# SiliconFlow vs Vercel AI Gateway

> Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) to SiliconFlow's 46.7 (D) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against SiliconFlow's 46.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. SiliconFlow leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

- SiliconFlow: grade D, 46.7/100, rank #956 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/siliconflow.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/siliconflow.json
- Vercel AI Gateway: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #302 of 1133. 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 326 models comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inference/index.md

## Which one, for what

### SiliconFlow (D)

Good for: Agents that want recent open-weight chat models, plus image, video and speech, behind one OpenAI-style key at low per-token prices, and can live without a status page or SLA.

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, incident history or SLA was found, and the terms disclaim any uptime or availability commitment

### 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 33
- Schema & documentation, 74 against 65
- Agent ergonomics, 83 against 60
- Security & auth, 79 against 39
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 47
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 51

Also in its favour:
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.5 out of 5

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 | SiliconFlow | Vercel AI Gateway | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 33 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +41 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 74 | Vercel AI Gateway +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 83 | Vercel AI Gateway +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 39 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +40 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 20 | SiliconFlow +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 79 | Vercel AI Gateway +32 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 51 | 70 | Vercel AI Gateway +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **46.7 · D** | **66.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | SiliconFlow | Vercel AI Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model router |
| Vendor | SiliconFlow Labs Pte. Ltd. | Vercel Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.siliconflow.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 | Proprietary service under the SiliconFlow Terms of Use | 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 | 2026-09-14 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | none | 29.6M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (4) | 3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**SiliconFlow.** Per-token prices for every listed model are public, and one key reaches chat, embeddings, reranking, image, video and speech through OpenAI-style and Anthropic-style routes. No status page, SLA, security page or official SDK was found, release notes stop at 11 June 2026, and several model removals are dated the same day as their notice.

**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

### SiliconFlow

1. Set the OpenAI client's base URL to `https://api.siliconflow.com/v1`, or the Anthropic client's to `https://api.siliconflow.com/`, and send the key as a Bearer token
2. Take model ids from the model pages or `GET /v1/models`, not from the OpenAPI enum or the function calling guide, which list removed models
3. Check the `model` field of each response. On 11 June 2026 traffic for GLM-5 and Kimi-K2.5 was routed to successor models
4. Use `response_format` of `json_object` only where the model page says JSON Mode is supported, and keep `max_tokens` about 10,000 below the context length
5. Set the Claude Code environment variables by hand. The automated route pipes a script from an Amazon S3 bucket into bash

### 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, SiliconFlow or Vercel AI Gateway?

Vercel AI Gateway scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against SiliconFlow's 46.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. SiliconFlow leads on payments & pricing.

### Do SiliconFlow and Vercel AI Gateway need an API key?

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

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

Yes. SiliconFlow has a hosted endpoint at https://api.siliconflow.com/v1 and Vercel AI Gateway at https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1.


## For agents

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

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