What's free
Free tier with a monthly free credit covering a subset of models at lower rate limits
Rate limits
Free tier is rate-limited per model (HTTP 429 on exceed), lower than paid; routes to many providers rather than hosting models itself
The catch
Free tier and its monthly-credit behaviour are confirmed in Vercel's own docs; the specific "$5/month" figure circulating in community posts is not stated there. Once you purchase credits, your account moves to the paid tier and the monthly free credit no longer applies.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="<a-free-model>",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"<a-free-model>","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'