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# Vercel AI Gateway's Free Tier Is $5 a Month With No Bring-Your-Own-Key
- URL: https://efreedirectory.com/vercel-ai-gateway-free-tier/
- Published: 2026-11-09T09:35:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-09T09:35:03.000Z
- Description: Five dollars is not a rounding error at provider list price, and the restrictions tell you exactly where the free tier is aimed.
- Author: Alpesh Gevariya
- Tags: tool, Developer & Code

**Vercel's AI Gateway gives every team account $5 of free credit per month, with token pricing at provider list rates and zero markup or platform fee. The free tier covers a subset of models rather than the full catalogue, applies lower per-model rate limits that return a 429 when exceeded, and does not support bring-your-own-key. Free credit starts at your first AI Gateway request, and purchasing any credits ends the monthly allowance permanently by moving the account to the paid tier.**[1](#sources)

Zero markup is the part that makes the $5 meaningful. On a marked-up gateway, free credit is worth less than its face value because every token costs more than the provider charges. Here the $5 buys exactly what $5 buys from the provider, which for the cheap models is a surprising amount of work.[2](#sources)

## The two tiers, compared

|                    | Free tier                        | Paid tier                            |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| Monthly credit     | $5 included                      | Pay as you go with purchased credits |
| Model access       | Free-tier eligible models only   | All available models                 |
| Token pricing      | Provider list rates, zero markup | Provider list rates, zero markup     |
| Rate limits        | Lower limits per model           | Custom limits available              |
| Bring your own key | Not available                    | Available                            |
| Commitment         | None                             | None, credits only                   |

**Prices measured on 27 October 2026.** Vendor plan terms, allowances and prices change without notice, so treat every figure on this page as a dated snapshot rather than a permanent fact. Where a number here differs from the vendor's own pricing page, the vendor's page is correct and the figure above is simply older than it.

Three details in that table decide whether the free tier suits you, and all three are easy to miss.

## Buying credits cancels the free ones

The allowance is not an ongoing benefit that stacks with a paid balance. Vercel is explicit: once you purchase credits, the account transitions to the paid tier and the monthly free credit no longer applies.

That turns the first top-up into a one-way door. A team that spends $5 quickly, adds $20 to keep going, and then has a quiet month has given up the recurring $5 in exchange for a balance it is now spending down. For a project with spiky usage, the rational move is to stay inside the allowance for as long as the models permit rather than topping up the moment it runs out.

There is no obligation to renew, and no commitment on either tier, so the exit is clean. The re-entry is not.

## No bring-your-own-key on free

This is the restriction that surprises people, because BYOK is usually the feature that makes a gateway cheap to run. On the free tier it is unavailable, so every request has to draw on Vercel's credit rather than your own provider account.

On the paid tier BYOK returns, and the zero-markup promise still holds even when you bring your own key. That combination is unusual and worth stating plainly: a gateway that charges nothing on top of list price, including for tokens you are already paying a provider for.

## What $5 actually buys

At list price with no markup, the answer depends entirely on the model, and the spread is enormous. A frontier model at a few dollars per million output tokens makes $5 a short experiment. A cheap Flash-class or Flash-Lite-class model makes it a small but genuine workload.

The practical use is development rather than production. Five dollars a month at these rates is enough to build against a real API, measure actual token consumption on your own prompts, and size a production budget from evidence rather than a calculator. That is exactly what a free tier should do, and it is a better designed one than a walled demo.

The lower per-model rate limits reinforce the same intent. Exceeding one returns a 429 with retry guidance rather than a bill, which is the correct failure mode for someone still learning what their workload costs.

## How this sits beside Token Pass

Vercel runs two overlapping products, and they are easy to confuse. [Token Pass is $30 a month for $80 of credit](https://efreedirectory.com/vercel-token-pass-free-plan-limits/) on three featured open-weight models, available to Pro teams only, with a dedicated key scoped to those models.

AI Gateway's free tier is the opposite shape: $5 of credit, a subset of models, no BYOK, no plan requirement beyond a team account. Token Pass is a discounted bundle for a specific model pool. The free tier is general access with a small allowance.

The distinction that matters is what happens at the limit. Token Pass credit runs out and a standard key falls back to your AI Gateway credits. AI Gateway free credit runs out and requests fail. One is a discount layered on a balance, the other is a balance with nothing behind it.

## What to take from it

The verdict is that this is the most honestly constructed free tier among the developer platforms covered here this month. It does not pretend to be unlimited, it does not mark up the tokens to claw back the allowance, and it states the two restrictions that would catch a scaling project, BYOK and model coverage, before you build on it.

The limitation to plan around is the one-way transition. If a project might ever need more than $5 a month, decide before the first top-up whether you want the recurring allowance or the balance, because Vercel will not let you have both.

Against the rest of the field, the pattern holds. [Cloudflare's free logging stops at 0.5 GB a day with no top-up available](https://efreedirectory.com/cloudflare-logs-free-plan-limits/). [Google gives three free videos in Vids and sells none in the API](https://efreedirectory.com/google-vids-omni-free-videos/). Free tiers are being drawn as sharp edges rather than soft ones, and an explicit $5 with a documented exit is a friendlier version of that than most.

## Frequently asked questions

**How much free credit does AI Gateway give?**  
$5 per month for every Vercel team account, at provider list price with zero markup.

**Which models can I use on the free tier?**  
A subset of the catalogue, listed as the free-tier eligible models. Everything else requires purchased credits.

**Can I use my own provider key on the free tier?**  
No. BYOK is unavailable until you move to the paid tier.

**What happens if I hit a rate limit?**  
AI Gateway returns a 429 and you can retry after a short wait. Purchasing credits raises the limits.

**Do I keep the $5 if I buy credits?**  
No. Purchasing credits moves the account to the paid tier and the monthly free credit stops applying.

**Is there a commitment?**  
None on either tier. The paid tier is pay as you go through purchased credits with no renewal obligation.

*The $5 monthly credit, free-tier model subset, provider list rates with zero markup, lower per-model rate limits, the 429 behaviour, the absence of BYOK on free, the credit-start trigger, the paid-tier BYOK availability, custom limits, the no-commitment terms and the effect of purchasing credits on the monthly allowance all verified in* [*Vercel's AI Gateway pricing documentation*](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing?ref=efreedirectory.com)*, read on 9 November 2026.*

## Sources

1. Vercel Docs: AI Gateway pricing: [vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing?ref=efreedirectory.com). Used for: The $5 monthly credit, free-tier model subset, zero markup, rate limits and 429 behaviour, BYOK availability and the effect of purchasing credits.
2. Vercel Docs: AI Gateway Token Pass: [vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/token-pass](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/token-pass?ref=efreedirectory.com). Used for: Token Pass pricing, eligibility and fallback behaviour, cited as the contrast.

*All sources are the vendor's own plan or documentation pages, checked on 27 October 2026\. Plan terms change without notice, so confirm current limits before you rely on them.*