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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Cloudflare AI Gateway vs GroqCloud

GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Cloudflare AI Gateway's 66.8 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Cloudflare AI Gateway leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

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

Cloudflare AI GatewayCloudflare, Inc. · Model router B66.8/100#275 of 950 GroqCloudGroq · Model API BB75.6/100#44 of 950

Which one, for what

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 64
  • Payments & pricing, 52 against 40

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

GroqCloud BB

Good for Many small, latency-sensitive calls on open-weight models, routing, extraction and classification, and agents that need to start free.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 100 against 66
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 73
  • Transparency & trust, 85 against 73

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Cloudflare AI Gateway loses 3 points for them

Watch for

Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare AI GatewayGroqCloudEdge
Reliability16%2066100GroqCloud +34
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27564Cloudflare AI Gateway +11
Agent ergonomics13%16.27380GroqCloud +7
Security & auth14%17.57577GroqCloud +2
Payments & pricing10%12.55240Cloudflare AI Gateway +12
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87572Cloudflare AI Gateway +3
Transparency & trust7%8.87385GroqCloud +12
Negative events≤15-30
Total66.8 · B75.6 · BB

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare AI GatewayGroqCloud
KindModel routerModel API
VendorCloudflare, Inc.Groq
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/aihttps://api.groq.com/openai/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402payer tooling onlyno
LicenceProprietary 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-ClauseApache-2.0 (SDKs)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-09-21
Terms last updated2025-09-122026-06-22
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2025-11-12
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity251k npm/wk619 stars
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (8)

Verdicts

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.

GroqCloud

Free plan with no card, at 30 requests a minute and 1,000 a day on gpt-oss. Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice.

Before you call either

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

GroqCloud

  1. Call /models at start-up. Four model ids stopped working this quarter
  2. Read retry-after on a 429 and the x-ratelimit-remaining-tokens header before the next call
  3. Free plan allows 8,000 tokens a minute on gpt-oss, so keep prompts small or batch them
  4. Don't build on Qwen 3.8 27B. It's a preview and previews can go at short notice
  5. Treat a 498 as Flex capacity and retry later; 5xx responses aren't billed

Questions

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

GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Cloudflare AI Gateway's 66.8 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Cloudflare AI Gateway leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing.

Do Cloudflare AI Gateway and GroqCloud need an API key?

Both need an API key.

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

Yes. Cloudflare AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai and GroqCloud at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1.

Other comparisons with Cloudflare AI Gateway or GroqCloud

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