Vercel AI Gateway

One key, hundreds of models, $5 of credits every month. No markup on tokens.

Vercel AI Gateway is one OpenAI-compatible URL in front of hundreds of models, at the provider’s list price with no markup. Every team gets $5 of credits a month on the Free Tier subset — GPT-OSS 120B, GPT-5.4 Mini, Gemma 4 31B, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Qwen 3.8 Flash Next, GLM 5.3 Flash, Kimi K2.7 Code, MiniMax M3, Nemotron 3 Super, Llama 4 Maverick, Grok 4.6, DeepSeek V3.2 Thinking. Email, no card. Base https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1, key AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY.

The credit starts on the first request and refreshes monthly. Buy extra credits and the monthly $5 stops — you move to the paid tier. Free-tier requests are rate-limited per model (429 if you burst). Claude Opus/Sonnet 5, Gemini 3.7 and GPT-5.6 are not on that subset. The live filter is vercel.com/ai-gateway/models?freeTier=true.

Free models: 12
Max context: 1M
Free tier: $5 of credits per month
Requirement: Email account, no card

Endpoint

Base URLhttps://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1

Env varAI_GATEWAY_API_KEY

Rate limitPer-model caps on the free tier; 429 if you burst

OpenAI-compatible
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Code examples

npm install openai

import OpenAI from 'openai'

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: 'https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1',
  apiKey: process.env.AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY
})

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'openai/gpt-oss-120b',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Explain closures in one paragraph.' }]
})

console.log(response.choices[0].message.content)

pip install openai

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY"],
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain closures in one paragraph."}],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

curl https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain closures in one paragraph."}]
  }'

Worth knowing

The $5 monthly credit only spends on the Free Tier subset. Claude Opus/Sonnet 5, Gemini 3.7 and GPT-5.6 are paid.
Buying AI Gateway Credits moves the team to the paid tier and the monthly $5 stops.
Browse vercel.com/ai-gateway/models?freeTier=true for the full subset — we list the current standouts, not every id.

Models you get for free12

GPT-OSS 120Bopenai/gpt-oss-120b
GPT 5.4 Miniopenai/gpt-5.4-mini
Gemma 4 31Bgoogle/gemma-4-31b-it
Gemini 2.5 Flashgoogle/gemini-2.5-flash
Qwen 3.8 Flash Nextalibaba/qwen3.8-flash-next
GLM 5.3 Flashzai/glm-5.3-flash
Kimi K2.7 Codemoonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code
MiniMax M3minimax/minimax-m3
Nemotron 3 Supernvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b
Llama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick
Grok 4.6spacexai/grok-4.6
DeepSeek V3.2 Thinkingdeepseek/deepseek-v3.2-thinking