Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL vs Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Nemotron 3.5 Super VL's 58.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Nemotron 3.5 Super VL leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 326 models comparisons

Which one, for what

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL C

Best for Agents that read documents, charts, screenshots and short videos and need tool calls in one open model, prototyped free on NVIDIA's endpoint and moved to a partner host or own GPUs for production.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 35 against 20

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Vercel AI Gateway loses 3 points for them

Watch for

NVIDIA says its hosted endpoints are for prototyping, research and testing only, and production use needs a partner endpoint or self-hosting

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 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 65
  • Security & auth, 79 against 51
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 71
  • Transparency & trust, 70 against 59

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 runNemotron 3.5 Super VLVercel AI GatewayEdge
Reliability16%205874Vercel AI Gateway +16
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27474even
Agent ergonomics13%16.26583Vercel AI Gateway +18
Security & auth14%17.55179Vercel AI Gateway +28
Payments & pricing10%12.53520Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87179Vercel AI Gateway +8
Transparency & trust7%8.85970Vercel AI Gateway +11
Negative events≤150-3
TotalC 58.9/100B 66.7/100

Facts side by side

FactNemotron 3.5 Super VLVercel AI Gateway
KindModel APIModel router
VendorNVIDIAVercel Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreePay per use
x402nono
LicenceOpenMDW-1.1 for the weights (permissive, not an OSI licence). The hosted trial endpoint is under the NVIDIA API Trial Terms of Service, and the NIM container under the NVIDIA Software Licence AgreementProprietary 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 release2026-10-152026-10-17
Terms last updated2026-06-01
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-06-01
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularitynone29.6M npm/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (4)3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

NVIDIA's free endpoint takes OpenAI-format requests with typed tool calls, JSON Schema output and an OpenAPI 3.1 file, and the weights run anywhere under a permissive licence. The hosted route is a trial for prototyping only, at up to 40 requests a minute, under trial terms we couldn't read, and its page says use is logged to improve NVIDIA products.

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

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

  1. Set chat_template_kwargs to {"enable_thinking": false} for short tasks. Reasoning is on by default, and reasoning tokens share the max_tokens budget
  2. Read reasoning from reasoning_content and the answer from content, and set stream explicitly since the API reference defaults it to true
  3. Don't send confidential or personal data to the hosted trial. The model page asks callers not to and says use is logged
  4. Back off and retry on throttling. Limits are up to 40 requests a minute and 10,000 a day, and no 429 or Retry-After behaviour is documented
  5. For production, use a partner endpoint or serve the weights. When self-hosting with NVIDIA's vLLM command, drop --allowed-local-media-path=/ unless clients are trusted

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, Nemotron 3.5 Super VL or Vercel AI Gateway?

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Nemotron 3.5 Super VL's 58.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Nemotron 3.5 Super VL leads on payments & pricing.

Do Nemotron 3.5 Super VL and Vercel AI Gateway need an API key?

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL needs an API key. Vercel AI Gateway takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Nemotron 3.5 Super VL and Vercel AI Gateway without installing anything?

Yes. Nemotron 3.5 Super VL has a hosted endpoint at https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1 and Vercel AI Gateway at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.

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