Ask HN: Best AI Gateway?
TL;DR
A Hacker News user is asking which AI gateway works best for an AI agent running on val.town. The current setup talks directly to Anthropic router. The shortlist includes OpenRouter, Vercel AI Gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway, or something else. The author sees a lot of vendor noise around gateways right now. OpenRouter looks attractive for model and provider coverage, but the author flags a 5.5 percent pay-as-you-go platform fee and missing features such as prompt caching.
Nauti's Take
This is more an operations decision than a tool pick. OpenRouter wins on catalog breadth, Vercel fits a Vercel-heavy app stack, and Cloudflare is appealing when infrastructure and policy already live there.
But a gateway that breaks prompt caching or blurs fees can be worse than direct provider access. Measure real agent traffic first, then pick the control plane.
Briefingshow
AI gateways are becoming the control layer between apps, model providers, cost tracking, logging, and outages. For agents, the model catalog is only one piece; caching, tool calls, fallbacks, billing, latency, and data handling decide whether the gateway helps. If inference costs are passed to customers, platform fees and missing features matter fast.
Sources