Cloudflare AI Gateway: LLM Gateways

Founded 2023|San Francisco, CA|1001-5000 people|Freemium

What is Cloudflare AI Gateway?

Cloudflare AI Gateway is a unified API gateway for AI applications that provides observability, caching, rate limiting, and cost tracking across multiple LLM providers. Available on all Cloudflare plans, the core gateway features are free with no per-call fees beyond the Cloudflare subscription. The platform connects popular providers like Workers AI, Hugging Face, OpenAI, and Anthropic with a single line of code, offering centralized visibility and control. Built into Cloudflare global network infrastructure, AI Gateway provides edge-level caching, request retries, model fallbacks, and analytics. The free tier includes 100,000 AI Gateway logs per month, while the Workers Paid plan starting at USD 5/month provides 1 million logs. In 2026, Cloudflare introduced Unified Billing, allowing customers to pay for third-party model usage directly through Cloudflare invoices. While the platform excels at cost-effectiveness and integration with Cloudflare existing services, it adds 10-50ms of proxy latency, lacks deep AI observability features like token-level tracing, and enforces strict log retention caps that can require manual management at scale.

Key features

Core capabilities this platform advertises.

Edge-deployed AI gateway
Caching and rate limiting
Usage analytics
Provider failover
Cloudflare network integration

Strengths and tradeoffs

What this tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.

Pros

Core features free with Cloudflare plans—no per-call gateway fees
Tightly integrated with Cloudflare global network for low-latency routing
One-line integration for major LLM providers
Built-in caching, rate limiting, and fallbacks improve reliability

Cons

Adds 10-50ms proxy latency to every request
Lacks token-level tracing and prompt analysis
Strict log retention caps require manual management at scale
No enterprise governance features like RBAC or audit trails

Plans & pricing

What's included in each plan, and how the tiers compare.

Free

100,000 logs/month
Core gateway features
Caching and rate limiting
Basic analytics
Included with Cloudflare plan

Workers Paid

Per month

1 million logs/month
10M requests included
30M CPU-ms included
$0.30 per 1M additional requests

Enterprise

Custom

Contact sales for a quote

Custom log retention
Advanced features
Dedicated support
SLA guarantees

View official pricing page

Common use cases

Cloudflare users who want to add AI gateway capabilities to their existing edge infrastructure

Edge caching for AI API calls
Rate limiting AI usage per user
Cost management for AI APIs
Global AI traffic management
Cloudflare ecosystem AI integration

Using Cloudflare AI Gateway with Respan

Cloudflare AI Gateway and Respan provide complementary AI infrastructure. Route requests through Cloudflare while gaining deeper observability with Respan.

Combine Cloudflare edge caching with Respan token-level cost attribution
Use Cloudflare for infrastructure while Respan provides AI-specific analytics
Track prompt quality and model performance beyond Cloudflare basic metrics
Monitor AI costs across teams and projects with Respan detailed breakdowns

Run Cloudflare AI Gateway in production with Respan

10KFree traces/mo

1,000+Models

5 minSetup

Respan lets you trace LLM and agent calls across any model or framework, A/B test prompts on production traffic, and route requests across 1,000+ models through one gateway.

Try Respan free

Best Cloudflare AI Gateway alternatives & competitors

Top companies in LLM Gateways you can use instead of Cloudflare AI Gateway.

Respan

One API for 1,000+ models