# Router.com (Ramp Router) vs Vercel AI Gateway

> Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) to Router.com's 54.5 (C) for model routing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ramp-router-vs-vercel-ai-gateway
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ramp-router-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.md (~3,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ramp-router-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ramp-router-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-28

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Router.com (Ramp Router)'s 54.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Router.com (Ramp Router) leads on payments & pricing. Both do model routing.

- Router.com (Ramp Router): grade C, 54.5/100, rank #798 of 1218. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ramp-router.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ramp-router.json
- Vercel AI Gateway: grade B, 66.8/100, rank #315 of 1218. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.json
- Best model APIs and inference for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/inference/index.md
- All 466 models comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inference/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Router.com (Ramp Router) (C)

Good for: Teams in the US that want one key for OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and open-weight models, with routing to cheaper tiers and per-request cost, and can switch off content recording.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Vercel AI Gateway loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Ramp-side content recording is on by default and keeps prompts, outputs and tool calls for one year

### Vercel AI Gateway (B)

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, 74 against 25
- Schema & documentation, 74 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 83 against 77
- Security & auth, 79 against 66
- Maintenance & community, 79 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

| Category | Weight | Router.com (Ramp Router) | Vercel AI Gateway | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 25 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +49 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 83 | Vercel AI Gateway +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 66 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Router.com (Ramp Router) +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 71 | Vercel AI Gateway +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **54.5 · C** | **66.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Router.com (Ramp Router) | Vercel AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model router | Model router |
| Vendor | Ramp | Vercel Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.router.com/v1` | `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 | Closed service under the Router Terms of Service (last updated 31 August 2026). The Ramp CLI that configures coding agents for Router is MIT. | 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 | 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated |  | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 1.7k npm/wk | 29.6M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Router.com (Ramp Router).** Detailed Markdown docs with typed error codes, per-model capability data and routing an agent can set per request. No OpenAPI document, status page, changelog or published rate limits were found. Signup needs a US business email in a browser, and Ramp records prompts and outputs for a year by default unless switched off.

**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

### Router.com (Ramp Router)

1. Switch off content recording in Settings before sending private data. It is on by default and keeps prompts and outputs for a year
2. Read model ids from `GET /v1/models` at runtime. Ids are account-specific, an unknown one is a 404, and Gemini ids need your own Google key
3. Use `POST /v1/responses` with a `models` list for fallbacks. Router stops falling back once a stream has started
4. Set `fallback_timeout` and `provider_timeout`, or `allow_flex_tier: false`, when latency matters. Flex routing is on by default
5. Treat both `401 invalid_api_key` and `401 api_key_deactivated` as a possibly locked key, and stop retrying on `402`

### 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, Router.com (Ramp Router) or Vercel AI Gateway?

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Router.com (Ramp Router)'s 54.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Router.com (Ramp Router) leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Router.com (Ramp Router) and Vercel AI Gateway need an API key?

Router.com (Ramp Router) needs an API key. Vercel AI Gateway takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Router.com (Ramp Router) and Vercel AI Gateway without installing anything?

Yes. Router.com (Ramp Router) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.router.com/v1 and Vercel AI Gateway at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ramp-router-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ramp-router-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "ramp-router", "b": "vercel-ai-gateway"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare ramp-router vercel-ai-gateway`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ramp-router.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-ai-gateway.json

## Other comparisons with Router.com (Ramp Router) or Vercel AI Gateway

- [Claude API vs Router.com (Ramp Router)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-ramp-router.md)
- [Claude API vs Vercel AI Gateway](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-vercel-ai-gateway.md)
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