---
title: "AI API without KYC: an email and a card, or crypto"
canonical: https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/ai-api-without-kyc
generated: 2026-10-20T20:28:48.832Z
source: https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/ai-api-without-kyc
base_url: https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1
---

# AI API without KYC: an email and a card, or crypto

What an AI API without KYC means, what Anthropic's and OpenAI's consoles ask for at signup, and what we ask instead: an email and prepaid credit from $10.

October 19, 2026·UplinkSwitch·[All posts](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog)

An AI API without KYC is one that never asks for a government ID, a phone number or a business registration before you pay and call a model. Here the signup is an email with our payment processor and a prepaid top-up from $10, by card or crypto. That key reaches 163 chat models, Claude and GPT among them, through one base URL.

This page says exactly what we ask for and what we store, sets that next to what Anthropic's and OpenAI's own consoles ask for on their pages (read 2026-10-19), and separates no-KYC from no-log, which the search results mix up.

## What an AI API without KYC means

KYC, know your customer, is the identity check a bank runs before it opens an account. Applied to a model API, it means the provider wants to know who you are before it sells you tokens. [Venice's 2026 guide](https://venice.ai/blog/what-is-no-kyc-ai) (2026-09-03, read 2026-10-19) defines a no-KYC AI service as one that “does not require government identity verification before you use or pay for it”.

That definition leaves room for an email. An email is a mailbox, not an identity: nothing on it says who holds it. A phone number from a supported country, a passport scan or a tax identifier is identity, and those are the things a no-KYC API never asks for.

It also says nothing about logging. The page that ranks for the distinction, [nhimg.org's FAQ](https://nhimg.org/faq/what-is-the-difference-between-no-kyc-ai-and-no-log-ai/) (2026-09-25, read 2026-10-19), puts it this way: no-KYC AI “does not require government identity documents before access or payment”, and no-log AI means “prompts and outputs are not retained after inference, or are retained only in limited ways”. A provider can be one without the other. The section on what we store answers both for this key.

## What UplinkSwitch asks for

Three things, in order: an account with our payment processor, a top-up, a key.

1.  **Sign in.** The console signs you in through an account with our payment processor. There is no password on our side, no magic link and no form of ours asking for a name. What reaches us from that account is the email address.
2.  **Top up.** Credit is prepaid from $10, by card or crypto through our payment processor, with no subscription. The processor runs the checkout and holds the payment details; UplinkSwitch never sees your card number. Each paid top-up locks the rates you pay for 30 days, and billing takes the lowest live rate inside that window.
3.  **Create a key.** The console creates, renames, pauses and revokes keys. The full key is shown once. A revoked key stops working within 60 seconds. Each key can carry a monthly spend limit, counted over the UTC month; past it, requests answer 402 `monthly_limit_reached`.

We searched the gateway and the site code for any product requirement named identity, phone or KYC on 2026-10-19 and found none: no government ID, no phone number, no business verification, at signup or later. The one gate on the account side is money: with no credit, requests answer 402 `insufficient_balance` until a top-up.

The page that ranked first for “anonymous ai api” on 2026-10-19 scored APIs on three things: signup with no email, payment in crypto, and whether your identity travels with your prompts. On that rubric we pass two. Crypto is accepted, and a request goes to the model host with its content and none of your account on it. We do ask for an email, so a wallet-only service beats us on the first point, and the table below names one.

## What the developer consoles ask for, read 2026-10-19

Each row is from the provider's own page on the date above, with the page linked. Where a page does not say something, the row says so instead of guessing.

| Service | Signup | Identity check | Payment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Anthropic Console | Google account, email link or SSO; no password | See the note on phone numbers below | Prepaid Console credit |
| OpenAI API | OpenAI account | Government ID and a selfie, when asked, before some models and features | Not stated on the verification page |
| Venice API | Not stated in the article | None, by its own definition | Card, Bitcoin or USDC, by its article |
| TrustedRouter | Google, GitHub or a MetaMask wallet | None for wallet-funded use | x402 per request, prepaid card credit or your own keys |
| UplinkSwitch | Email with our payment processor | None | Card or crypto, prepaid from $10 |

Each row from the linked page, read 2026-10-19. Payment columns for other services are what their pages name, not a full list.

**Anthropic.** The Console is the developer's own key, with workspaces, key expiration, service accounts and an Admin API, all documented on [the API key page](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/get-api-key); credit is prepaid, per the billing article linked from our [Claude API key post](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/claude-api-key) (read 2026-10-18). Its [login article](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13371040-log-in-to-your-console-account) lists Google, an email link and SSO, and says “It's not possible to create a dedicated password for your Console account at this time”. On phone numbers, Anthropic's [verification article](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8287232-verify-your-phone-number) says of a Claude account: “We require phone verification for all new users, and there isn't a way to skip this step”, with no VoIP or app-created numbers accepted. The login article calls a Claude account and a Console account separate, and neither page says whether Console signup asks for a phone, so we do not claim it either way.

**OpenAI.** The verification article is plain that verification is for “certain products, features, models, or programs”, not for the API as a whole, and that an account that is not approved keeps its existing access. When it applies, identity verification takes “an original, physical government-issued ID from one of our supported countries and territories, plus a device that can capture a clear image of your ID and, if requested, a selfie”, and one person can verify one organization. Business verification asks for the legal name, address and a tax identifier. The article does not name which models sit behind the check ([help.openai.com](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10910291-api-organization-verification), updated the same day it was read).

**Venice.** Venice wrote the definition this page opens with and sells to it: its guide says it takes cards, Bitcoin and USDC (2026-09-03). Pick it when the definition itself is what you want, from the company that wrote it.

**TrustedRouter.** The strongest answer to the no-email criterion. Its page offers “x402 pay-per-request for agents and scripts”, MetaMask sign-in with “no traditional account needed”, and states “There is no credit card and no KYC step for wallet-funded usage”. It also says it never logs prompt or output content, with an opt-in batch API that keeps encrypted artifacts up to 30 days ([its page](https://trustedrouter.com/anonymous-llm-api), catalog snapshot dated 2026-10-19). Pick it when you want no mailbox in the loop at all.

**UplinkSwitch.** An email and prepaid credit. What it adds is the developer models at a discount on the same key as the open-weight and [uncensored builds](https://uplinkswitch.ai/uncensored), a signed receipt on every non-streamed answer, and a daily public check that the model named is the model that answered.

## What is stored, and what the model host sees

No-KYC says what we do not ask. This is what we do keep, from the [privacy page](https://uplinkswitch.ai/privacy) (last updated 2026-10-18):

-   From checkout: the email address and the amount paid, as our payment processor reports them.
-   Each API key as a salted hash, with its name, status, limits and timestamps. The key itself is shown once and not stored.
-   One usage record per request: request id, model, host, mode, token counts by class, where those counts came from, and the charge.
-   The ledger: top-ups, charges, refunds and disputes.
-   SHA-256 fingerprints of each request and response, never the text, so a signed receipt can show what was billed. Large system prompts are fingerprinted for 7 days to find prompts many accounts send and cache them; `x-uplink-crowd-cache: off` on a request skips that.
-   Where your first visit came from: the referring site, campaign tags and landing page, saved when your first sign-in creates the account.

Not stored: request and response bodies. Prompts and completions pass through the gateway and are not written anywhere, unless you turn on replay for a key, which keeps that key's request bodies for 7 days so a request can be sent again to another model.

The model host does see your prompt. Every model on the list is served by model hosting providers under contract with UplinkSwitch, and they receive the request and response content for each call. What they do not receive is your account. We read the gateway code that builds the outgoing request on 2026-10-19: it carries the body, the content-type and accept headers, the format headers the SDK sent, and UplinkSwitch's own credential for that host. Your key, your email and your account id are not on it. For the retention side of this, the [no-logs LLM API post](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/no-logs-llm-api) goes request by request.

Two more controls are yours. The console's account page takes an account deletion request, handled by a person; usage records and ledger entries stay as accounting records after an account closes. And every non-streamed answer carries an `x-uplink-receipt` header, a signed statement of which model answered, what was billed, and the hashes of the request and response, which anyone can check at [/statements/verify](https://uplinkswitch.ai/statements/verify) without an account.

## What no-KYC does not mean here

Not asking who you are is not the same as not caring what the key does. The [terms](https://uplinkswitch.ai/terms) have one line on it: “Keys used to break a provider's usage policies, or to attack the service, may be revoked.” You are responsible for every request made with your keys, including the ones your users send through your app.

So the honest pitch is narrow. No ID, no phone, no business papers, no name field. A key that is used to break a model developer's policy on that developer's model gets closed. For requests a developer's policy declines, the [uncensored LLM API](https://uplinkswitch.ai/uncensored) page lists the open-weight builds that answer on the same key.

## Call a model with the key

One base URL, `https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1`, and the key in an `Authorization: Bearer` header. Every chat model takes the OpenAI format, so the OpenAI SDK reaches Claude, GPT, Gemini and the open-weight models with two settings changed. A key in the URL is refused.

curl

```
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-your-key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-5-5",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in five words."}]
  }'
```

python · OpenAI SDK

```
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1",
    api_key="sk-uplink-your-key",
)

reply = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-5-5",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in five words."}],
)
print(reply.choices[0].message.content)
```

The Claude models also answer the Anthropic format at `https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/messages`, which is what Claude Code and the Anthropic SDK send. `GET /v1/models` lists every id your key can call, and streams pass through unchanged. Setup for each tool is in the [SDK guide](https://uplinkswitch.ai/guides/sdks).

## What the same models cost on this key

Not asking for an ID would matter less if the price were the catch. These are the developer's list prices next to ours, per million tokens, from the live catalog at render.

| Model | List in / out | Here in / out | Under list |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Claude Opus 5.5](https://uplinkswitch.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5) | $4.00 / $20.00 | $2.10 / $6.00 | 47% in, 70% out |
| [Claude Sonnet 5.5](https://uplinkswitch.ai/models/claude-sonnet-5-5) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $1.20 / $3.00 | 40% in, 70% out |
| [GPT-6.1 Sol](https://uplinkswitch.ai/models/gpt-6.1-sol) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.60 / $3.00 | 70% under |
| [Gemini 4 Argon](https://uplinkswitch.ai/models/gemini-4-argon) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.60 / $3.00 | 70% under |

USD per million tokens, developer list price and ours, from the live catalog. The [LLM API pricing comparison](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/llm-api-pricing-2026) has every chat model with a calculator.

A discount invites the question of whether the model named is the model answering. Once a UTC day every model on the key gets the same fixed test prompt, and the input token count is a tokenizer fingerprint: a swapped model or added hidden instructions shows as a changed count. At the last check, on Oct 20, 82 of the 131 models checked were stable. The verdicts are public at [/proof](https://uplinkswitch.ai/proof), with the [method](https://uplinkswitch.ai/proof/method).

## Questions

**Is there a completely free AI API?** Not here. Every request bills per token from prepaid credit, which starts at $10 with no subscription. The lists that rank for this search are about free tiers, which is a different question from whether a provider asks who you are.

**Can I use the ChatGPT API without a subscription?** A ChatGPT subscription and an API key are different products, and a subscription does not come with a key. On this key, the GPT models bill per token from prepaid credit with no subscription: GPT-6.1 Sol is $0.60 per million input tokens and $3.00 per million output, from the live catalog.

**Is there a free OpenAI API key available?** Not from us. We issue keys only to accounts with credit on them, and the key reaches 163 chat models, GPT included, through the same base URL. Where OpenAI itself asks for verification before some models, the requirement is a physical government-issued ID, by its own help article (read 2026-10-19).

**Is an AI API without KYC the same as a no-log AI API?** No. No-KYC is about what the provider asks for before you pay; no-log is about what it keeps after a request. Here the two are separate facts: no government ID or phone number at signup, and no request or response bodies stored unless you turn on replay for a key. See [no-logs LLM API](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/no-logs-llm-api).

**Can I use the Claude API without verification?** The Claude models on this key answer the Anthropic format and the OpenAI format with no Console account at Anthropic: an email with our payment processor and prepaid credit are the whole signup. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is $1.20 in and $3.00 out per million tokens here, against $2.00 and $10.00 on Anthropic's list. See [how to get a Claude API key](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/claude-api-key).

**Which crypto do you accept?** Crypto through our payment processor, at checkout under more payment methods, for any top-up from $10. The processor runs the checkout and holds the payment details; UplinkSwitch sees the email address and the amount paid.

**What does UplinkSwitch store about me?** The email address and the amount paid from checkout, each API key as a salted hash with its name and limits, one usage record per request with token counts and the charge, the ledger of balance changes, and SHA-256 fingerprints of each request and response. Request and response bodies are not stored unless replay is on for a key, which keeps them 7 days. See [the privacy page](https://uplinkswitch.ai/privacy).

**What do the Reddit and GitHub threads for "ai api without kyc" point to?** Mostly free-key lists and no-auth demo endpoints, which answer a different question: how to call a model for $0. If the question is which API never asks for an ID or a phone number, the answer is in the table above, with each provider’s own page as the source.

[Get a key](https://uplinkswitch.ai/console): prepaid from $10, no subscription, 30-day price lock.

## Related

-   [No logs LLM API: what is stored](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/no-logs-llm-api)
-   [What UplinkSwitch stores](https://uplinkswitch.ai/privacy)
-   [Terms](https://uplinkswitch.ai/terms)
-   [How to get a Claude API key](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/claude-api-key)
-   [LLM API pricing comparison, October 2026](https://uplinkswitch.ai/blog/llm-api-pricing-2026)
-   [Uncensored LLM API](https://uplinkswitch.ai/uncensored)
-   [Verify a signed statement](https://uplinkswitch.ai/statements/verify)
-   [Daily real-model check](https://uplinkswitch.ai/proof)
-   [SDK setup](https://uplinkswitch.ai/guides/sdks)
-   [Claude Sonnet 5.5](https://uplinkswitch.ai/models/claude-sonnet-5-5)
-   [GPT-6.1 Sol](https://uplinkswitch.ai/models/gpt-6.1-sol)