Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run
Tencent Hy4 vs Vercel AI Gateway
Vercel AI Gateway scores 69 (B) on agent readiness against Tencent Hy4's 64 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Tencent Hy4 leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.
Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 1044 models comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Long-context agent work, coding and office or finance tasks on a 1M-token context with images, for teams already on Tencent Cloud or happy to verify an account there.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 45 against 30
Also in its favour
- No incidents deducted, where Vercel AI Gateway loses 3 points for them
Watch for
Weights, licence and system card are promised but not published; tencent/Hy4 didn't answer on Hugging Face on 11 November
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, 79 against 46
- Security & auth, 79 against 71
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 73
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 52
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
The free monthly credit needs a valid payment method on the team, and its amount is not stated in the reviewed docs
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Reliability Vercel AI Gateway +33
Tencent Hy4 46
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. No public status page (0) and so no incident record to read (5 of 30). Per-model rate limits only in the console and DescribeModelQuota (8 of 15). Six 429 codes, Retry-After and backoff advice (13 of 15). The TokenHub SLA promises 99.5% a month, and Hy4 is Tencent's own model, so the third-party exclusion doesn't apply (10). Released as hy4 on 4 November, a separate id from hy4-preview, with no preview label (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 13 + 10 + 10 = 46.
Vercel AI Gateway 79
Hosted reading. AI Gateway is a component on www.vercel-status.com (20). The history feed, re-read on 1 November 2026, has 25 entries from 23 July to 23 October, so it covers the whole 90 days from 3 August. None names AI Gateway in its title or text. The Drains, Logs and Observability incidents (6, 17 and 20 August, 16 to 17 September, 10 October in Washington, which names delayed logs, metrics and traces in general, and 23 October) name no AI Gateway surface, and none reports requests failing. Component tags sit in the status API, which robots.txt disallows, so they were not used. A readable page that posts incidents, none touching the product, is a clean record, as vercel-connect's incidents were read from the same feed (30). The rate-limit page, re-read on 1 November, says it describes behaviour rather than fixed numbers. The paid tier has no gateway limit, and the free tier's per-model limits are not published (5 of 15). A 429 has a documented JSON body, some carry retry-after, the docs give backoff code and separate a 429 from a 402 budget rejection, and failed provider attempts are retried on other providers (14 of 15). The Enterprise SLA excludes the APIs and CLI, and no SLA naming AI Gateway was found (0). Generally available since 21 August 2025. Token Pass is early access and the Python SDK is in beta (10).
Transparency & trust Vercel AI Gateway +19
Tencent Hy4 52
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Closed service under the TokenHub terms, but Tencent's release headline calls Hy4 open source while the weights and system card are only promised 'in the coming days', with no licence stated, and tencent/Hy4 didn't answer on Hugging Face on 11 November (14 of 30). Terms and FAQ agree inputs aren't used for training; the privacy policy renders only with JavaScript and wasn't read (15 of 30). Dated retirement notices and shutdown fields (13 of 20). Processing generally in mainland China for the China site, Singapore for the international one (13 of 20). Every benchmark in the release is Tencent's own or a partner's. 14 + 15 + 13 + 13 = 55.
Vercel AI Gateway 71
Closed service under the Terms of Service last updated 19 October 2026, the AI Product Terms with an AI Gateway section, and Token Pass terms on its docs page. Routed models carry the terms of 64 providers listed in the Notices and Licence Information, and the SDK is Apache-2.0 (18 of 30). The FAQ, the ZDR page and the logs page agree that prompt and response content is not kept. The terms place content sent to providers under the providers' own terms, give the no-training warranty only to Enterprise and bar sensitive personal information in Input. The DPA covers Pro and Enterprise, not Hobby, and the privacy notice gives retention criteria, not periods (17 of 30). No deprecation policy found. Model retirements carry dates in the model list, and the AI Product Terms let Vercel change fees, change or end anything in beta without notice, and end Token Pass with a pro-rata refund (8 of 20). Provider terms are listed per provider and regional inference names four regions, while the gateway itself may process a request in any Vercel region. The subprocessor list on security.vercel.com was not read (12 of 20).
Payments & pricing Tencent Hy4 +15
Tencent Hy4 45
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. No machine payment protocol (0). The price page, updated 9 November, lists ¥6 input, ¥0.3 cached and ¥18 output per million tokens, with Hy4 billed at 50% until 31 December 2026 (20). TokenHub's campaign of 1M free tokens per language model, read on 1 November, isn't confirmed for hy4 on the price page, so half (10 of 20, a judgement call). A person signs up with real-name verification (0). 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30. Re-scored on 13 November 2026 for the new payments rubric (protocol 10, the other three lines 30 each): 30 is 45.
Vercel AI Gateway 30
No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-token prices for every model are public in the keyless model list and the catalogue, and add-on prices are on the pricing page (20). A monthly free credit exists, but the getting-started page and the FAQ say the team must add a valid payment method before using it (0). A person signs up in a browser. Keys can then be created through POST /v1/api-keys, which needs a Vercel access token from that account (0). Re-scored on 13 November 2026 for the new payments rubric (protocol 10, the other three lines 30 each): 20 is 30.
Security & auth Vercel AI Gateway +8
Tencent Hy4 71
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Bearer keys limited by model, service, IP range and token quota, long-lived with no rotation (26 of 30). The terms say inputs aren't used to train Tencent Cloud's own models, and Hy4 is first party, so no third party's terms apply (14 of 20). Retention only as long as the service needs, no periods (7 of 15). Per-call audit logs and optional full logs to the customer's CLS (14 of 15). No security.txt; Tencent's TSRC bounty covers Tencent Cloud; no certification checked (10 of 20). 26 + 14 + 7 + 14 + 10 = 71.
Vercel AI Gateway 79
Router, read on the model lines. AI Gateway API keys belong to a team, can be limited to one project and given an expiry and a budget, are deactivated when their creator leaves the team, and can be revoked without authentication by reporting a leaked key. Keys carry no per-model or read-only scope apart from the Token Pass key type. On Vercel, project OIDC tokens replace long-lived keys (24 of 30). Vercel says it does not train on prompts, and the AI Product Terms make that a warranty only for Enterprise subscriptions. Provider training is filtered only when disallowPromptTraining or ZDR is set, the filter does not apply to BYOK, and the terms say Stealth Model providers may train on inputs (12 of 20). The gateway does not keep prompt or response content. Provider ZDR is free per request on Pro and Enterprise and not available on Hobby, and BYOK keys are skipped under ZDR unless marked (12 of 15). Per-request logs record status, provider attempts, tokens, cost and authentication method, with routing details kept 30 days and Trace Drains and spend reports on paid plans (13 of 15). Valid security.txt with HackerOne (re-read on 1 November, expires 28 September 2027), SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001:2022 as Vercel states them, and a public bulletin for the April 2026 incident, closed on 16 October 2026 (18 of 20).
Maintenance & community Vercel AI Gateway +6
Tencent Hy4 73
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Added on 4 November 2026 per the release notes; the model list and price page were updated on 9 November (30). Retirement notices of 21 to 33 days, no minimum written (7 of 12). Heavy retirement churn on the platform (3 of 8). Dated release notes and announcements, round-the-clock support (13 of 15). CLI replies not sampled (3 of 10). Control-plane SDKs and CLI, no inference SDK of its own (12 of 15). CLI runtime stated, CI not checked (5 of 10). 30 + 7 + 3 + 13 + 3 + 12 + 5 = 73. The model is a week old, so these lines are TokenHub's habits more than Hy4's record.
Vercel AI Gateway 79
Closed service, read on the model lines. The newest changelog entry naming AI Gateway is dated 30 October 2026 (30). Twelve models in the model list carry a deprecated_at date on 1 November, from 5 November 2026 (4 days ahead) to 26 February 2027. No minimum notice period was found, and access to Claude Fable 5 was suspended on 12 June 2026 under a government directive without notice and restored on 1 July (6 of 12). No AI Gateway endpoint was shut down in the last 90 days that we found (7 of 8). 95 changelog entries name AI Gateway from 3 August to 30 October 2026, and support runs from the dashboard (13 of 15). Replies to issues on vercel/ai were not read, because GitHub's pages refuse our reader (3 of 10). @ai-sdk/gateway is at 4.0.132 in vercel/ai, versioned on 30 October 2026, and had 29,597,661 npm downloads in the week to 12 October per the 17 October check. The Python SDK is in beta (14 of 15). Three runtime dependencies and a test file beside most modules. CI was not checked (6 of 10).
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Tencent Hy4 | Vercel AI Gateway | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 46 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +33 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 73 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 86 | 83 | Tencent Hy4 +3 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 71 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 45 | 30 | Tencent Hy4 +15 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 73 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 52 | 71 | Vercel AI Gateway +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | B 64/100 | B 69/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Tencent Hy4 | Vercel AI Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model router |
| Vendor | Tencent (Hy team) | Vercel |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Hosted model under the Tencent Cloud TokenHub terms. Tencent says weights and a system card will follow; no licence is stated yet | Proprietary 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 documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | none | 29.6M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Verdicts
Tencent Hy4
Tencent's flagship model is on TokenHub as hy4, with a 1M-token context, image understanding, function calling and caching, at ¥6 input and ¥18 output per million tokens, half price until the end of 2026. The weights it is called open source for aren't published yet, and every benchmark is Tencent's own.
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
Tencent Hy4
- Use model id hy4 on TokenHub's OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoints; hy4-preview is a separate, older model
- Keep input under 960K tokens and expect at most 64K output
- Reuse prompt prefixes: cached input is ¥0.3 against ¥6
- Check the price page for the end of the 50% discount on 31 December 2026 before budgeting
- Read rate limits from the console or DescribeModelQuota; the public docs don't give them for chat models
Vercel AI Gateway
- Read
GET https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1/modelswithout a key to pick a model ID and check its price, context, ZDR and no-training flags before calling - Set
zeroDataRetentionordisallowPromptTrainingto true inproviderOptions.gatewayon sensitive requests. Default routing ignores provider retention and training policies - Treat a 429 as retryable and honour
retry-afterwhen present. A 402 withquota_for_entity_exceededis a spent budget, so do not retry it - On a Token Pass key, a 403 with
no_providers_availablemeans spent credit or a model outside the pass. Retry with a standard AI Gateway key, which bills credits - Set
inferenceRegionwhen data residency matters. The defaultglobalmay run inference outside the user's jurisdiction
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Tencent Hy4 or Vercel AI Gateway?
Vercel AI Gateway scores 69 (B) on agent readiness against Tencent Hy4's 64 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Tencent Hy4 leads on payments & pricing.
Do Tencent Hy4 and Vercel AI Gateway need an API key?
Tencent Hy4 needs an API key. Vercel AI Gateway takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Tencent Hy4 and Vercel AI Gateway without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Tencent Hy4. Vercel AI Gateway has a hosted endpoint at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.
Other comparisons with Tencent Hy4 or Vercel AI Gateway
- Amazon Bedrock vs Tencent Hy4
- Amazon Bedrock vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Claude API vs Tencent Hy4
- Claude API vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Antseed vs Tencent Hy4
- Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models vs Tencent Hy4
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- Gemini Developer API vs Vercel AI Gateway
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- Tencent Hy4 vs Muse Ember
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- Tencent Hy4 vs SambaCloud
- Tencent Hy4 vs SiliconFlow
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- Tencent Hy4 vs Together AI Inference
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- Tencent Hy4 vs xAI API (Grok)
- Jais 3 vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Meta Model API vs Vercel AI Gateway
- MiniMax API vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Mistral AI API vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Muse Ember vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Muse Spark Open vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Novita AI vs Vercel AI Gateway
- OpenAI API vs Vercel AI Gateway
- OpenRouter vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Beam 1.0 vs Vercel AI Gateway
- SambaCloud vs Vercel AI Gateway
- SiliconFlow vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Simplismart vs Vercel AI Gateway
- StepFun API vs Vercel AI Gateway
- SWE-2 Flash vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Together AI Inference vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Vercel AI Gateway vs Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)
- Vercel AI Gateway vs xAI API (Grok)
- Antseed vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Eden AI vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Hugging Face Inference Providers vs Vercel AI Gateway
- LiteLLM vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Router.com (Ramp Router) vs Vercel AI Gateway
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/hy4-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/hy4.json·/api/v1/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.json - From a terminal
anchor compare hy4 vercel-ai-gateway(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "hy4", "b": "vercel-ai-gateway"}at/mcp, no key