Liquid Inference vs Cloudflare AI Gateway

Cloudflare AI Gateway is a proxy for your AI traffic. It adds logs, a cache and rate limits, and it sends each request to the provider that you name. With Unified Billing, you can pay six providers through Cloudflare credit. Liquid Inference is an exchange. Providers quote their own prices, and each request starts an auction among the offers that meet your rules.

The facts about Cloudflare AI Gateway come from its own pages, checked on 10 November 2026. The links are in Sources.

Feature by feature

Feature	Cloudflare AI Gateway	Liquid Inference
Price	The provider's list price	Each provider quotes its own price
Provider choice	You name it. You can add a fallback list or a dynamic route	An auction: the lowest charge plus wait cost wins
Fee	5% on credit. None with your own keys	5% of the charge, or a floor on cheap models. No top-up fee
Providers on one bill	Six, and Workers AI	Each provider on the exchange
Cap for each request	No	Yes. `cap_usd`; the provider pays any usage above it
Spend limits	Partly. Up to 20 for each gateway. A burst can pass one	Yes. Exact, for each key, workspace, organization and end user
Preview with no charge	No	Yes. The charge and cap of each offer, and why others are out
Record of each request	Partly. A log with a cost estimated from the token count	Yes. A receipt at the rates of the offer
No prompt logs by default	No. Logs can hold the prompt and the response. You can skip them for each request	Yes. The exchange stores no prompt or answer
No retention by default	Partly. Provider ZDR only on Cloudflare credit	Yes. Only offers that keep no prompt compete
Open to sellers	No. You can add your own endpoint for your own use	Yes. By application; sellers post their own offers
Cache	Yes. An edge cache for identical requests	Yes. Provider prompt caching, and a response cache for each request

What the exchange does that Cloudflare AI Gateway does not

One bill for every provider. You pay each provider on the exchange from one balance, with no account at the provider.
Prices from competition. Each provider quotes its own price for each model, and the auction buys the lowest cost. See Price and wait.
A hard cap for each request. Send exchange.cap_usd, or the x-liquid-cap-usd header. See Purchasing rules.
An exact charge. The receipt shows the charge from the metered usage and the rates of the offer, not an estimate. See Receipts.

When Cloudflare AI Gateway is the better choice

You already have accounts with your providers, and you want logs, a cache and rate limits in front of them.
Your app runs on Cloudflare Workers.

The two can work together. The exchange takes the OpenAI format, so you can add it to your gateway as a custom provider.

Switch in one line

 client = OpenAI(
-    base_url="https://gateway.ai.cloudflare.com/v1/<account>/<gateway>/compat",
+    base_url="https://router.inference.ai.exchange/v1",
     api_key=...,
 )

Then change each model to a name that GET /v1/models lists. See Connect an app.

Questions

Can I keep Cloudflare AI Gateway in front of the exchange?

Yes. Add the exchange as a custom provider with the base URL https://router.inference.ai.exchange/v1 and your exchange key. Cloudflare then logs and caches the requests, and the exchange runs the auction.

Does the exchange cache answers?

Yes, if you ask. Send x-liquid-cache: true, and an identical request from the same key gets the stored answer at no charge. Providers also cache prompts. See Response caching and Prompt caching.

Sources

Checked on 10 November 2026.

Credit and providers on one bill: Unified Billing
Fees: Pricing
Routing: Dynamic routing, Fallbacks
Spend limits: Spend limits
Logs and cost: Logging, Costs
Custom providers: Custom providers
Cache: Caching