Vercel AI Gateway bills tokens at the provider list price with zero markup, deducted from prepaid AI Gateway Credits. Every team gets a monthly free credit (recently $5) against a subset of models, and that free allowance ends permanently on your first credit purchase. BYOK is also zero markup but requires purchased credits. Four capabilities bill on their own meters: Custom Reporting at $0.075 per 1,000 writes and $5 per 1,000 queries, the team-wide provider allowlist at $0.10 per 1,000 successful requests, team-wide Zero Data Retention at $0.10 per 1,000 requests, and Trace Drains under the Drains meters. Enterprise teams can invoice and skip payment processing fees.
- No markup, no platform fee on tokens. You pay the provider list price. Checked August 2026.
- Free tier: $5 of credits per month, subset of models, tighter per-model rate limits, 429 when exceeded.
- The free monthly credit stops permanently after your first credit purchase. It is not a standing allowance.
- You pay payment processing fees on top-ups. Enterprise invoicing removes them.
- Four add-on meters exist and are off by default. Custom Reporting is the one that surprises people.
- BYOK is zero markup but needs purchased credits, and BYOK spend cannot be capped by a budget.
The headline: list price, prepaid
Vercel's pricing page states it plainly: AI Gateway charges no markup and no platform fee on tokens, and you pay the provider's list price on a pay-as-you-go basis. Charges deduct from an AI Gateway Credits balance you top up in the dashboard, with optional auto top-up when the balance drops below a threshold you set.
That means there is no per-request fee, no monthly platform subscription for the gateway itself, and no percentage taken off the top. It is a genuinely rare structure. Most aggregators either mark up inference or take a cut of credit purchases.
| Gateway | Fee on inference | Fee on money in |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel AI Gateway | None | Payment processing fees on top-ups |
| OpenRouter | None (pass-through) | 5.5% on Stripe credit purchases, $0.80 minimum; 5% on crypto |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway (Unified Billing) | None | 5% on all credits purchased |
| Direct to provider | None | None |
Free tier versus paid tier
Every Vercel team gets both. The free tier is $5 in AI Gateway credits per month, and the clock starts on your first gateway request rather than on signup.
| Free tier | Paid tier | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly credit | $5 | What you purchase |
| Model catalogue | A subset, filterable in the model list | Everything |
| Per-model rate limits | Lower; 429 on exceed | Raised |
| BYOK | Not available | Available |
| After first purchase | Ends permanently | n/a |
Free-tier rate limiting is per model rather than per account, so a 429 on one model does not mean you are out of credit. Retrying on a different model in the free set usually works, which is worth knowing before you go looking for a billing problem that is not there.
The four add-on meters
These are off by default and bill in addition to token cost. Each is disabled again from the team's AI Gateway settings.
| Meter | Rate | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Reporting: writes | $0.075 per 1,000 tag / user ID / quota entity ID writes | All |
| Custom Reporting: queries | $5 per 1,000 queries to the reporting endpoint | All |
| Team-wide provider allowlist | $0.10 per 1,000 successful requests | Pro and Enterprise |
Per-request only filter | No additional cost | All |
| Team-wide Zero Data Retention | $0.10 per 1,000 requests | Pro and Enterprise |
| Per-request ZDR | No additional cost | Pro and Enterprise |
| Trace Drains | Billed on Drains events and egress; no Pro allowance | Pro and Enterprise |
Two of those rows are free versions of the paid rows above them. If you only need to restrict providers or enforce ZDR on some requests, do it per request and pay nothing. The team-wide switches exist for the case where you cannot trust every caller to set the flag, and that guarantee is what the $0.10 per 1,000 buys.
Trace Drains bill through the Drains section of your usage rather than against AI Gateway Credits, on two meters at once: trace events delivered and trace data transferred. Pro plans include no allowance for either, so the first delivered trace is billable. The sampling rate is the lever.
A worked month
Take a five-person team running coding agents through the gateway. Assume 60 million input tokens and 6 million output tokens across a mid-tier model month, no add-ons enabled.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Tokens at provider list price | Exactly what the provider would have charged |
| Gateway markup | $0.00 |
| Gateway platform fee | $0.00 |
| Credit top-up processing fee | Card processor rate on each top-up |
| Custom Reporting, if enabled with 2 tags per request | $0.15 per 1,000 requests |
| Team-wide allowlist, if enabled | $0.10 per 1,000 successful requests |
The honest summary of that table: for a team that turns nothing on, Vercel AI Gateway costs the same as going direct to each provider, minus the operational cost of five separate accounts. For a team that turns on Custom Reporting with several tags per request, the reporting bill can become a visible line of its own well before the token bill does.
Versus the other options
| Option | Structure | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel AI Gateway | List price, prepaid credits, add-on meters | You want zero markup and already touch Vercel |
| OpenRouter | List price, 5.5% on Stripe top-ups, BYOK free to $25k/mo then 5% | You want the widest catalogue and do not mind the load fee |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway | Proxy is free; Unified Billing credits carry 5% | You want caching and rate limiting more than a wallet |
| Direct to each provider | List price, no fee | You use one or two providers and can live with N invoices |
| Self-hosted LiteLLM or Bifrost | Free software plus your infrastructure | You need on-prem, air-gapped, or a hard data boundary |
Questions people ask
How much does Vercel AI Gateway cost?
The gateway itself costs nothing. Tokens bill at the AI provider list price with no markup and no platform fee, deducted from prepaid AI Gateway Credits. You pay payment processing fees on top-ups unless you are an Enterprise team on invoiced billing. Four optional capabilities have their own meters: Custom Reporting, the team-wide provider allowlist, team-wide Zero Data Retention, and Trace Drains.
Is Vercel AI Gateway free?
Partly. Every team gets $5 of AI Gateway credits per month, usable only against a subset of models and with lower per-model rate limits than the paid tier. That free monthly credit ends permanently the first time you purchase credits, so treat it as an evaluation budget rather than an ongoing free plan.
Does Vercel mark up AI Gateway tokens?
No. Vercel states zero markup and no platform fee on tokens, at the provider list price, including with Bring Your Own Key. Verified on the AI Gateway pricing page in August 2026. It is one of the few gateways with no percentage taken on either inference or credit purchases.
What does BYOK cost on Vercel AI Gateway?
Nothing extra. BYOK carries no markup or fee from AI Gateway. The two conditions: BYOK is only available once you have purchased credits, and a BYOK request that fails with your credentials is retried on Vercel system credentials and charged to your credit balance. BYOK spend is also excluded from budgets and cannot be capped.
Vercel AI Gateway or OpenRouter, which is cheaper?
On inference they are the same: both pass through provider list pricing. The difference is the fee on money going in. OpenRouter charges 5.5% with an $0.80 minimum on Stripe credit purchases (5% on crypto), while Vercel charges only the payment processor fee. At $1,000 a month of spend that gap is roughly $50. OpenRouter has the larger catalogue; Vercel has the four API shapes and the coding-agent endpoints.
What is the most expensive thing to turn on by accident?
Custom Reporting. Each unique tag, user ID, or quota entity ID within a single request scope counts as one write at $0.075 per 1,000. Three tags on a million requests is 3 million writes, or $225 a month, on top of your token spend. Queries against the reporting endpoint are a separate $5 per 1,000.
Sources
Every figure above was read from these pages on August 2026. Vendors reprice without notice; if you find a stale number, tell us.
- Vercel AI Gateway pricing markup, tiers, add-on surcharge tables
- Vercel AI Gateway documentation zero markup statement
- Vercel AI Gateway BYOK paid-tier requirement, budget exclusion
- OpenRouter FAQ the 5.5% credit purchase fee, for comparison
- Cloudflare AI Gateway pricing the 5% Unified Billing fee, for comparison