RouterOne

Vercel AI Gateway alternatives

The best Vercel AI Gateway alternatives

The leading Vercel AI Gateway alternatives are RouterOne, OpenRouter, Requesty, Cloudflare AI Gateway, LiteLLM and Portkey. Teams usually switch for three reasons: avoiding a Vercel account dependency, wanting top-ups without fees and credit that does not expire, or needing broader native protocol support. Below, six leading options are compared on pricing, protocol compatibility, hosting model and governance.

Get startedBrowse models and pricing

Last verified 2026-10-19

At a glance

OptionDeploymentPricingBest for
RouterOneOur productHostedNo markup or top-up fee; discounted low-cost and official channelsTeams that want lower costs, no platform lock-in, or enterprise-grade organization and budget management.
OpenRouterHostedNo inference markup; 5.5% fee on card top-upsDevelopers who prioritize model count and need broad long-tail and open-weight coverage.
RequestyHosted5% service feeTeams that need EU data residency, visual routing policies and an MCP gateway.
Cloudflare AI GatewayHosted (edge network)Core features free; 5% fee on Unified Billing creditsTeams on Cloudflare Workers that want caching and observability in front of existing provider accounts.
LiteLLMOpen source, self-hostedFree and open source; pay each upstream directlyTeams that require fully self-managed deployment and strict control over the data path.
PortkeyHosted or self-hostedPriced by log volume, from $49/monthEnterprise teams that prioritize logging, guardrails and compliance.

What to look for

  1. 01

    Pricing and fees

    Whether inference is marked up, whether top-ups carry a fee and whether credit expires. At high volume, a few percentage points translate directly into cost.

  2. 02

    Platform dependency

    Whether you must first open an account or plan on a particular cloud platform, and whether migrating means rethinking where you deploy.

  3. 03

    Protocol compatibility

    Whether the protocols your SDKs and tools use are supported natively. Native support means migrating by changing the base URL, with no code rewrite.

  4. 04

    Model and provider coverage

    Whether the models you need are available, and whether each model can be served by several providers — which determines price headroom and availability.

  5. 05

    Hosted or self-hosted

    Hosted services remove deployment and operations work; self-hosted options give full control of the data path but leave upstream accounts, keys and scaling to you.

  6. 06

    Teams and governance

    Organizations, workspaces, role permissions and spend limits are the foundation for using LLMs across a growing team.

Top Vercel AI Gateway alternatives

  1. 01

    RouterOne

    Our productHosted

    A hosted LLM API gateway with 0+ text, image and video models, no inference markup, no top-up fees, paid credit that never expires and low-cost channels far below official pricing and discounted official channels. Natively supports OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini protocols plus vendor image and video protocols.

    Pricing
    No markup or top-up fee; discounted low-cost and official channels
    Best for
    Teams that want lower costs, no platform lock-in, or enterprise-grade organization and budget management.
    Considerations
    Embeddings, speech and SAML SSO are on the roadmap; bringing your own upstream keys is not supported yet.
    Get startedSee the full RouterOne vs Vercel AI Gateway comparison
  2. 02

    OpenRouter

    Hosted

    A hosted model marketplace advertising 500+ models from 80+ providers, with BYOK and enterprise SSO.

    Pricing
    No inference markup; 5.5% fee on card top-ups
    Best for
    Developers who prioritize model count and need broad long-tail and open-weight coverage.
    Considerations
    Top-ups carry a fee; workspace budgets and role assignment are Enterprise-only.
  3. 03

    Requesty

    Hosted

    A hosted, OpenAI-compatible router advertising 600+ models, with fallbacks, load balancing and latency routing.

    Pricing
    5% service fee
    Best for
    Teams that need EU data residency, visual routing policies and an MCP gateway.
    Considerations
    Adds a 5% service fee; group budgets, full RBAC and SSO are Enterprise-only.
  4. 04

    Cloudflare AI Gateway

    Hosted (edge network)

    A gateway on Cloudflare's edge network with free analytics, caching and rate limiting; credits are purchased through Unified Billing.

    Pricing
    Core features free; 5% fee on Unified Billing credits
    Best for
    Teams on Cloudflare Workers that want caching and observability in front of existing provider accounts.
    Considerations
    Unified Billing charges a 5% fee on credit purchases; log allowances depend on the Workers plan.
  5. 05

    LiteLLM

    Open source, self-hosted

    An MIT-licensed Python SDK and self-hosted proxy that unifies calls to 100+ LLMs.

    Pricing
    Free and open source; pay each upstream directly
    Best for
    Teams that require fully self-managed deployment and strict control over the data path.
    Considerations
    You deploy and operate it yourself and manage accounts, keys and billing for each upstream; SSO and audit logs are enterprise features.
  6. 06

    Portkey

    Hosted or self-hosted

    A gateway centered on observability and governance, available as open-source self-hosted software or a hosted service.

    Pricing
    Priced by log volume, from $49/month
    Best for
    Enterprise teams that prioritize logging, guardrails and compliance.
    Considerations
    Priced by log volume — the Production plan is $49/month for 100,000 logs; you bring your own upstream accounts.

Frequently asked questions

It depends on your priority. For lower costs, no platform lock-in or team budgets, choose RouterOne. For the largest model catalog, choose OpenRouter. For EU data residency, choose Requesty. If you are deep in the Cloudflare ecosystem, use Cloudflare AI Gateway. For fully self-managed deployment, choose LiteLLM.

Vercel AI Gateway does not require deploying on Vercel, but it does require a Vercel team account, and budgets and keys are managed per Vercel team. If your team does not use Vercel, a standalone hosted gateway is usually more direct.

Among hosted options, RouterOne has no inference markup and no top-up fee, and low-cost channels go far below official pricing while official channels are discounted too; OpenRouter charges 5.5% on card top-ups, Requesty adds a 5% service fee, and Cloudflare Unified Billing charges 5% on credit purchases. Self-hosted options have no platform fee but carry deployment and operations costs, and you pay each upstream at its official price.

Most platforms are compatible with the OpenAI SDK, so switching usually means changing the base URL and API key. AI SDK projects can switch to an OpenAI-compatible provider; the main differences are model ID formats and routing parameters, so check model names before switching.

Get started

Minutes from now,
your first request is live.

  1. 1Create an account
  2. 2Create an API key
  3. 3Swap the base_url and call
Base URLhttps://gateway.routerone.ai/v1
Get startedView pricing

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Vercel AI Gateway and other product names mentioned on this page are trademarks of their respective owners. Information about third-party products is compiled from their official public sources for evaluation purposes only and may change; refer to each vendor's website for current details. To report an inaccuracy, contact support@amux.ai.