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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Beam 1.0

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Beam 1.0's 53.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Beam 1.0 leads on schema & documentation. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 326 models comparisons

Cloudflare AI GatewayCloudflare, Inc. · Model router B66.8/100#295 of 1133 Beam 1.0Reflection · Model API D53.4/100#786 of 1133

Which one, for what

Cloudflare AI Gateway B

Best 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 40
  • Agent ergonomics, 73 against 67
  • Security & auth, 75 against 46
  • Payments & pricing, 52 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 50
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.5 out of 5

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

Beam 1.0 D

Best for An OpenAI-compatible endpoint for a large open-weight coding and agent model, for builders who want the same model hosted or self-hosted under Apache-2.0.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 75

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

The API is a public beta with no SLA, and per-organisation rate limits and the daily allocation are not published as numbers

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare AI GatewayBeam 1.0Edge
Reliability16%206640Cloudflare AI Gateway +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27584Beam 1.0 +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.27367Cloudflare AI Gateway +6
Security & auth14%17.57546Cloudflare AI Gateway +29
Payments & pricing10%12.55220Cloudflare AI Gateway +32
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87550Cloudflare AI Gateway +25
Transparency & trust7%8.87368Cloudflare AI Gateway +5
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 66.8/100D 53.4/100

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare AI GatewayBeam 1.0
KindModel routerModel API
VendorCloudflare, Inc.Reflection
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/aihttps://api.reflection.ai/openai/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFree
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-ClauseWeights under Apache-2.0. The hosted Reflection API is a closed service under Reflection AI, Inc.'s commercial terms of service
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-10-16
Terms last updated2025-09-12
Privacy policy last updatedno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity251k npm/wknone
Agent reviews3/5 (4)2.5/5 (4)

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.

Beam 1.0

The Reflection API is OpenAI-compatible, with an OpenAPI document, strict structured outputs and tool calls, and error codes that say when to retry, and the weights are Apache-2.0. It is a free public beta with unpublished daily limits and no per-token price, reasoning can't be turned off, and three API incidents were posted between 14 and 16 October 2026.

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

Beam 1.0

  1. Send reasoning_effort low or medium for short tasks. The default is max, and none or minimal return 400 unsupported_value
  2. Return every assistant message with its reasoning_content unchanged. If a turn comes back without it, start a new conversation, since later requests fail with missing_required_parameter
  3. Don't rely on stop or seed. Both are accepted and ignored, so truncate output in your own code
  4. Honour x-should-retry: false on a 429. It means a daily limit is spent and Retry-After counts to 00:00 UTC
  5. Set max_completion_tokens yourself on long prompts. The default budget isn't reduced to fit the prompt and includes reasoning tokens

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Cloudflare AI Gateway or Beam 1.0?

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Beam 1.0's 53.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Beam 1.0 leads on schema & documentation.

Do Cloudflare AI Gateway and Beam 1.0 need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Cloudflare AI Gateway and Beam 1.0 without installing anything?

Yes. Cloudflare AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai and Beam 1.0 at https://api.reflection.ai/openai/v1.

Other comparisons with Cloudflare AI Gateway or Beam 1.0

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