$5 free credits when you sign up
Vs Vercel AI Gateway

Host-portable LLM gateway, without the platform lock-in.

Vercel AI Gateway is purpose-built for the Vercel platform. Nemo Router is a host-portable LLM gateway you can run from any host, with credit-based billing, built-in guardrails, and every enterprise feature free on every tier. Keep the Vercel AI SDK — just swap the base URL. Every claim below about Vercel AI Gateway cites its public docs and is dated.

Start free — no credit cardBook a demo
vs · vercel-ai-gateway · verified May 2026

What changes on day one

Host portabilityAny host
Vercel AI Gateway roleVercel-bound
Provider keysWe manage all
Guardrails / SSO / AuditEvery tier
Works with Vercel AI SDKDrop-in baseURL
Models live now70+
Tier 3 · 0%Any hostGDPRDPA
Tier 3 platform fee
0%

Annual prepay ($1,200+/yr) — charged on top, not carved out

Hosts supported
Any

Vercel · Cloudflare · AWS · GCP · Render · your infra

Provider keys to manage
0

We hold every credential — no BYOK

Migration time
< 5 min

Swap the base URL — keep the Vercel AI SDK

Compliance posture — stated honestly, not overclaimed

  • SOC 2 Type IIIn progress
  • ISO/IEC 27001In progress
  • GDPRActive
  • HIPAAAvailable
  • PCI DSSAvailable
  • Data residencyActive

Our underlying infrastructure (Cloud Run, Supabase) is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified. Nemo Router's own SOC 2 Type II audit is in progress. Full detail and downloadable artifacts live on the Trust Center.

Side by side

The capability matrix

Both serve OpenAI-compatible APIs and route LLM traffic. The substantive differences are host-portability, pricing philosophy, and provider-key ownership. Every marker is sourced below.

Comparison · sources verified May 2026

CapabilityNemo RouterVercel AI Gateway
Platform feeMarkup added on top of provider cost
0 % – 4 %0 % – 4 %7
Plan-dependentPlan-dependent1
Host-portabilityRun the gateway from any host, not tied to one platform
Any hostAny host7
Vercel platformVercel platform2
Provider key managementWho holds the OpenAI / Anthropic / Google credentials
Fully managed (no BYOK)Fully managed (no BYOK)7
BYOK across providersBYOK across providers2
OpenAI-compatible APIDrop-in base URL for existing clients
Included
Included
Works with the Vercel AI SDKKeep SDK ergonomics, swap the gateway
Via OpenAI providerVia OpenAI provider4
NativeNative4
Models live todayCounts come from the live router, never hardcoded
70+70+7
Per provider catalogPer provider catalog2
Built-in guardrailsPII, prompt injection, content filter in request path
Included7
Verify in docsVerify in docs3
Role-based team managementOwner / admin / member / viewer
4 roles, every tier4 roles, every tier7
Verify in docsVerify in docs3
SSO / SAML
Every tierEvery tier7
Plan-dependentPlan-dependent3
Audit logs
Every tierEvery tier7
Plan-dependentPlan-dependent3
Per-team & per-key budgetsHard spend caps enforced in the request path
Hard caps, every tierHard caps, every tier7
Verify in docsVerify in docs3
Built-in credit billingStripe-backed credit ledger with reserve + settle
Included
Not available5
Observability suiteLogs, latency percentiles, callbacks
Built-in, every tierBuilt-in, every tier7
Built-in, plan-dependentBuilt-in, plan-dependent5
Prompt managementVersioned templates + A/B variants
Templates + versioningTemplates + versioning7
Verify in docsVerify in docs3
Contractual uptime SLA
99.9 %99.9 %7
Platform SLA on paid plansPlatform SLA on paid plans6
IncludedNot availableNot applicablenSourced footnote below

Sources & methodology

Competitor rows reflect each vendor's publicly documented plans and docs as last checked in May 2026; each cell links the specific source. Where a competitor's pricing or plan structure is not public, the cell describes the structure rather than quoting a figure — we never invent competitor pricing. Found something out of date? Email sales@nemorouter.ai and we'll correct it.

  1. Vercel AI Gateway routes LLM traffic with pricing tied to the Vercel platform plan (Hobby / Pro / Enterprise). Specific figures vary by plan and credit allowance and are not quoted here. Vercel AI Gateway · Vercel pricing · verified May 2026
  2. Vercel AI Gateway is delivered as a feature of the Vercel platform. Its routing endpoint lives at gateway.ai.cloudflare-ish style URLs tied to a Vercel project — host-portability is not the product shape. Vercel AI Gateway (all plans) · Vercel AI Gateway docs · verified May 2026
  3. Vercel AI Gateway documents observability and provider routing; the depth of governance controls (guardrails, RBAC, audit logs, SSO) is plan-dependent — verify on the Vercel AI Gateway documentation. Vercel AI Gateway · Vercel AI Gateway docs · verified May 2026
  4. The Vercel AI SDK is an open-source TypeScript toolkit that calls any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Pointing the SDK's OpenAI provider at Nemo Router's base URL keeps the SDK ergonomics; you swap the gateway. Vercel AI SDK · Vercel AI SDK docs · verified May 2026
  5. Vercel AI Gateway surfaces request analytics, spend, and usage from logged traffic. It does not ship a customer-facing credit ledger — billing flows through the underlying Vercel platform subscription. Vercel AI Gateway (all plans) · Vercel AI Gateway docs · verified May 2026
  6. Vercel publishes uptime targets through its platform-wide SLA on paid / enterprise plans. AI Gateway availability inherits the platform SLA rather than carrying a separate contractual percentage on the free tier. Vercel Pro / Enterprise · Vercel site · verified May 2026
  7. Nemo platform fee is charged on top of provider cost, never deducted from purchased credits. Every product feature ships on every tier — tiers differ only on fee percentage and RPM/TPM guarantee. Host-portable by design: one OpenAI-compatible base URL works from any host. Nemo Router pricing · Nemo Router pricing page · verified May 2026
Feature by feature

The honest, line-by-line breakdown

Ten capabilities, compared in plain English — including where Vercel AI Gateway is genuinely a peer. Drop this straight into an internal RFP.

Host portability — any host vs Vercel-bound2

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

Nemo Router exposes an OpenAI-compatible HTTPS endpoint at https://api.nemorouter.ai/v1. Any client that can call OpenAI can call Nemo — from Vercel projects, Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda, GCP Cloud Run, Render, Fly, or bare-metal VMs. No platform lock-in.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway ships as a feature of the Vercel platform. Its routing endpoint is tied to a Vercel project; using it cleanly means deploying on Vercel and matching your AI Gateway plan to your platform plan.

Bottom line: If your stack is Vercel-native and staying that way, Vercel AI Gateway is purpose-built. If you need a gateway that survives a host migration, Nemo is host-portable by construction.

Pricing philosophy & feature gating3

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

Every product feature ships on every tier. Tiers differ on exactly two axes — the platform-fee percentage (4% / 2% / 0%) and the RPM/TPM guarantee. Guardrails, SSO, audit logs, prompts, and budgets are never behind a paywall.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway pricing is tied to the underlying Vercel platform plan (Hobby / Pro / Enterprise). Governance depth (SSO, audit logs, advanced RBAC) scales with the platform plan rather than being free on the entry tier — verify on vercel.com/pricing and vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway.

Bottom line: If your team needs SSO or audit logs without negotiating an Enterprise Vercel contract, Nemo includes them from Tier 1. Vercel AI Gateway's depth tracks your platform plan.

Provider keys — BYOK vs fully managed2

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

We hold every provider credential across 3 provider clouds today. You get one NEMOROUTER_API_KEY and never provision, rotate, or audit an upstream provider account.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway routes through providers using credentials configured in your Vercel project; you provision and own the upstream provider relationships. Virtual routing abstracts model selection, but the underlying provider accounts remain yours.

Bottom line: If you want to keep your own provider contracts, Vercel AI Gateway's BYOK is a feature. If you want zero provider-account management, Nemo's fully-managed model removes that operational tax.

Vercel AI SDK compatibility4

Roughly even

Nemo Router

The Vercel AI SDK calls any OpenAI-compatible endpoint via its OpenAI provider. Point the SDK's baseURL at Nemo and the SDK's streaming, tool-call, and structured-output abstractions continue to work — you keep the SDK, you swap the gateway.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway is native to the Vercel AI SDK and the deepest integration point. If your codebase is already AI SDK-first, the integration is one-line on either gateway — Nemo just doesn't lock you to Vercel.

Bottom line: Both keep the Vercel AI SDK working. Nemo decouples the SDK choice from the host choice.

Billing & cost control5

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

A Stripe-backed credit ledger with atomic reserve-and-settle. Every call deducts in real time, every failure releases the reservation, and per-key / per-team / per-org budgets are hard caps enforced before a request leaves the gateway.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway surfaces request analytics and spend; billing flows through the underlying Vercel platform subscription. Spend controls are documented as part of the Vercel platform's controls rather than as a customer-facing credit ledger.

Bottom line: Nemo turns spend control into an enforced product surface; on Vercel AI Gateway it routes through your platform subscription.

Guardrails & content safety3

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

Content filtering, PII detection/redaction, and prompt-injection detection run in the request path on every tier — pre-call, during-call, post-call — scoped per org, team, or key. No volume tier, no add-on.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway documents observability and routing; the depth of in-path content-safety guardrails is plan-dependent — verify on the Vercel AI Gateway documentation on the date you evaluate.

Bottom line: If you need PII redaction or injection defense as a request-path control on every tier, Nemo ships it free. On Vercel AI Gateway the depth tracks your plan.

Teams, roles & tenant isolation3

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

Org → team → member with four roles (owner / admin / member / viewer) and granular permissions for keys, spend visibility, and guardrails. Multi-tenancy is enforced in Postgres with row-level security — cross-org reads are physically impossible.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway tenancy inherits the Vercel team model. Advanced RBAC, SSO/SAML, and audit logging depth track the Vercel platform plan — verify on the Vercel AI Gateway documentation.

Bottom line: Nemo gives every tier the full role model and RLS-backed isolation; on Vercel AI Gateway the governance depth tracks your Vercel platform plan.

Observability5

Roughly even

Nemo Router

Request logs, cost tracking per model/team/key, P50/P95/P99 latency, error-rate monitoring, and callbacks to Langfuse / Datadog / S3 / Slack — included on every tier, with org-level data-policy controls.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway ships a strong observability surface — request analytics, spend breakdowns, latency — native to the Vercel dashboard. Some depth is associated with higher platform plans.

Bottom line: Observability is genuine common ground — both are strong here. The difference is Nemo does not tier it.

Prompt management3

Edge: Nemo Router

Nemo Router

Versioned prompt templates with deterministic A/B variants and evals, opted into per request via a template ID. Versioning lives in the gateway, not your codebase.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway and the Vercel AI SDK provide patterns for prompt construction; centralized versioning and A/B traffic splitting at the gateway are surface-dependent — verify on Vercel AI Gateway docs.

Bottom line: Both let you ship prompts. Nemo bakes versioning, A/B traffic splitting, and evals into the gateway itself.

Model catalog2

Edge: competitor

Nemo Router

78 models live today on Google Vertex AI; Anthropic, OpenAI, and AWS Bedrock are on the public roadmap. We publish only what is routable.

Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway routes to providers configured in your Vercel project — its catalog depth tracks the provider accounts you connect plus the Vercel-supported provider list.

Bottom line: Vercel AI Gateway's BYOK-style provider model gives broad reach today. Nemo's catalog is focused but managed end-to-end and growing.

Why teams switch

Four reasons teams move to Nemo Router

Every product feature — guardrails, prompt management, A/B tests, evals, observability, RBAC, SSO/SAML, audit logs, per-team budgets, and priority support — ships on every tier. Tiers differ on exactly two axes: the platform-fee percentage (4 % / 2 % / 0 %) and the RPM/TPM guarantee. Nothing else is gated.

Host-portable by design

Nemo Router runs anywhere a client can speak HTTPS — Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda, GCP Cloud Run, Render, Fly, your own VMs. No platform lock-in, no rewrite if you ever move off Vercel. Vercel AI Gateway is delivered as a feature of the Vercel platform.

  • One OpenAI-compatible base URL
  • Same gateway from any host
  • No platform-coupled SDK required

No feature gating, no add-ons

Vercel AI Gateway governance depth (SSO, audit logs, advanced RBAC) tracks the underlying Vercel platform plan. Nemo Router ships every feature on every plan — Tier 1 through Tier 3. The only thing that changes between tiers is platform fee (4% / 2% / 0%) and RPM/TPM guarantees.

  • Guardrails on Tier 1
  • SSO + audit on Tier 1
  • No platform-plan upgrade pressure

Keep the Vercel AI SDK — swap the gateway

The Vercel AI SDK calls any OpenAI-compatible endpoint via its OpenAI provider. Point the SDK's baseURL at Nemo and the SDK's streaming, tool-call, and structured-output abstractions continue to work. Your codebase doesn't have to change to leave the platform.

  • One-line baseURL swap
  • Streaming + tool-calls preserved
  • Works with 70+ models behind one key

Real RBAC + tenant isolation

Owner / admin / member / viewer with granular permissions for keys, spend visibility, guardrails, and team operations — on every tier. Multi-tenancy is enforced at the database level via row-level security, so cross-org reads are physically impossible.

  • 4 roles on every tier
  • RLS-enforced isolation in Postgres
  • Single-org-per-user invariant
Migration

Migrate in 3 steps

Keep the Vercel AI SDK, swap the base URL, and you're done. Your existing streaming, tool-call, and structured-output code keeps working.

1

Sign up at nemorouter.ai

Free account, no credit card required. Takes 30 seconds.

2

Point the AI SDK baseURL at Nemo

One line. Same SDK, same client code, no rewrites.

3

Run from any host

Vercel, Cloudflare, AWS, GCP, Render, your infra — same gateway.

migration.ts · Vercel AI SDK
// Before (Vercel AI Gateway via Vercel project)
import { openai } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const { text } = await generateText({
  model: openai('gpt-4o'),  // routed by your Vercel project
  prompt: 'Hello',
});

// After (Nemo Router — same SDK, host-portable)
import { createOpenAI } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const nemo = createOpenAI({
  baseURL: 'https://api.nemorouter.ai/v1',
  apiKey: process.env.NEMOROUTER_API_KEY!,
});

const { text } = await generateText({
  model: nemo('gpt-4o'),  // runs from any host
  prompt: 'Hello',
});

Works with the Vercel AI SDK, the OpenAI Node.js / Python SDK, and any OpenAI-compatible client. No platform-specific runtime, no project-level config — just base URL and API key.

Architectural differences

Host, pricing, billing — where the products diverge

Host portability

Vercel AI Gateway is delivered as a feature of the Vercel platform. Its routing endpoint, observability dashboard, and provider config live inside a Vercel project — using it cleanly means deploying on Vercel and matching the AI Gateway plan to the platform plan.

Nemo Router takes the opposite shape. It is a host-independent HTTPS endpoint at https://api.nemorouter.ai/v1. Any client — running on Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda, GCP Cloud Run, Render, Fly, or a bare VM — calls it the same way. Your gateway choice doesn't lock your deploy target.

Pricing philosophy

Vercel AI Gateway pricing is tied to the underlying Vercel platform plan. Governance depth (SSO, audit logs, advanced RBAC) scales with that plan rather than being free on the entry tier.

Nemo Router includes every feature on every plan. Plans differ only in platform-fee percentage (4% Tier 1 / 2% Tier 2 / 0% Tier 3) and RPM/TPM guarantees. Nothing else is gated.

Billing and cost control

Nemo Router has a built-in credit system powered by Stripe. You purchase credits, every call deducts via atomic reserve-and-settle, and budgets at the key/team/org level enforce in real time — when a budget is exhausted, requests reject before reaching the provider.

Vercel AI Gateway surfaces request analytics and spend; billing flows through the underlying Vercel platform subscription. Spend controls are documented as part of the platform's controls rather than as a customer-facing credit ledger.

Enterprise features

Enterprise capability, included on every plan

The opposite of feature gating — we differentiate on platform fee and RPM/TPM guarantees, not by paywalling governance.

Budget controls that enforce

Hard spending caps per API key, per team, per org. When a key hits the cap, requests reject before reaching the provider — not a post-hoc report telling you that you already overspent.

Full observability stack — free

Request logging, cost tracking by model/team/key, P50/P95/P99 latency, error-rate monitoring, and callbacks to Langfuse / Datadog / S3 / Slack. Data retention is configurable at the org level.

Compliance posture, stated honestly

SSO/SAML (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace), immutable audit logs, GDPR with a DPA, data-residency controls — on every plan. Infrastructure is SOC 2 Type II certified; our own audit is in progress.

Zero BYOK across every provider

We manage every provider key. No provisioning, rotation, or auditing of upstream credentials on your side — the operational tax is ours.

What customers ask

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about choosing Nemo Router over Vercel AI Gateway.

Host-portable · 5-minute migration

Ready to leave the platform lock-in?

Free Tier 1 account, no credit card. Every feature included from day one — guardrails, SSO, audit logs, budgets, RBAC, prompt management. Same Vercel AI SDK, any host.

Start free — no credit cardBook a demo

Need help moving over? sales@nemorouter.ai for white-glove migration.99.9% SLA