ai-gateway.vercel.sh
Free LLM quota · free models · community reputation · risk review
Overview
Vercel AI Gateway is Vercel's official AI model gateway, offering hundreds of text/image/video/speech models through an OpenAI-compatible API (ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1). It bills at provider list prices with zero markup and includes $5 of free credit per team each month.
Free quota
$5 of free credit per Vercel team per month (starts at the first request, refreshes every 30 days, no credit card), usable only on a subset of free-tier models with per-model rate limits (429 on overflow). Buying any credits moves you to the paid tier and permanently ends the monthly $5.
Free models
nvidia/nemotron-3.5-lightning-freeconvaiinnovations/laya-freepoolside/laguna-s-2.1-freereflection/beamopenai/gpt-oss-120bgoogle/gemini-2.5-flashdeepseek/deepseek-v3.2-thinkingPros
- Run officially by Vercel, a major vendor; stability and compliance are reliable, with no exit-scam or stolen-key concerns
- OpenAI-compatible API with a catalog of ~300 models (Claude, Gemini, GPT, DeepSeek, Qwen, etc.)
- $5 monthly free credit refreshes indefinitely; signup needs only email, no credit card
- Paid tier charges provider list price with zero markup; supports BYOK, budgets and observability
Cons
- Free credit only works on a subset of free-tier models; flagships like Claude Opus/Sonnet 5 and GPT-5.6 are excluded
- Free-tier per-model rate limits are tight and easily hit 429
- Buying any credits permanently ends the monthly $5; community users complain this is unclear
- $5/month is limited for large-model usage
Risk flags
- Free credit is limited to a subset of free-tier models; other models require purchased credits
- Purchasing credits permanently ends the monthly $5 free credit
- Free tier has per-model rate limits and returns 429 when exceeded
- Add-ons like Custom Reporting or team-wide ZDR incur extra charges
- Requests are forwarded to upstream vendors; team-wide ZDR is unavailable on the free tier (Pro/Enterprise only)
Community reputation
Vercel is a well-known frontend cloud platform; AI Gateway is GA with thorough docs. A Vercel Community thread ('Why lie about the Vercel AI Gateway free credit?') complains the free credit did not match expectations; the official reply cited the docs on the $5/month rule and the paid-tier transition after purchase. Overall trustworthiness is high; the main dispute is the scope of the free credit.
Recommendation
Suitable for developers with a Vercel account who want to try some models with the $5 monthly free credit. Reliable, but the free credit is small and restricted to a model subset. To keep the free credit, do not purchase credits, and check in the console which models are on the free tier.
Latest probe
Mentions (3)
Sources
Community discussion · reputation check
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External discussion quality varies; judge together with the risk review on this page.
FAQ
Is ai-gateway.vercel.sh safe and trustworthy?
Overall reputation 80/100, risk level Low. Vercel is a well-known frontend cloud platform; AI Gateway is GA with thorough docs. A Vercel Community thread ('Why lie about the Vercel AI Gateway free credit?') complains the free credit did not match expectations; the official reply cited the docs on the $5/month rule and the paid-tier transition after purchase. Overall trustworthiness is high; the main dispute is the scope of the free credit.
Will ai-gateway.vercel.sh shut down? Is the service stable?
Known risks: Free credit is limited to a subset of free-tier models; other models require purchased credits; Purchasing credits permanently ends the monthly $5 free credit; Free tier has per-model rate limits and returns 429 when exceeded; Add-ons like Custom Reporting or team-wide ZDR incur extra charges; Requests are forwarded to upstream vendors; team-wide ZDR is unavailable on the free tier (Pro/Enterprise only). Free and relay/public-benefit stations generally have no SLA and may shut down or change quotas at any time; don't use them for production or critical work — keep an official pai…
Which free models does ai-gateway.vercel.sh offer? How much free quota?
Free quota: $5 of free credit per Vercel team per month (starts at the first request, refreshes every 30 days, no credit card), usable only on a subset of free-tier models with per-model rate limits (429 on overflow). Buying any credits moves you to the paid tier and permanently ends the monthly $5.. Available free models: nvidia/nemotron-3.5-lightning-free, convaiinnovations/laya-free, poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free, reflection/beam, openai/gpt-oss-120b, google/gemini-2.5-flash, deepseek/deepseek-v3.2-thinking.
Is ai-gateway.vercel.sh worth using? How should I use it?
Suitable for developers with a Vercel account who want to try some models with the $5 monthly free credit. Reliable, but the free credit is small and restricted to a model subset. To keep the free credit, do not purchase credits, and check in the console which models are on the free tier.
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