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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Novita AI

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Novita AI's 53.5 (D), and leads in every scored category. 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 Novita AINovita AI · Model API D53.5/100#706 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

  • Reliability, 66 against 28
  • Schema & documentation, 75 against 62
  • Security & auth, 75 against 65
  • Payments & pricing, 52 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 62
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 56

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

Novita AI D

Good for Agents that want many open-weight models at per-token prices behind one OpenAI-style key, with keys that can be limited by model, IP and expiry.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Cloudflare AI Gateway loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No status page or SLA was found on the home page, the docs index or the docs site map. The home page states 99.5% uptime with no supporting document

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare AI GatewayNovita AIEdge
Reliability16%206628Cloudflare AI Gateway +38
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27562Cloudflare AI Gateway +13
Agent ergonomics13%16.27372Cloudflare AI Gateway +1
Security & auth14%17.57565Cloudflare AI Gateway +10
Payments & pricing10%12.55235Cloudflare AI Gateway +17
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87562Cloudflare AI Gateway +13
Transparency & trust7%8.87356Cloudflare AI Gateway +17
Negative events≤15-30
Total66.8 · B53.5 · D

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare AI GatewayNovita AI
KindModel routerModel API
VendorCloudflare, Inc.Novita AI
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/aihttps://api.novita.ai/openai
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
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-ClauseProprietary service under the Novita AI Terms of Service. The agent skill and the MCP server are MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-09-28
Terms last updated2025-09-122026-08-05
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-05-13
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 textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity251k npm/wk6 stars, 1.4k npm/wk

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.

Novita AI

Per-token prices for about 140 language models are public, and each key can carry an expiry, a model allowlist and a source IP allowlist. No status page, SLA or security.txt was found, the per-model rate limit figures are drawn by script, and both vendor SDK repositories are archived while the docs still point to them.

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

Novita AI

  1. Set the OpenAI client base URL to https://api.novita.ai/openai and send the key as Authorization: Bearer. Keys start with sk_
  2. Do not close a connection to stop generation. A request that reached the model is billed in full under status 499, so cap output with max_tokens
  3. On 429, check whether the code is RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED or TOKEN_LIMIT_EXCEEDED and back off exponentially. No Retry-After header is documented
  4. Read the changelog for retirement notices before pinning a model id. One retirement in October 2026 came with 11 days' notice
  5. Ask the account owner for a key with an expiry, a model access policy and an IP allowlist. Keys are created and deleted only in the console

Questions

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

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Novita AI's 53.5 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Do Cloudflare AI Gateway and Novita AI need an API key?

Both need an API key.

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

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

Other comparisons with Cloudflare AI Gateway or Novita AI

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