Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Vercel AI Gateway: LLM Gateways Comparison
Compare Cloudflare AI Gateway and Vercel AI Gateway side by side. Both are tools in the LLM Gateways category.
Updated March 10, 2026
The short answer
Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway if core features free with Cloudflare plans—no per-call gateway fees.
Choose Vercel AI Gateway if zero markup on tokens with bring-your-own-key—transparent pricing.
Quick Comparison
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Pricing | Freemium | — |
| Best For | Cloudflare users who want to add AI gateway capabilities to their existing edge infrastructure | — |
| Website | developers.cloudflare.com | vercel.com |
| Key Features |
| — |
| Use Cases |
| — |
Pros & Cons: Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Vercel AI Gateway
- +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
- +Zero markup on tokens with bring-your-own-key—transparent pricing
- +USD 5 monthly free credit enables risk-free experimentation
- +Excellent developer experience with minimal setup
- +Automatic failover ensures reliability when providers fail
- −504 Gateway Timeout errors for long-running agents beyond hard limits
- −Pro plan maximum 300 seconds insufficient for complex agent workflows
- −Semantic caching relies only on HTTP headers—misses equivalent prompts
- −Vendor lock-in with custom middleware not portable to other platforms
Pricing: Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Vercel AI Gateway
- · 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
- · Monthly credit
- · Zero markup on tokens
- · Basic features
- · Risk-free trial
- · Provider list pricing
- · Bring your own key
- · No platform fees
- · Unlimited access
- · Plus token costs
- · Agent capabilities
- · Production ready
When to Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Vercel AI Gateway
- Edge caching for AI API calls
- Rate limiting AI usage per user
- Cost management for AI APIs
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 Vercel AI Gateway
Vercel AI Gateway is a production-ready LLM gateway that provides unified access to hundreds of AI models with built-in reliability, monitoring, and cost management. Available to every Vercel team account, the gateway offers a free USD 5 monthly credit plus pay-as-you-go pricing with zero markup on model tokens. When bringing your own API keys, Vercel charges no platform fees, offering tokens at provider list price. Vercel Agent is priced at USD 0.30 per action plus underlying token costs. The platform focuses on developer experience, enabling frontend developers to add LLM capabilities with minimal setup without managing provider-specific SDKs or credentials. Key features include unified API across providers, budget controls, usage monitoring, load balancing, and automatic failover. While praised for ease of use, transparent pricing, and reliability with automatic failover, Vercel AI Gateway faces criticism for infrastructure limitations including 504 Gateway Timeout errors for long-running agents, execution time constraints (15 seconds default, 300 seconds maximum on Pro), insufficient semantic caching relying only on HTTP headers, and vendor lock-in with custom middleware not easily portable to other platforms.
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 →