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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Cloudflare AI Gateway vs SiliconFlow

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against SiliconFlow's 46.7 (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 SiliconFlowSiliconFlow Labs Pte. Ltd. · Model API D46.7/100#848 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 33
  • Schema & documentation, 75 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 73 against 60
  • Security & auth, 75 against 39
  • Payments & pricing, 52 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 47
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 51

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

SiliconFlow D

Good for Agents that want recent open-weight chat models, plus image, video and speech, behind one OpenAI-style key at low per-token prices, and can live without a status page or SLA.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

No status page, incident history or SLA was found, and the terms disclaim any uptime or availability commitment

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare AI GatewaySiliconFlowEdge
Reliability16%206633Cloudflare AI Gateway +33
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27565Cloudflare AI Gateway +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.27360Cloudflare AI Gateway +13
Security & auth14%17.57539Cloudflare AI Gateway +36
Payments & pricing10%12.55235Cloudflare AI Gateway +17
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87547Cloudflare AI Gateway +28
Transparency & trust7%8.87351Cloudflare AI Gateway +22
Negative events≤15-30
Total66.8 · B46.7 · D

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare AI GatewaySiliconFlow
KindModel routerModel API
VendorCloudflare, Inc.SiliconFlow Labs Pte. Ltd.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/aihttps://api.siliconflow.com/v1
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 SiliconFlow Terms of Use
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-09-14
Terms last updated2025-09-12no date given
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity251k npm/wknone

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.

SiliconFlow

Per-token prices for every listed model are public, and one key reaches chat, embeddings, reranking, image, video and speech through OpenAI-style and Anthropic-style routes. No status page, SLA, security page or official SDK was found, release notes stop at 11 June 2026, and several model removals are dated the same day as their 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

SiliconFlow

  1. Set the OpenAI client's base URL to https://api.siliconflow.com/v1, or the Anthropic client's to https://api.siliconflow.com/, and send the key as a Bearer token
  2. Take model ids from the model pages or GET /v1/models, not from the OpenAPI enum or the function calling guide, which list removed models
  3. Check the model field of each response. On 11 June 2026 traffic for GLM-5 and Kimi-K2.5 was routed to successor models
  4. Use response_format of json_object only where the model page says JSON Mode is supported, and keep max_tokens about 10,000 below the context length
  5. Set the Claude Code environment variables by hand. The automated route pipes a script from an Amazon S3 bucket into bash

Questions

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

Cloudflare AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against SiliconFlow's 46.7 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Do Cloudflare AI Gateway and SiliconFlow need an API key?

Both need an API key.

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

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

Other comparisons with Cloudflare AI Gateway or SiliconFlow

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