Product updates
Choose the AI you trust: no lock-in to one provider
Spoon isn't tied to a single AI company. Run the platform on the model you prefer, and bring your own key from the provider you trust.
June 15, 2026 · 8 min read
AI is moving faster than any single company can own. The “best” model changes every few months, prices and terms shift without much warning, and access can be shaped by everything from regional rules to a vendor's own capacity. Against that backdrop, building your hiring on top of exactly one AI company is a quiet, compounding risk. So we made Spoon Hire provider-flexible: you are not locked into a single AI vendor.
The single-vendor risk
Depending on one AI provider is a single point of failure in three different ways, and they tend to arrive uninvited:
- Pricing: a vendor changes rates or repackages tiers, and your unit economics move overnight.
- Availability: outages, rate limits or capacity crunches stall the exact workflows you depend on.
- Policy and access: terms of use, data-handling rules or regional availability shift, and suddenly a model you relied on is off the table for you.
You would never run a serious business on a sole supplier you had no way to switch away from. AI should not be the exception, especially for something as critical as hiring.
Choice, built in
On the bring-your-own-key tier you pick your provider and connect your key, and your matching, interviews and scoring all run on the model you chose. The experience inside Spoon Hire is identical (same questions, same skills-first shortlists, same scoring) because the features are designed around the task, not around one vendor's particular behaviour. Only the engine changes.
That lets each team make the call that fits them: the model they already have a contract with, the one that meets their region's compliance posture, or simply the best price/quality trade-off this quarter. And when that calculus changes, as it always does, switching is a setting, not a migration.
Resilience over dependence
There is a deeper reason this matters for hiring specifically. Hiring is high-stakes and time-sensitive: a stalled pipeline or a sudden cost spike is not an inconvenience, it is roles left unfilled and candidates left waiting. Provider flexibility turns a potential crisis into a non-event. If one vendor has a bad week, or a bad policy change, you (and we) route around it. The platform keeps working; your hiring keeps moving.
Flexibility without changing fairness
One thing that doesn't change with the model is the thing that matters most: fairness. Whichever provider powers an interview, candidates get the same structured, skills-focused conversation, judged on what they say and how they reason, never on appearance or accent. Provider choice is a business-resilience feature; it is not a lever that quietly alters how people are assessed.
Why we built it
Our job is to give you fair, accurate hiring signal, not to marry you to a particular AI brand or to our own vendor relationships. Letting you choose the model keeps you in control of the three things that actually bite: cost, compliance and continuity. We think a hiring platform should be a durable foundation, and durable means not betting everything on one supplier.
Bring your own AI → · How the bring-your-own-key tier works →
Frequently asked
Can I choose which AI model Spoon uses?
Yes. On the bring-your-own-key tier you choose your provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini or Mistral) and connect your key. Spoon's own default is a top-tier model, but the platform isn't locked to a single vendor.
Why does provider choice matter?
Different teams have different preferences, contracts, regions and compliance needs. And vendors change: prices move, terms shift, availability wobbles. Not being tied to one AI company means resilience: if your preferred provider changes, you have options instead of an outage.
Does switching models change how Spoon works?
No. Interviews, matching and scoring work exactly the same way; only the underlying model changes. The features are designed around the task, not around one vendor's quirks.
Is one model 'the best' for hiring?
There's no permanent winner; the leading models trade places constantly. That's the whole point of flexibility: you can use the one that's best (or best for your budget and compliance) today, and switch when that changes.
Does provider flexibility affect candidates?
Not visibly. Candidates get the same fair, structured interview regardless of which model powers it. Flexibility is about resilience and control for the business, not a change to the candidate experience.
Put it into practice with Spoon Hire.
Run fair, skills-first AI interviews and review anonymized, merit-ranked shortlists.