Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Respan (2026)
Updated March 9, 2026
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Overview
Rating
10.0 / 10
Rating
10.0 / 10
Best For
Cloudflare users who want to add AI gateway capabilities to their existing edge infrastructure
Best For
AI engineering teams building production LLM applications who need unified access, observability, and cost control
Product Summary
Cloudflare AI Gateway is a proxy for AI API traffic that provides caching, rate limiting, analytics, and logging for LLM requests. Running on Cloudflare's global edge network, it reduces latency and costs by caching repeated requests. Free to use on all Cloudflare plans.
Product Summary
Respan is the AI router with built-in observability and automated evals: one API for 1,000+ models, with tracing, spend control, and evals on every request.
Starting Price
Free
Starting Price
$0
Free Trial
Yes
Free Trial
Yes
Free Version
Yes
Free Version
Yes
Website
Website
Key features
Core capabilities each platform advertises.
- Edge-deployed AI gateway
- Caching and rate limiting
- Usage analytics
- Provider failover
- Cloudflare network integration
- One API for 1,000+ models
- Automatic fallbacks and retries
- Load balancing across providers and models
- Exact-match caching with configurable TTL
- Hard spend limits per key, per customer, or org-wide
- Task-aware model routing with Respan Router (beta)
- Tracing, evals, and prompt management on every routed request
Strengths and tradeoffs
What each 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
Pros
- Gateway, tracing, and evals in one platform, so every metric ties back to the request behind it
- 1,000+ models through one OpenAI-compatible API
- No processing fee on Respan credits, and provider discounts are passed straight through
- Hard spend caps that block requests, not just alert
- Unlimited seats on the free plan
- SOC 2, HIPAA with a BAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001
Cons
- Additional latency (30-40ms) 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
Cloudflare AI or Respan — which should you choose?
Choose Cloudflare AI if you wantChoose if you want
- 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
Choose Respan if you wantChoose if you want
- Keeping agents online through provider outages and rate limits
- Controlling LLM spend per customer or API key
- Switching models without code changes
- Scoring output quality on live production traffic
- Replacing a separate gateway, logging tool, and eval tool with one platform