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Start with prepaid managed Amazon Bedrock

See how purchased credit, a reviewed model catalog, explicit routes, hard budgets, and bounded reloads create a no-provider-key starting path.

For First-time administrators, individuals, small teams, finance owners, and implementation partners · Updated August 18, 2026
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The screens come from the sanitized working sandbox. No customer data, credentials, prompt bodies, or provider responses appear in the recording.

  • English captions and transcript
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  • Reviewed 2026-08-18

Transcript: start without a provider key

Managed Amazon Bedrock is an optional way to begin without bringing a separate provider API key. Your applications still use an AI Gateway HQ workload identity, route, policy, and budget.

1. Fund provider spend first

Activation requires settled purchased credit and a reusable payment authorization. Promotional credit never funds an Amazon Web Services call, and a zero eligible balance stops managed inference before provider dispatch.

2. Choose from the reviewed catalog

The Providers page shows the release-controlled catalog, region, output limit, and exact customer rate per million tokens. Each route target names one reviewed model; the gateway does not silently substitute another.

3. Put a stable route name in front

Create a route alias such as “quality” or “fast,” then add only the models that may serve it. Additional targets provide controlled fallback or distribution while capability, health, policy, and budget remain binding.

4. Set a hard budget

Set a hard budget before issuing a workload key. For managed requests, the gateway reserves conservative exposure before dispatch and reconciles supported provider usage afterward. If the reservation cannot be funded, the request stops.

5. Keep automatic reload bounded

Automatic reload begins disabled. If the owner enables it, a threshold, reload amount, and monthly cap are all required. A pending or failed charge never creates spendable credit.

6. Verify the operational evidence

After each request, the evidence ledger connects workload identity, route, policy outcome, provider attempt, latency, usage, and cost basis. Prompt and response bodies are not written to this ledger by default.

Send the first bounded request

The shortest safe path is to purchase credit, activate managed Bedrock, select one explicit model in a route, set a hard budget, issue one workload key, and send a small non-sensitive test.

Put it into practice

See the working controls behind the guide.

Run a bounded provider simulation without a login, card, key, or model charge. Create a workspace only when you are ready to save controls or connect live traffic.

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