LiteLLM Proxy - Virtual keys, budgets and rate limits documentation

Fetched 2026-10-04. Virtual keys require an external Postgres (DATABASE_URL) plus a master key - so cost attribution and quota are stateful and backed by a database, not an in-process counter. Key generation is an HTTP endpoint (/key/generate) with an explicit user_id. The doc states inheritance is deliberately non-uniform: 'Model access and MCP access are always evaluated against the key row itself, while management-route access is decided by the role of the owning user, which is why a key owned by a proxy admin can call admin endpoints.' Table of what a key inherits: models ('Nothing when the key belongs to a team'), management routes ('The owner's role in full. If the owner is proxy_admin, every non-admin route restriction is skipped'), MCP ('the owner's MCP entitlement as a ceiling, never as a grant'). This is the auth surface a gateway adds and the config surface where a misconfiguration turns a caller's key into an admin key.