The BYOK Advantage in Options Software
Bring Your Own Key, shortened to BYOK, means the Cipher platform never holds, caches or resells market data. Each trader connects a personal broker key and the data travels from that broker directly to that trader's browser.
What does BYOK mean in the Cipher platform?
BYOK means the Cipher platform computes positioning analytics using a trader's own broker API key rather than a feed Obsidian licenses and resells. The Obsidian desk supplies the mathematics and the interface, while the trader supplies the entitlement, so no market data is ever redistributed by Obsidian.
How does BYOK improve execution speed?
A shared vendor feed adds hops: the broker sends to the vendor, the vendor caches and normalises, then the vendor serves subscribers on a schedule. BYOK deletes the middle hops entirely. A trader's key pulls the chain directly, so the only latency remaining is the broker connection itself.
Why does BYOK give better privacy?
Under BYOK the Obsidian desk never sees which symbols a trader loads, because requests are issued with the trader's own credentials rather than proxied through Obsidian infrastructure. A conventional vendor necessarily logs every query each subscriber makes, which builds a record of that subscriber's watchlist.
Why does BYOK allow uncapped customisation?
Vendors cap requests because every subscriber query costs the vendor money against a licensed feed. Under BYOK the cost sits with the trader's own broker entitlement, so the Cipher platform imposes no daily request ceiling, no symbol restriction, and no limit on how many expirations load at once.
Frequently asked questions
Does BYOK mean I pay twice?
Most supported broker accounts include the option chain entitlement Cipher needs at no additional cost. A trader pays Obsidian for the terminal and the desk, not for the data.
Is BYOK harder to set up than a normal subscription?
Connecting a key is a one time step that takes a few minutes. The Obsidian desk walks every new member through the connection process directly in the Discord server.
What happens to my key?
The key is used to authorise the trader's own requests and is never used to trade on the trader's behalf. Full detail sits on the Cipher data privacy page.