API Keys

Aider lets you specify API keys in a few ways:

On the command line
As environment variables
In a .env file
In your .aider.conf.yml config file

OpenAI and Anthropic

Aider has special support for providing OpenAI and Anthropic API keys via dedicated switches and configuration options. Settings keys for other providers works a bit differently, see below.

Command line

You can set OpenAI and Anthropic API keys via command line switches --openai-api-key and --anthropic-api-key.

Environment variables or .env file

You can also store them in environment variables or a .env file, which also works for every API provider:

OPENAI_API_KEY=<key>
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<key>

YAML config file

You can also set those API keys via special entries in the YAML config file, like this:

openai-api-key: <key>
anthropic-api-key: <key>

Other API providers

All other LLM providers can use one of these other methods to set their API keys.

Command line

Use --api-key provider=<key> which has the effect of setting the environment variable PROVIDER_API_KEY=<key>. So --api-key gemini=xxx would set GEMINI_API_KEY=xxx.

Environment variables or .env file

You can set API keys in environment variables. The .env file is a great place to store your API keys and other provider API environment variables:

GEMINI_API_KEY=foo
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=bar
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=baz

YAML config file

You can also set API keys in the .aider.conf.yml file via the api-key entry:

api-key:
- gemini=foo # Sets env var GEMINI_API_KEY=foo
- openrouter=bar # Sets env var OPENROUTER_API_KEY=bar
- deepseek=baz # Sets env var DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=baz