API keys & the free tier

CoursifyYT works with no key at all. Adding your own AI key lifts every limit, and moves the AI call from our server to your browser.

Which key do I need?

One: an AI provider key, from Mistral, OpenAI or Google Gemini. You do not need a YouTube Data API key — listing channels runs on our key for everyone, free or not.

Creating a key, provider by provider

Every provider hands out keys from its web console — free to create, and it takes a couple of minutes. Pick one:

Mistral

1. 1
   Go to the Mistral AI Console and create an account or sign in.
2. 2
   Open the API Keys page. If prompted, activate the free experimentation tier — it covers mistral-large-latest.
3. 3
   Click Create new key, copy it (it's shown only once), and paste it into the extension with Mistral selected.

OpenAI

1. 1
   Sign in at the OpenAI API keys page.
2. 2
   Click Create new secret key, copy it (starts with sk-), and paste it into the extension with OpenAI selected.
3. 3
   OpenAI keys need a small amount of billing credit on the account before they work.

Google Gemini

1. 1
   Open Google AI Studio → API keys and sign in with your Google account.
2. 2
   Click Create API key, copy it, and paste it into the extension with Gemini selected.
3. 3
   Gemini's free tier is generous, and this one key also covers the Overview fallback — a good all-round choice.

Adding your key

1. 1
   Open the popup and click Setup API Keys in the header. (From the in-page panel, the key icon beside Export opens the same screen for you — it glows amber while you're still on our shared keys.)
2. 2
   Pick your provider, paste the key, and save. The key is stored in your browser only and is sent straight to that provider when a course is built.
3. 3
   Optionally fill in Gemini Key — Overview Fallback. This is only used for videos that have no usable captions; see below. It's hidden if you already chose Gemini as your main provider, because that key covers both.

Why there are two key fields

Because Overviews have two ways to build a video breakdown:

• Primary — the video's own captions. Read in your browser, summarized by whichever provider you picked above. This handles the vast majority of videos.
• Fallback — Gemini watches the video. Used only when a video has no caption track, or too little speech to summarize. Gemini is the only model that can do this, hence the separate optional field.

Either key on its own is enough to lift the Overview cap. Leave the fallback field empty and captionless videos simply fall back to our shared key, subject to the free daily limit.

What your key changes