illustrated process)
1/ BYOK feels like the easiest way to add AI to a mobile app when you don’t run a backend.
You just ask users to provide their own API key and let them deal with the cost.
High fives all around. Everyone wins. Right?
Well... you want people to use your app. right? You've just
You’re adding AI to an iOS app. The feature works. Then you hit the uncomfortable question:
Where does the API key go?
You don’t have a backend. You don’t want to build one. But shipping the key means anyone can steal it.
A study of 444 iOS apps shows what typically happens…