Vercel AI Gateway
Vercel's AI Gateway routes a single OpenAI-compatible key to models from many providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, etc.) with a recurring monthly free credit.
- Free credit
- $5
- Credit window
- 30 days
- Card required
- No
Vercel AI Gateway scores 6.7/10 for free value in LLM. The main constraint: $5 of AI Gateway credits granted every 30 days on any Vercel account (recurring, not one-time), spendable across the full model list at provider list price with zero gateway markup. Credit clock starts on your first request.
Free value score
6.7 / 10Show the math
Key metrics
Models
38 free · 282+ totalLimits may be stale — last re-verified outside this section's freshness window.
| Model | Family | AA | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| anthropic/claude-opus-4.8 | Claude | 55.7 | free |
| openai/gpt-5.5 | GPT | 54.8 | free |
| openai/gpt-5.4 | GPT | 51.4 | free |
| zai/glm-5.2 | GLM | 51.1 | free |
| google/gemini-3.5-flash | Gemini | 50.2 | free |
| google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview | Gemini | 46.5 | free |
| alibaba/qwen3.7-max | Qwen | 46 | free |
| minimax/minimax-m3 | MiniMax | 44.4 | free |
| deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro | DeepSeek | 44.3 | free |
| openai/gpt-5.3-codex | GPT | 44.3 | free |
| moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 | Kimi | 42.8 | free |
| anthropic/claude-opus-4.7 | Claude | 42.7 | free |
| xiaomi/mimo-v2.5-pro | MiMo | 42.2 | free |
| moonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code | Kimi | 42 | free |
| deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash | DeepSeek | 40.3 | free |
| openai/gpt-5.4-mini | GPT | 40 | free |
| zai/glm-5 | GLM | 39.5 | free |
| alibaba/qwen3.7-plus | Qwen | 39 | free |
| anthropic/claude-opus-4.6 | Claude | 37.8 | free |
| nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b | Nemotron | 37.8 | free |
| xai/grok-4.3 | Grok | 37.6 | free |
| alibaba/qwen3.6-27b | Qwen | 37 | free |
| anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6 | Claude | 35.9 | free |
| cohere/command-a | Cohere | 29.3 | free |
| google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite | Gemini | 25 | free |
| mistral/mistral-large-3 | Mistral | 16.2 | free |
| meta/llama-4-maverick | Llama | 14.3 | free |
| meta/llama-4-scout | Llama | 10 | free |
| bfl/flux | FLUX | — | free |
| google/gemini-3.1-flash-image | Gemini | — | free |
| google/gemma-4-31b-it | Gemma | — | free |
| klingai/kling-video | Kling | — | free |
| mistral/devstral-2 | Mistral | — | free |
| openai/gpt-5.5-pro | GPT | — | free |
| openai/gpt-image-2 | GPT | — | free |
| perplexity/sonar | Perplexity | — | free |
| voyage/voyage-3 | Voyage | — | free |
| xai/grok-4.20-reasoning | Grok | — | free |
Showing first 38 of a larger catalog.
What you get
$5 free credit refreshes every 30 days (recurring)
One key reaches OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and more
Zero markup on provider list prices, automatic failover
OpenAI-compatible, integrates with the Vercel AI SDK
Gotchas
- Free credit ends permanently after first credit purchase
Once you purchase any AI Gateway Credits, your account moves to the paid tier and the $5 monthly free credit no longer applies — the free tier is lost permanently.
Sources
-
"| **Monthly credit** | $5/month included | Pay as you go with purchased credits |"
https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing -
"The free tier includes a subset of models, not the full catalog. To see which models you can use with free credits, browse the Free Tier models. To use any other model, purchase AI Gateway Credits."
https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing -
"Free tier requests are also rate limited per model, with lower limits than the paid tier. If you exceed a limit, AI Gateway returns a `429` error and you can retry after a short wait."
https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing -
"'name': 'RestrictedModelsError', 'message': 'Free tier users do not have access to this model. Upgrade to paid credits ... for unrestricted access.'"
https://community.vercel.com/t/ai-gateway-update-vercel-documentation-about-available-ai-models-on-free-tier/43373 -
"GLM-5.2 scores 51 on Intelligence Index v4.1, ranking ahead of MiniMax-M3, DeepSeek V4 Pro (max), and Kimi K2."
https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/glm-5-2-is-the-new-leading-open-weights-model-on-the-artificial-analysis-intelligence-index
Alternatives
Same category · similar quota
OpenAI-compatible inference gateway from Bad Theory Labs with a $5 signup credit and 346 public model slugs. Its public btl-2 slug currently maps to one Google AI Studio Gemma route rather than a published multi-provider auto-router.
