# LiteLLM vs Vercel AI Gateway (slim)

> Vercel AI Gateway scores 67.8 (B) to LiteLLM's 62.4 (B) for model routing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/litellm-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.md (~6,100 tokens) · this version ~3,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/litellm-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/litellm-vs-vercel-ai-gateway
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Vercel AI Gateway scores 67.8 (B) on agent readiness against LiteLLM's 62.4 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. LiteLLM leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do model routing.

- LiteLLM: B 62.4, rank #559 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/litellm.min.md
- Vercel AI Gateway: B 67.8, rank #303 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.min.md
- LiteLLM, good for Teams that want one OpenAI-compatible endpoint over many providers on their own infrastructure, with per-key budgets, model allowlists and an MCP gateway. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 91 against 74; Payments & pricing, 60 against 20. Also Open source.
- Vercel AI Gateway, good 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 70; Security & auth, 79 against 72; Transparency & trust, 71 against 63. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | LiteLLM | Vercel AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 70 | 79 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 91 | 74 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 79 | 83 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 72 | 79 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 63 | 71 |

| Fact (where they differ) | LiteLLM | Vercel AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | BerriAI | Vercel Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1` |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | MIT, except the enterprise/ directory, which is under its own licence and needs an Enterprise licence key | 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 |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Popularity | 63k stars, 22.5M PyPI/wk | 29.6M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, LiteLLM +40: LiteLLM 60 (Read with the self-hosted rule, since an agent uses the free gateway and Enterprise is a sales-led licence for the same software. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). MIT with no account and no card, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. Model calls cost what the operator's provider keys cost.); Vercel AI Gateway 20 (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).)
- Schema & documentation, LiteLLM +17: LiteLLM 91 (Every gateway serves Swagger at /, ReDoc at /redoc and the raw schema at /openapi.json, and the docs host a public Swagger explorer (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of every page via `.md` (10). Pages say what a feature is for and where its limits are, and the key-auth page explains how permissions are inherited and where they aren't, but the reference is very large for a model to navigate (16 of 20). OpenAI-shaped request schemas from Pydantic models, with `metadata`, `litellm_params` and config blocks left as free-form objects (10 of 15). A full error reference with the envelope, every status, response headers and how to tell gateway limits from provider limits, plus examples on every page (15). Release notes per version with dates, newest v1.108.0 and v1.106.7 on 4 November 2026 (15).); Vercel AI Gateway 74 (Router, scored on the API lines. Vercel's OpenAPI 3.0.3 document has AI Gateway management paths (budgets, routing rules, virtual model configs, routers) and `POST /api-keys`. It does not cover the inference routes on ai-gateway.vercel.sh or `/v1/models`, `/v1/credits`, `/v1/generation` and `/v1/report`, which follow the OpenAI and Anthropic formats and the REST reference page (12 of 25). Every docs page is served as Markdown, and vercel.com/llms.txt lists AI Gateway and the keyless model list (10). The docs say when to use AI Gateway, which API format suits which client, and what each control leaves out, such as BYOK spend outside budgets (16 of 20). `providerOptions.gateway` fields are documented in tables with types, and the model list names each model's supported parameters. The request bodies have no published schema of their own (9 of 15). cURL, TypeScript and Python examples on most pages, and error tables in the FAQ, the REST reference and the Token Pass pages. The Chat Completions error list omits 402 (13 of 15). Paths carry `/v1`, the changelog is dated, with 95 entries naming AI Gateway from 3 August to 30 October 2026, and `@ai-sdk/gateway` keeps a CHANGELOG. The changelog sitemap dates one AI Gateway entry to 25 March 2025, before the alpha (14 of 15).)
- Reliability, Vercel AI Gateway +9: LiteLLM 70 (Read with the local-software lines, since the gateway runs on the operator's hardware and BerriAI hosts nothing an agent calls. litellm on PyPI states Python 3.10 to 3.14, and the gateway ships as a Docker image, a Helm chart and Terraform modules, with GHCR images signed by cosign (20). 51 GitHub Actions workflows plus a CircleCI config cover unit, proxy-database, end-to-end, chaos, mutation and UI tests. The GitHub API was rate-limited for our reader on 6 November and Actions pages refused it on 6 October, so we couldn't confirm main is passing (15 of 25). The issue tracker showed 1,674 open issues on 6 November, with eight bug reports among the 15 newest, seven of them with a reply, against a project that tags several releases a day (10 of 25, down from an unchecked 12). Release notes carry breaking-change bullets, but breaking changes land in weekly minor releases on the 1.x line, so version numbers don't signal them (10 of 15). 1.108.1, past 1.0 (15).); 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 +8: LiteLLM 63 (MIT for everything outside enterprise/, which has its own licence (25 of 30). The data security page (updated 6 November 2026) and security.md agree that a self-hosted gateway sends no data or telemetry to BerriAI, and the gateway stores prompts and spend in the operator's own Postgres. We found no terms of service or privacy policy on litellm.ai for its site, trial or Enterprise licence (20 of 30). A version support policy since 29 June 2026 (four stable minor lines), deprecated pages labelled in the docs, and release notes with breaking-change bullets (15 of 20). Usage telemetry, new in v1.107.0, is off by default, lists every field it can send and goes only to a table or endpoint the operator sets. A main-branch commit of 23 October 2026 made the Admin UI chat post a hashed user id to chat-telemetry.litellm.ai, and it was removed on 24 October before any tagged release contained it, so it isn't deducted. The start-up fetch of the price map from GitHub is documented with an opt-out (17 of 20).); 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).)
- Security & auth, Vercel AI Gateway +7: LiteLLM 72 (Read with the tool checklist for self-hosted software. Virtual keys are hashed, revocable and blockable, with model, route, MCP server, budget, rate and expiry limits, and a `proxy_admin_viewer` read-only role exists. Rotation with a grace period is Enterprise only, so 25, less 10 because the docs pass a key as `?key=` on `/key/info` and on the Claude Code marketplace manifest (15 of 30). `allowed_routes`, MCP permissions by key and team, an approval queue for submitted MCP servers and stdio MCP servers off by default from 1.104.0 (15 of 20). Guardrails can run before a model call and on MCP tool results, and an OWASP LLM Top 10 page maps each risk to a control, but prompt-injection detectors such as Lakera need an Enterprise licence and all of it is off by default (12 of 15). Request and spend logs per key in the open-source build; audit logs of admin actions are Enterprise only (12 of 15). security.md with GitHub private reporting, a bug bounty from $500 to $3,000 for P0 and P1 reports, a security announcements list, SOC 2 Type II per the data security page, CodeQL, OSV and Scorecard workflows, and advisories published on GitHub. No security.txt, and reports without a video are closed unread (18 of 20).); 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).)