# Antseed vs Vercel AI Gateway

> Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) to Antseed's 55.1 (C) for model routing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (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.

- Antseed: grade C, 55.1/100, rank #741 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/antseed.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/antseed.json
- Vercel AI Gateway: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #302 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.json
- Best model APIs and inference for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/inference/index.md
- All 326 models comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inference/index.md

## 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 20

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

### Vercel AI Gateway (B)

Good for: Teams that want one key, one bill, budgets and failover in front of many model providers, especially on Vercel with OIDC.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 74 against 62
- Schema & documentation, 74 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 83 against 56
- Security & auth, 79 against 45
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 59

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: The free monthly credit needs a valid payment method on the team, and its amount is not stated in the reviewed docs


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Antseed | Vercel AI Gateway | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 62 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +19 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 83 | Vercel AI Gateway +27 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 45 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +34 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 20 | Antseed +50 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 79 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 70 | Vercel AI Gateway +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **55.1 · C** | **66.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Antseed | Vercel AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model router | Model router |
| Vendor | Antseed Foundation | Vercel Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | GPL-3.0 (LICENSE in the repository). The @antseed/cli manifest on npm carries no licence field | Proprietary service under Vercel's Terms of Service and AI Product Terms, with Token Pass terms on its docs page. Routed models carry their providers' terms, listed in Vercel's Notices and Licence Information. The `@ai-sdk/gateway` provider is Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-05-15 | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 106 stars, 1.8k npm/wk | 29.6M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

## 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.

**Vercel AI Gateway.** Token prices pass through with no markup, prompts are not stored by the gateway, and budgets, provider failover and per-request logs are built in. The free monthly credit needs a card on file, rate limits are not published as numbers, no SLA covers the API, and the contractual promise not to train on content applies to Enterprise subscriptions only.

## 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

### Vercel AI Gateway

1. Read `GET https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1/models` without a key to pick a model ID and check its price, context, ZDR and no-training flags before calling
2. Set `zeroDataRetention` or `disallowPromptTraining` to true in `providerOptions.gateway` on sensitive requests. Default routing ignores provider retention and training policies
3. Treat a 429 as retryable and honour `retry-after` when present. A 402 with `quota_for_entity_exceeded` is a spent budget, so do not retry it
4. On a Token Pass key, a 403 with `no_providers_available` means spent credit or a model outside the pass. Retry with a standard AI Gateway key, which bills credits
5. Set `inferenceRegion` when data residency matters. The default `global` may run inference outside the user's jurisdiction

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Antseed or Vercel AI Gateway?

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (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 Vercel AI Gateway need an API key?

Antseed needs no key. Vercel AI Gateway takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

No hosted endpoint is listed for Antseed. Vercel AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.

### Are Antseed and Vercel 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 Vercel AI Gateway.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antseed-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antseed-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "antseed", "b": "vercel-ai-gateway"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare antseed vercel-ai-gateway`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/antseed.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.json

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- [Claude API vs Vercel AI Gateway](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.md)
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