Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Respan: LLM Gateways Comparison
Compare Cloudflare AI Gateway and Respan side by side. Both are tools in the LLM Gateways category.
Updated March 9, 2026
The short answer
Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway if core features free with Cloudflare plans—no per-call gateway fees.
Choose Respan if single API endpoint for 250+ LLMs eliminates vendor lock-in.
Quick Comparison
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Best For | Cloudflare users who want to add AI gateway capabilities to their existing edge infrastructure | AI engineering teams building production LLM applications who need unified access, observability, and cost control |
| Website | developers.cloudflare.com | respan.ai |
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Pros & Cons: Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Respan
- +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
- −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
- +Single API endpoint for 250+ LLMs eliminates vendor lock-in
- +Automatic fallback ensures uptime even during provider outages
- +Real-time cost tracking and analytics across all providers
- +Built-in caching reduces redundant API costs significantly
- +Easy integration with existing codebases via OpenAI-compatible API
- −Additional latency from routing through a gateway layer
- −Newer platform with smaller community compared to established tools
- −Some advanced provider-specific features may not be fully supported
Pricing: Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Respan
- · 100,000 logs/month
- · Core gateway features
- · Caching and rate limiting
- · Basic analytics
- · 1 million logs/month
- · 10M requests included
- · 30M CPU-ms included
- · USD 0.30 per 1M additional requests
- · Custom log retention
- · Advanced features
- · Dedicated support
- · SLA guarantees
- · 10,000 requests/month
- · Basic analytics
- · Community support
- · Up to 2 team members
- · 100,000 requests/month
- · Advanced analytics
- · Priority support
- · Unlimited team members
- · Unlimited requests
- · Custom SLAs
- · Dedicated support
- · SSO and RBAC
When to Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Respan
- Edge caching for AI API calls
- Rate limiting AI usage per user
- Cost management for AI APIs
- Multi-provider LLM orchestration
- LLM cost optimization and tracking
- Production monitoring and observability
About 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.
About Respan
Respan is a unified AI gateway that provides a single API endpoint to access 250+ LLMs from every major provider including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, and dozens more. Built for engineering teams that need reliability and flexibility in their AI stack, Respan eliminates vendor lock-in by enabling seamless switching between models without code changes.
The platform provides intelligent model routing with automatic fallback strategies, ensuring AI applications stay online even when individual providers experience outages. Built-in load balancing distributes requests across providers for optimal performance, while real-time cost tracking and usage analytics help teams understand and control their AI spend. Respan's caching layer reduces redundant API calls, cutting costs by up to 70% for repeated queries.
Respan also includes rate limiting, request/response logging, and a unified dashboard for monitoring all LLM interactions across an organization. The platform supports prompt management, A/B testing between models, and semantic caching to accelerate response times. Teams can get started with a free tier and scale to enterprise plans with custom SLAs and dedicated support.
What is LLM Gateways?
Unified API platforms and proxies that aggregate multiple LLM providers behind a single endpoint, providing model routing, fallback, caching, rate limiting, cost optimization, and access control.
Browse all LLM Gateways tools →