Get a Cerebras key
Who this is for: anyone who wants Cerebras' fast inference through SpiderGate on their own Cerebras Cloud account.
What this does: walks you through adding a payment method, generating a Cerebras API key, and adding it to your SpiderGate vault.
Before you begin
A Cerebras Cloud account at cloud.cerebras.ai.
A verified payment method. Cerebras says that if you skip it at sign-up, "Playground and API access remain inactive until you do".
About 5 minutes.
Limits and terms to know first
Cerebras gives new accounts $5 of credit after you add a verified payment method. It expires 30 days after it is granted. Cerebras answers its own question "Is there a permanently free tier?" with "No." After the trial, you buy credits from the Billing tab; your first purchase moves you to the Developer tier, with higher limits.
Note: SpiderGate's picker used to show Cerebras as a free key with 14,400 requests a day. That free tier is gone, and Cerebras now sits under Pay-as-you-go.
Cerebras' terms say they do not let Cerebras use your content to train or fine-tune models.
Warning: Cerebras' terms say you may not share your credentials "or otherwise transfer your User Account to anyone else", or "Buy, sell or transfer API keys" without its consent. Keep this key to your own brand.
Steps
Step 1 — Generate the key
Sign in at cloud.cerebras.ai and open API Keys in the left navigation. On a paid account, select a project first; trial accounts skip this. Click Generate API Key, give it a name, and confirm. You can copy the full key again later from the list.
Step 2 — Add the key in SpiderGate
Open Gate → Vault (/dashboard/gate/vault) and click Add Provider. Type Cerebras in Search providers... and pick it from the Pay-as-you-go group.
Fill in the dialog:
API Key — paste the key
Label — a name you will recognise later, for example the account it came from.
Under Routing, the Share with SpiderIQ key pool toggle does not apply to a metered key: SpiderGate never pools a key that bills per call, whatever the toggle shows. Switch it off anyway so the dialog matches what happens.
Click Add key. The button reads Saving... while SpiderGate checks the key.
Verify it worked
When you click Add key, SpiderGate sends one request to Cerebras with the key before it stores anything: it lists your models at https://api.cerebras.ai/v1/models.
If Cerebras accepts the key, the dialog closes and the key appears in your vault list.
If it does not, the dialog stays open and shows:
The cerebras key did not pass its check: <reason>. Nothing was saved.The reason is SpiderGate's own wording, never Cerebras's error text. The usual ones are Invalid API key (401 Unauthorized), Access denied (403 Forbidden) and The account behind this key has no credit left (402).
To see the key serve a request, give it a slot in one of your own routing aliases and send a request to that alias. The trace shows which provider answered.
SpiderGate's check proves the key is valid. It does not prove the account has credit: a key on an empty balance can pass the check and then fail on its first real request.
Troubleshoot
Requests fail with a 402. The trial credit is used up or expired. Buy credits from the Billing tab.
Requests fail with a 429. Cerebras says free accounts "have lower per-minute limits than paid accounts".
A key you deleted on Cerebras is still in your vault. Cerebras says deletion is immediate and any app using the key gets 401 errors. Remove it from your vault too.
Too many keys checked for this workspace; try again in …s. SpiderGate runs at most 20 key checks per brand in any 10 minutes. Wait the number of seconds it gives, then click Add key again.
Request timed out (15s) or Could not reach … to check the key. Try again later. The provider did not answer in time. Nothing was saved. Try again in a minute.
The provider is rate-limiting us (429). Try again in a minute. The provider throttled the check itself. Wait a minute and retry.