What Vercel offers startups
The Vercel AI Gateway is Vercel's unified LLM proxy — one API key, one SDK, and access to 100+ models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Mistral, Meta, Cohere, and more. Through Vercel for Startups, eligible founders receive up to $2,400 in AI Gateway credits alongside Vercel Pro hosting credits.
If you're building an AI product, the AI Gateway eliminates the need to manage separate accounts, billing, and rate limits across every model provider. Switch from GPT-5 to Claude Sonnet to Gemini with a one-line change. Built-in observability, automatic retries, fallback routing, and rate limiting are all included — no extra LiteLLM setup.
Everything in the program
- Up to $2,400 in Vercel AI Gateway credits
- Unified access to 100+ models across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Mistral, Cohere, Meta
- One API key, one SDK (Vercel AI SDK)
- Built-in observability: per-request logging, latency tracking, cost analytics
- Automatic retries, fallback routing, and per-key rate limiting
- Bundled with Vercel Pro hosting credits for the broader Startups program
Who qualifies
- Startup under 2 years old
- Less than $10M total funding raised
- Applying via Vercel for Startups (the AI Gateway credits are part of the broader package)
- Building a real product (not an agency or template-resale business)
- Not currently on Vercel Enterprise
The application path
- Visit vercel.com/startups and submit the application
- Provide company info, current Vercel team, and AI use case
- Vercel reviews applications within 1–2 weeks
- On approval, credits are applied to your AI Gateway and Vercel Pro accounts
- Set your AI Gateway API key in your application and start routing model calls
Maximize your approval odds
- Use the AI Gateway even when you only call one model — observability and retries are worth it on day one
- Set per-key budgets to prevent runaway costs in development environments
- Configure fallback routing (e.g., GPT-5 → Claude Sonnet) so a provider outage doesn't take you down
- Combine with the Vercel AI SDK for type-safe streaming responses across all models
Founders ask before applying
How much in Vercel AI Gateway credits can a startup get?
Up to $2,400 in AI Gateway credits, bundled with the broader Vercel for Startups package which also includes Vercel Pro hosting credits.
Which AI models does the Vercel AI Gateway support?
OpenAI (GPT-5, o-series, GPT-4o), Anthropic (Claude Opus, Sonnet, Haiku), Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Mistral, Meta (Llama), Cohere, and more — over 100 models in total.
Do I need to use Vercel hosting to use the AI Gateway?
No. The AI Gateway works from any environment, but Vercel for Startups bundles both products together.
How long do Vercel AI Gateway credits last?
Credits are typically valid for 12 months from the date of approval.