I purchased Pickaxe as an AppSumo Lifetime Deal customer, and one of the important features available and repeatedly confirmed during the LTD period was BYOK (Bring Your Own API Key).

Pickaxe publicly confirmed on AppSumo that:

• July 1, 2024: BYOK provided unlimited uses.
• July 7, 2024: there was no Pickaxe-side usage limit when using your own OpenAI API key.
• July 15, 2024: future BYOK improvements would also benefit AppSumo customers.
• October 17, 2024: using your own API key was again confirmed as providing unlimited usage.

Then, after the Lifetime Deal sales had ended, BYOK was removed. Pickaxe acknowledged this change in December 2025.

For me, this is not a minor feature change. BYOK allowed LTD customers to control their own API provider, billing, limits and usage, and it was an important part of the economics of using Pickaxe at scale.

Replacing BYOK with Pickaxe-managed credits is not equivalent to having direct control of our own API account.

I still think Pickaxe has useful features, but removing a capability that existed and was explicitly promoted to LTD buyers significantly reduces my confidence in the long-term value of the deal.

I hope Pickaxe does the fair thing and restores/grandfathers BYOK for the original AppSumo LTD customers who purchased while this feature was included.