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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

BlockRun.AI vs Cloudflare AI Gateway

BlockRun.AI scores 72.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Cloudflare AI Gateway's 66.8 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Cloudflare AI Gateway leads on reliability, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do llm inference. BlockRun.AI accepts x402. Cloudflare AI Gateway doesn't.

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

BlockRun.AIBlockRun, Inc. · MCP server BB72.4/100#104 of 950 Cloudflare AI GatewayCloudflare, Inc. · Model router B66.8/100#275 of 950

Which one, for what

BlockRun.AI BB

Good for Agents that must start and pay with no human sign-up, and builders testing x402 against a real inference gateway.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 100 against 52
  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 75

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
  • Runs on your own machine
  • No incidents deducted, where Cloudflare AI Gateway loses 3 points for them

Watch for

The status page shows live checks only and keeps no incident history

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

  • Reliability, 66 against 55
  • Security & auth, 75 against 70
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 65

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 runBlockRun.AICloudflare AI GatewayEdge
Reliability16%205566Cloudflare AI Gateway +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27575even
Agent ergonomics13%16.27073Cloudflare AI Gateway +3
Security & auth14%17.57075Cloudflare AI Gateway +5
Payments & pricing10%12.510052BlockRun.AI +48
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88575BlockRun.AI +10
Transparency & trust7%8.86573Cloudflare AI Gateway +8
Negative events≤150-3
Total72.4 · BB66.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactBlockRun.AICloudflare AI Gateway
KindMCP serverModel router
VendorBlockRun, Inc.Cloudflare, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai
TransportsstdioHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402yespayer tooling only
LicenceMITProprietary 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
Tools exposed19none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-292026-10-06
Terms last updated2026-09-022025-09-12
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-02no 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
Popularity5 stars, 679 PyPI/wk251k npm/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

BlockRun.AI

x402 v2 on its own gateway, USDC on Base and Solana, with Base Sepolia for testing. The status page shows live checks only and keeps no incident history.

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

BlockRun.AI

  1. Fund a dedicated wallet with a small USDC balance. The balance is the spending cap
  2. Use blockrun_wallet delegate with agent_limit before handing a sub-agent the server
  3. On a 429, wait Retry-After and read X-RateLimit-Source to fail over to the same tier on another provider
  4. Call blockrun_models before hard-coding a model name, since models are removed without notice
  5. Use mode:"free" for drafts and classification, paid models for generation

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, BlockRun.AI or Cloudflare AI Gateway?

BlockRun.AI scores 72.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Cloudflare AI Gateway's 66.8 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Cloudflare AI Gateway leads on reliability, security & auth and transparency & trust.

Do BlockRun.AI and Cloudflare AI Gateway need an API key?

BlockRun.AI takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Cloudflare AI Gateway needs an API key. An agent can also pay BlockRun.AI per call over x402, with no account.

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

BlockRun.AI runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Cloudflare AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai.

Other comparisons with BlockRun.AI or Cloudflare AI Gateway

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