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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Vercel AI Gateway

Cloudflare AI Gateway and Vercel AI Gateway score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 66.8 (B) and 66.7 (B). Vercel AI Gateway leads on reliability and agent ergonomics. 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 Vercel AI GatewayVercel Inc. · Model router B66.7/100#302 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

  • Payments & pricing, 52 against 20

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

Vercel AI Gateway B

Best for Teams that want one key, one bill, budgets and failover in front of many model providers, especially on Vercel with OIDC.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 74 against 66
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 73

Watch for

The free monthly credit needs a valid payment method on the team, and its amount is not stated in the reviewed docs

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare AI GatewayVercel AI GatewayEdge
Reliability16%206674Vercel AI Gateway +8
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27574Cloudflare AI Gateway +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.27383Vercel AI Gateway +10
Security & auth14%17.57579Vercel AI Gateway +4
Payments & pricing10%12.55220Cloudflare AI Gateway +32
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87579Vercel AI Gateway +4
Transparency & trust7%8.87370Cloudflare AI Gateway +3
Negative events≤15-3-3
TotalB 66.8/100B 66.7/100

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare AI GatewayVercel AI Gateway
KindModel routerModel router
VendorCloudflare, Inc.Vercel Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/aihttps://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or 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 Vercel's Terms of Service and AI Product Terms, with Token Pass terms on its docs page. Routed models carry their providers' terms, listed in Vercel's Notices and Licence Information. The @ai-sdk/gateway provider is Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-10-17
Terms last updated2025-09-122026-06-01
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-06-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes, with an opt-out
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 noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity251k npm/wk29.6M npm/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (4)3/5 (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.

Vercel AI Gateway

Token prices pass through with no markup, prompts are not stored by the gateway, and budgets, provider failover and per-request logs are built in. The free monthly credit needs a card on file, rate limits are not published as numbers, no SLA covers the API, and the contractual promise not to train on content applies to Enterprise subscriptions only.

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

Vercel AI Gateway

  1. Read GET https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1/models without a key to pick a model ID and check its price, context, ZDR and no-training flags before calling
  2. Set zeroDataRetention or disallowPromptTraining to true in providerOptions.gateway on sensitive requests. Default routing ignores provider retention and training policies
  3. Treat a 429 as retryable and honour retry-after when present. A 402 with quota_for_entity_exceeded is a spent budget, so do not retry it
  4. On a Token Pass key, a 403 with no_providers_available means spent credit or a model outside the pass. Retry with a standard AI Gateway key, which bills credits
  5. Set inferenceRegion when data residency matters. The default global may run inference outside the user's jurisdiction

Questions

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

Cloudflare AI Gateway and Vercel AI Gateway score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 66.8 (B) and 66.7 (B). Vercel AI Gateway leads on reliability and agent ergonomics.

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

Cloudflare AI Gateway needs an API key. Vercel AI Gateway takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

Yes. Cloudflare AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai and Vercel AI Gateway at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.

Other comparisons with Cloudflare AI Gateway or Vercel AI Gateway

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