# BlockRun.AI vs Vercel AI Gateway

> BlockRun.AI scores 72.4 (BB) to Vercel AI Gateway's 66.7 (B) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

BlockRun.AI scores 72.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Vercel AI Gateway's 66.7 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Vercel AI Gateway leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do llm inference. BlockRun.AI accepts x402. Vercel AI Gateway doesn't.

- BlockRun.AI: grade BB, 72.4/100, rank #108 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/blockrun-ai.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/blockrun-ai.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

### 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 20
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 79

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
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 3.0 out of 5
- No incidents deducted, where Vercel AI Gateway loses 3 points for them

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

### 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 55
- Agent ergonomics, 83 against 70
- Security & auth, 79 against 70
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 65

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 | BlockRun.AI | Vercel AI Gateway | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +19 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 74 | BlockRun.AI +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 83 | Vercel AI Gateway +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 100 | 20 | BlockRun.AI +80 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 79 | BlockRun.AI +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 70 | Vercel AI Gateway +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **72.4 · BB** | **66.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | BlockRun.AI | Vercel AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | Model router |
| Vendor | BlockRun, Inc. | Vercel Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1` |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | yes | no |
| Licence | MIT | 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 |
| Tools exposed | 19 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-02 | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-02 | 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 | 5 stars, 679 PyPI/wk | 29.6M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (4) |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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, BlockRun.AI or Vercel AI Gateway?

BlockRun.AI scores 72.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Vercel AI Gateway's 66.7 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Vercel AI Gateway leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust.

### Do BlockRun.AI and Vercel AI Gateway need an API key?

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

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

BlockRun.AI runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Vercel AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.


## For agents

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

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

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