How do I give every hackathon team a capped LLM API key?
Give each team one API key on pay as you go with a spend limit; at the limit, that team's key stops and every other team keeps building. A team of four coding with agents for two busy days uses about $19 on GPT-6 Luna or $232 on Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Cost per team for a two-day event
Each person's day is priced from our gateway's coding-agent traffic between September 13 and October 12, 2026, at list prices: the median day for a typical team, the 90th-percentile day for a busy one.
| Team of four | GPT-6 Luna | Sonnet 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Typical days | $1.84 | $28.24 |
| Busy days | $19.04 | $231.76 |
Usage at list prices, four people each coding on both days. The days come from working developers using agents such as OpenCode, Kilo and Roo.
Event budget by number of teams
On GPT-6 Luna, a busy team stays far below a $100 cap. On Sonnet 5.5, it reaches $100 within its first busy day, so either raise the cap or point teams at an efficient model, and tell them the number at kickoff.
| Event | Luna, no cap | Sonnet, no cap | $100 cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 teams | $438 | $5,330 | $2,300 |
| 50 teams | $1,095 | $13,326 | $5,750 |
| 200 teams | $4,379 | $53,305 | $23,000 |
What you pay on pay as you go (usage plus 15%) if every team is busy for both days, on GPT-6 Luna or Claude Sonnet 5.5 with no cap. The $100 cap column is the most you can pay if every team reaches a $100 limit, whatever model they use.
Before the event
There is no bulk import yet, so do this the day before. At about a minute per team, 50 teams take close to an hour and 200 teams more than three.
- In the dashboard sidebar, under Business, choose Create a company and name it after the event.
- On Home, choose + Add an application key. Name it after the team (team-07 works). Leave Plan on Decide later: pay as you go is chosen on the key itself.
- Open the key in People & keys. Under Plan, choose Pay as you go. The first time, add funds to the company balance through Stripe ($50 to $1,000 per payment).
- Under Pay-as-you-go limit per month, choose Set limit and enter the team's cap.
- Choose Copy key and hand it to the team with the base URL https://api.stdcmpt.com/v1, on a card or in a private message. Setup guides: Claude Code, Codex CLI, OpenCode.
During and after the event
- A team at its cap is stopped while the others keep working. You can raise one team's limit from its key in a few seconds.
- Leave Automatic refill off and every key stops when the prepaid balance runs out, so the balance you add is the most the event can spend. A Monthly limit for the whole company on Billing adds a second ceiling.
- Admins see usage and logs for any key, and every top-up comes with an invoice in the company's name for your sponsor or finance team.
- After judging and demos, open each key and choose Revoke key, or end everything at once with Close company in Company settings.
Capped keys elsewhere
| Option | Where the cap sits |
|---|---|
| OpenAI API | A project. A hard monthly spend limit returns HTTP 429 when reached, so each team needs a project |
| Anthropic Console | A workspace. A monthly spend limit per workspace, up to 100 workspaces per organization by default |
| Google Gemini API | A project. Spend caps are experimental and can overshoot by about 10 minutes of usage |
| OpenRouter | A key. A credit limit that resets daily, weekly, monthly or never, and keys can be created through an API |
| Standard Compute | A key. A monthly limit on pay as you go, with the prepaid balance as the event's ceiling |
Checked on each vendor's documentation on October 13, 2026: developers.openai.com (rate limits guide), platform.claude.com (workspaces), ai.google.dev (billing) and openrouter.ai (API keys).
The catch
Key limits reset on the 1st of each month. An event that runs across midnight on the last day of a month gets fresh limits halfway through, so for those dates rely on the prepaid balance, with Automatic refill off, as the real ceiling.
Where Standard Compute fits
Organizers who want every team building with coding agents and a known maximum spend before the event starts. Creating the company is free, and you pay only for what teams use, plus 15%.
FAQ
Should each team share one key, or each hacker get their own?
One key per team is the quickest to set up and caps the team as a whole. A key per person caps each hacker, but means four times the setup. With a team key, every teammate uses the same secret.
What happens when a team reaches its cap?
Its key stops, and every other team keeps working. You can raise that team's limit from the dashboard in a few seconds. The check runs before each request, so one already running can finish slightly past the cap.
How do we make sure the event can't overspend?
Turn Automatic refill off and add only the amount you are willing to spend. When the prepaid balance reaches zero, every pay-as-you-go key stops. Per-team limits decide how that balance is shared.
Which tools can teams use?
Anything that speaks the OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible API at https://api.stdcmpt.com/v1, including Claude Code (through ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL), Codex CLI, OpenCode and Cline, and any OpenAI-compatible SDK for the app itself.
What if a team pushes its key to a public repository?
Open the key and choose Rotate key. The old secret stops working immediately, the team gets a new one, and its spend so far stays on the key, so the cap still counts it.
Do you give hackathons free credits or sponsorship?
No. There is no credit or sponsorship program. You pay for usage plus 15% from the event's prepaid balance, and unused balance stays on the company for your next event.