# Liquid Inference vs Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway is a hosted gateway. It sells each model at the list price of the provider, with no fee on tokens, and picks the provider by recent uptime and latency. Liquid Inference is an exchange. Providers quote their own prices, and each request starts an auction among the offers that meet your rules.

Both services take the OpenAI and Anthropic formats. The facts about Vercel AI Gateway come from its own pages, checked on 10 November 2026. The links are in [Sources](#sources).

## Feature by feature

| Feature                 | Vercel AI Gateway                                                                                                     | Liquid Inference                                                                     |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Price                   | The provider's list price                                                                                             | Each provider quotes its own price                                                   |
| Provider choice         | Recent uptime and latency. You can set `order`, `only` or `sort`                                                      | An auction: the lowest charge plus wait cost wins                                    |
| Fee                     | None on tokens. You pay the card fees, and some controls cost extra                                                   | 5% of the charge, or a floor on cheap models. No top-up fee                          |
| Cap for each request    | No                                                                                                                    | Yes. `cap_usd`; the provider pays any usage above it                                 |
| Spend limits            | Partly. Soft: the request that crosses a budget completes                                                             | Yes. Exact: the cap of each job in progress counts                                   |
| Preview with no charge  | No. A price list for each provider                                                                                    | Yes. The charge and cap of each offer, and why others are out                        |
| Record of each request  | Yes. `gateway.cost` in each response, and a lookup by id                                                              | Yes. A receipt: rates, fee, cap, charge split and the offers left out                |
| No retention by default | Partly. Vercel keeps no prompts, but routing ignores provider retention. Team ZDR costs $0.10 for each 1,000 requests | Yes. Only offers that keep no prompt compete                                         |
| Open to sellers         | No. A fixed list of providers                                                                                         | Yes. By application; sellers post their own offers                                   |
| Own cloud keys          | Yes. No fee on the paid tier. A failure goes again on Vercel's keys and your credit                                   | Partly. Beta. The exchange fee at the list price. You choose market fallback or fail |
| Media                   | Yes. Image, video, speech, transcription, embeddings and rerank                                                       | Yes. Image, video, speech, transcription and embeddings                              |

## What the exchange does that Vercel AI Gateway does not

- **Prices from competition.** Each provider quotes its own price for each model, and the auction buys the lowest cost. See [Price and wait](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/price-and-wait.md).
- **A hard cap for each request.** Send `exchange.cap_usd`, or the `x-liquid-cap-usd` header. See [Purchasing rules](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/rules.md).
- **Budgets that hold.** The exchange holds the price cap of each job before the first token, so a budget is exact. See [Guardrails](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/guardrails.md).
- **A dry run.** See which offers compete and what the request can cost before you buy. See [Purchasing rules](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/rules.md).
- **Retention rules by default.** Only offers that promise not to keep your prompt compete, unless you allow retention. See [Data handling](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/data-handling.md).

## When Vercel AI Gateway is the better choice

- You buy at list price and want no fee on tokens.
- Your app runs on Vercel and uses the AI SDK, and you want one bill.
- You need a model or a provider that the exchange does not list.

## Switch in one line

```diff
 client = OpenAI(
-    base_url="https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1",
+    base_url="https://router.inference.ai.exchange/v1",
     api_key=...,
 )
```

Then change each `model` to a name that `GET /v1/models` lists. The AI SDK works with the exchange through its OpenAI-compatible provider. See [Vercel AI SDK](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/connect-vercel-ai-sdk.md).

## Questions

### Is a budget on the exchange exact?

Yes. A budget counts settled charges and the price cap of each job in progress. The ledger enforces it, so concurrent requests cannot pass it. See [Guardrails](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/guardrails.md).

### What happens when my own key fails?

You choose for each cloud. With `market`, the default, the exchange moves the job to the next offer before any output, and charges it as a market job. With `fail`, the job ends. See [Bring your own key (BYOK)](https://liquidinference.ai/docs/byok.md).

## Sources

Checked on 10 November 2026.

- Product and BYOK: [AI Gateway](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway), [BYOK](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/authentication-and-byok/byok)
- Routing: [Provider filtering and ordering](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/models-and-providers/provider-filtering-and-ordering)
- Fees: [Pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing), [FAQ](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/faq)
- Budgets: [Budgets](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/observability-and-spend/budgets)
- Request record: [Logs](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/observability-and-spend/logs)
- Retention: [Zero data retention](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/security-and-compliance/zdr)
- Models and media: [Models and providers](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/models-and-providers)