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Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Novita AI vs Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Novita AI's 53.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Novita AI leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

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

Novita AINovita AI · Model API D53.5/100#784 of 1133 Vercel AI GatewayVercel Inc. · Model router B66.7/100#302 of 1133

Which one, for what

Novita AI D

Best for Agents that want many open-weight models at per-token prices behind one OpenAI-style key, with keys that can be limited by model, IP and expiry.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 35 against 20

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

No status page or SLA was found on the home page, the docs index or the docs site map. The home page states 99.5% uptime with no supporting document

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 28
  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 72
  • Security & auth, 79 against 65
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 62
  • Transparency & trust, 70 against 56

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 runNovita AIVercel AI GatewayEdge
Reliability16%202874Vercel AI Gateway +46
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26274Vercel AI Gateway +12
Agent ergonomics13%16.27283Vercel AI Gateway +11
Security & auth14%17.56579Vercel AI Gateway +14
Payments & pricing10%12.53520Novita AI +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86279Vercel AI Gateway +17
Transparency & trust7%8.85670Vercel AI Gateway +14
Negative events≤150-3
TotalD 53.5/100B 66.7/100

Facts side by side

FactNovita AIVercel AI Gateway
KindModel APIModel router
VendorNovita AIVercel Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.novita.ai/openaihttps://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the Novita AI Terms of Service. The agent skill and the MCP server are MITProprietary 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 release2026-09-282026-10-17
Terms last updated2026-08-052026-06-01
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-132026-06-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot 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
Popularity6 stars, 1.4k npm/wk29.6M npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Novita AI

Per-token prices for about 140 language models are public, and each key can carry an expiry, a model allowlist and a source IP allowlist. No status page, SLA or security.txt was found, the per-model rate limit figures are drawn by script, and both vendor SDK repositories are archived while the docs still point to them.

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

Novita AI

  1. Set the OpenAI client base URL to https://api.novita.ai/openai and send the key as Authorization: Bearer. Keys start with sk_
  2. Do not close a connection to stop generation. A request that reached the model is billed in full under status 499, so cap output with max_tokens
  3. On 429, check whether the code is RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED or TOKEN_LIMIT_EXCEEDED and back off exponentially. No Retry-After header is documented
  4. Read the changelog for retirement notices before pinning a model id. One retirement in October 2026 came with 11 days' notice
  5. Ask the account owner for a key with an expiry, a model access policy and an IP allowlist. Keys are created and deleted only in the console

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, Novita AI or Vercel AI Gateway?

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Novita AI's 53.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Novita AI leads on payments & pricing.

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

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

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

Yes. Novita AI has a hosted endpoint at https://api.novita.ai/openai and Vercel AI Gateway at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.

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