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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Cloudflare AI Gateway vs SambaCloud

Cloudflare AI Gateway and SambaCloud score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 66.8 (B) and 66.4 (B). SambaCloud leads on reliability and schema & documentation. 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 SambaCloudSambaNova Systems, Inc. · Model API B66.4/100#293 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

  • Agent ergonomics, 73 against 67
  • Security & auth, 75 against 58
  • Payments & pricing, 52 against 40
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 63

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

SambaCloud B

Good for Agents that want open-weight models behind an OpenAI or Anthropic client with a free start and prices an agent can read from the API.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 66
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 75

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Production models get a notice of two to three weeks, and 13 model ids were removed between 9 March and 9 June 2026

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare AI GatewaySambaCloudEdge
Reliability16%206685SambaCloud +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27581SambaCloud +6
Agent ergonomics13%16.27367Cloudflare AI Gateway +6
Security & auth14%17.57558Cloudflare AI Gateway +17
Payments & pricing10%12.55240Cloudflare AI Gateway +12
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87577SambaCloud +2
Transparency & trust7%8.87363Cloudflare AI Gateway +10
Negative events≤15-3-2
Total66.8 · B66.4 · B

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare AI GatewaySambaCloud
KindModel routerModel API
VendorCloudflare, Inc.SambaNova Systems, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/aihttps://api.sambanova.ai/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-ClauseProprietary service under the SambaCloud Terms of Service. The SDKs and the OpenAPI document are Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-09-17
Terms last updated2025-09-12no date given
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2023-05-27
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/wk2 stars, 76 npm/wk, 6.1k PyPI/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.

SambaCloud

Per-token prices and the model list are readable without a key at /v1/models, and a free tier needs no card. Production models get two to three weeks' notice before removal, 13 model ids left between March and June 2026, and the docs disagree with the live catalogue on MiniMax-M2.7.

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

SambaCloud

  1. Call GET https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/models at start-up and use only ids it returns. The docs name models the endpoint no longer lists
  2. Read x-ratelimit-remaining-requests and x-ratelimit-remaining-requests-day on every response. The free tier allows 20 requests a day per model
  3. Treat 429 queue_full and 503 maintenance as retryable after a delay, and 410 model_deprecated as a signal to change model
  4. Validate JSON output yourself. Schema enforcement is best effort and strict: true changes nothing
  5. Check max_completion_tokens per model. DeepSeek-V3.1 caps output at 7,168 tokens and Llama 3.3 70B at 3,072

Questions

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

Cloudflare AI Gateway and SambaCloud score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 66.8 (B) and 66.4 (B). SambaCloud leads on reliability and schema & documentation.

Do Cloudflare AI Gateway and SambaCloud need an API key?

Both need an API key.

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

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

Other comparisons with Cloudflare AI Gateway or SambaCloud

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