# BlockRun.AI vs Cloudflare AI Gateway

> BlockRun.AI scores 72.4 (BB) to Cloudflare AI Gateway's 66.8 (B) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-cloudflare-ai-gateway
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-cloudflare-ai-gateway.md (~2,950 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-cloudflare-ai-gateway.min.md (~830 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-cloudflare-ai-gateway.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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.

- BlockRun.AI: grade BB, 72.4/100, rank #104 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/blockrun-ai.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/blockrun-ai.json
- Cloudflare AI Gateway: grade B, 66.8/100, rank #275 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cloudflare-ai-gateway.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cloudflare-ai-gateway.json
- Best model APIs and inference for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/inference/index.md
- All 136 models comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inference/index.md

## 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

| Category | Weight | BlockRun.AI | Cloudflare AI Gateway | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 66 | Cloudflare AI Gateway +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 75 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 73 | Cloudflare AI Gateway +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 75 | Cloudflare AI Gateway +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 100 | 52 | BlockRun.AI +48 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 75 | BlockRun.AI +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 73 | Cloudflare AI Gateway +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **72.4 · BB** | **66.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | BlockRun.AI | Cloudflare AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | Model router |
| Vendor | BlockRun, Inc. | Cloudflare, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai` |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | yes | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary 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 exposed | 19 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-02 | 2025-09-12 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-02 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| 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 | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 5 stars, 679 PyPI/wk | 251k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with BlockRun.AI or Cloudflare AI Gateway

- [Claude API vs BlockRun.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-blockrun-ai.md)
- [Claude API vs Cloudflare AI Gateway](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-cloudflare-ai-gateway.md)
- [Antseed vs BlockRun.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antseed-vs-blockrun-ai.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs Cloudflare Workers AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-cloudflare-workers-ai.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs Cohere Chat API (Command models)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-cohere-chat.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs DeepInfra](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-deepinfra.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs DeepSeek API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-deepseek-api.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs Gemini Developer API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-gemini-api.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs GroqCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-groq.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs Mistral AI API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-mistral-api.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs Novita AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-novita-ai.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs OpenAI API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-openai-api.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs OpenRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-openrouter.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs Prism Inference](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-prism-inference.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs SambaCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-sambanova.md)
- [BlockRun.AI vs SiliconFlow](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blockrun-ai-vs-siliconflow.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Cloudflare Workers AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-cloudflare-workers-ai.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Cohere Chat API (Command models)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-cohere-chat.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs DeepInfra](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-deepinfra.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs DeepSeek API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-deepseek-api.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Gemini Developer API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-gemini-api.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs GroqCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-groq.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Mistral AI API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-mistral-api.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Novita AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-novita-ai.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs OpenAI API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-openai-api.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs OpenRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-openrouter.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Prism Inference](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-prism-inference.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs SambaCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-sambanova.md)
- [Cloudflare AI Gateway vs SiliconFlow](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway-vs-siliconflow.md)
- [Antseed vs Cloudflare AI Gateway](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antseed-vs-cloudflare-ai-gateway.md)