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Head to head · Model routing · October 2026 research run

Antseed vs Cloudflare AI Gateway

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Antseed's 55.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Antseed leads on payments & pricing. Both do model routing.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 136 models comparisons

AntseedAntseed Foundation · Model router C55.1/100#667 of 950 Cloudflare AI GatewayCloudflare, Inc. · Model router B66.8/100#275 of 950

Which one, for what

Antseed C

Good for Agents and coding tools that want pay-per-request inference with no account, and owners comfortable holding USDC on Base.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 70 against 52

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The buyer proxy copies a client's Authorization and x-api-key headers to the seller. The repository's March 2026 review flagged it and issue #1104 is open

Cloudflare AI Gateway B

Good for Teams that already hold a Cloudflare account and want one token, one bill, logs, budgets and fallbacks in front of several model providers, or that want to keep their own provider keys behind a proxy with spend limits.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 75 against 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 73 against 56
  • Security & auth, 75 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 59

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

API tokens are account-scoped. Any token with AI Gateway Run can send requests through every gateway in the account and spend its stored provider keys

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAntseedCloudflare AI GatewayEdge
Reliability16%206266Cloudflare AI Gateway +4
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25575Cloudflare AI Gateway +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.25673Cloudflare AI Gateway +17
Security & auth14%17.54575Cloudflare AI Gateway +30
Payments & pricing10%12.57052Antseed +18
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87975Antseed +4
Transparency & trust7%8.85973Cloudflare AI Gateway +14
Negative events≤15-4-3
Total55.1 · C66.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactAntseedCloudflare AI Gateway
KindModel routerModel router
VendorAntseed FoundationCloudflare, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402nopayer tooling only
LicenceGPL-3.0 (LICENSE in the repository). The @antseed/cli manifest on npm carries no licence fieldProprietary service under Cloudflare's Self-Serve Subscription Agreement and its service-specific terms. Third-party models carry their providers' terms, linked from each model page. ai-gateway-provider is MIT and Cloudflare's OpenAPI repository is BSD-3-Clause
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-06
Terms last updated2026-05-152025-09-12
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity106 stars, 1.8k npm/wk251k npm/wk

Verdicts

Antseed

A buyer needs no account. The CLI creates a wallet key, free models answer at once and paid ones draw on deposited USDC, with seller, tokens and cost returned in response headers. Sellers are unvetted and can read prompts unless TEE-verified, the proxy forwards a client's own credential headers to them, and every package is pre-1.0.

Cloudflare AI Gateway

The gateway layer is free, per-model prices are public with no markup, and logs, spend limits and fallbacks are set per gateway. API tokens cannot be limited to one gateway, the service terms take third-party models outside Cloudflare's DPA, no SLA names the product, and error codes changed on 6 October 2026 with same-day notice.

Before you call either

Antseed

  1. Send a placeholder key such as antseed-p2p. The proxy forwards whatever Authorization or x-api-key header the client sends to the seller
  2. Call GET /v1/models first and request a concrete id. The antseed alias works only when the desktop app has a model selected
  3. Handle 402 insufficient_deposits by reading suggestedAmount, then fund the address from antseed buyer deposit with USDC on Base
  4. Pass --verifiers antseed-verifier --require-verifier to antseed buyer start when prompts are private, so only TEE-verified sellers are routed
  5. Read x-antseed-peer-id and x-antseed-estimated-cost-usd on each response, and pin a seller with <peerId>@<model> when the same one must answer

Cloudflare AI Gateway

  1. Use the REST API at api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai/v1 with a token holding Workers AI Read. A token with only an AI Gateway permission returns 401 with code 10000
  2. Send cf-aig-gateway-id on every Workers AI (@cf/) call and on dynamic routes. Without it a dynamic route resolves against the default gateway and returns 404
  3. Set cf-aig-collect-log: false or cf-aig-collect-log-payload: false on sensitive requests. Logging of prompts and responses is on by default
  4. Treat a 429 as a rate limit or a spent budget and a 401 with code 2009 as a rejected provider key. Do not retry a 2009
  5. Set byok_only on the gateway or send cf-aig-no-wholesale: true to stop a request without a provider key falling through to paid Unified Billing credits

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Antseed or Cloudflare AI Gateway?

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Antseed's 55.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Antseed leads on payments & pricing.

Do Antseed and Cloudflare AI Gateway need an API key?

Antseed needs no key. Cloudflare AI Gateway needs an API key.

Can an agent call Antseed and Cloudflare AI Gateway without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Antseed. Cloudflare AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai.

Are Antseed and Cloudflare AI Gateway open source?

Antseed is open source (GPL-3.0 (LICENSE in the repository). The @antseed/cli manifest on npm carries no licence field). No open-source release is listed for Cloudflare AI Gateway.

Other comparisons with Antseed or Cloudflare AI Gateway

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