HiWay2LLM vs Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel AI Gateway and HiWay2LLM both sit in front of LLM providers and give you one API surface to call them. Both do fallback, both do observability, both let you switch models without rewriting your app. On a feature checklist they look similar.

The difference is architectural philosophy. Vercel AI Gateway is platform-native: it's designed to be the LLM layer of the Vercel stack, tightly bolted to Next.js, the Vercel AI SDK, and the Vercel dashboard. If you deploy on Vercel, it's the path of least resistance. HiWay2LLM is platform-neutral: a standalone service that speaks the OpenAI API and runs anywhere — on Vercel, on AWS, on your laptop, on a customer's on-prem cluster.

Picking between them is less about features and more about where you want the gravity of your stack to be.

Quick decision

• Your entire app lives on Vercel and you ship with the Vercel AI SDK? Vercel AI Gateway is zero friction. Use it.
• You're deployed elsewhere (AWS, GCP, Fly, your own VPS, Supabase Functions, Cloudflare Workers)? HiWay is designed to be portable. No Vercel account required.
• You need smart routing by request complexity (cheap model for greetings, expensive model for hard reasoning)? HiWay does this natively. Vercel AI Gateway is fallback-based.
• EU-hosted with a signed DPA? HiWay is operated from France on OVH. Vercel has EU regions for compute, but their billing and control plane are US-origin — check their current DPA if compliance is load-bearing.
• Want the analytics in the same dashboard as your deploys and domains? Vercel AI Gateway wins — it's literally the same UI.

Pricing

Vercel AI Gateway is priced as part of the Vercel platform. Based on their public pricing as of 2026-04-22, it's a metered add-on: you pay per-request on top of whatever Vercel plan you're on, and inference is billed through Vercel's wallet at the provider rates (plus Vercel's margin — check their current terms for exact markup). The hidden cost to factor in: AI Gateway only makes economic sense if you're already paying for Vercel.

HiWay works differently. You bring your own provider keys (BYOK), so Anthropic/OpenAI/Google/etc. bill you directly at wholesale, with no markup from us. HiWay charges a flat monthly fee for the routing layer:

Nothing is metered against your inference spend. Two different models: Vercel bundles inference into your platform bill, which is convenient if you want one invoice. HiWay separates them — and smart routing (auto-downgrade simple requests to cheaper models, 40-85% savings on a typical mix) overtakes the $15/mo Build subscription within hours of real use, at any scale. Because 0% of markup on a normal inference bill beats any percentage, as soon as you care about cost at all.

Feature-by-feature

When to pick which

Migration

If you're using the Vercel AI SDK pointed at AI Gateway today, the SDK stays — you swap the base URL and the key. If you're using the OpenAI SDK, even simpler. The request shape doesn't change.

from openai import OpenAI

# Vercel AI Gateway (OpenAI-compatible endpoint)
client = OpenAI(
  base_url="https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1",
  api_key="vck_...",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
  model="anthropic/claude-3-5-sonnet",
  messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
  base_url="https://app.hiway2llm.com/v1",
  api_key="hw_live_...",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
  model="auto",  # let the router pick
  messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)

One-time setup: drop your provider keys into Settings → Providers in the HiWay dashboard. The Vercel AI SDK keeps working exactly as before — we're fully compatible with it.

The Vercel lock-in question

Here's the honest tension. Vercel AI Gateway is excellent if you live on Vercel. The ergonomics are genuinely unmatched: you deploy a Next.js app, you enable AI Gateway in the dashboard, your Vercel AI SDK code just works, the observability shows up next to your existing project metrics. One invoice, one login, one support channel. For a team that's already all-in on Vercel, this is hard to beat on pure developer experience.

The question is what happens when the gravity shifts. If next year you migrate part of your stack off Vercel — to Cloudflare Workers for edge latency, to your own EKS cluster for compliance, to Fly.io for cheaper compute — your LLM layer is now tangled with a platform you're leaving. You either keep paying for Vercel just for the gateway, or you rip out AI Gateway and replace it with something neutral. Either option is friction.

HiWay is deliberately platform-neutral. It doesn't care where your app runs. You can deploy on Vercel and use HiWay, then migrate to your own infra and still use HiWay. The LLM router is a separate concern from the hosting platform — which is also how CDN, email, and payments have all ended up working at scale.

This isn't an argument that Vercel AI Gateway is a trap. It's not. It's an argument that if you already know you don't want to couple your LLM layer to a hosting platform, Vercel AI Gateway isn't the right tool for you. And if you're sure you'll be on Vercel forever, the coupling is a feature, not a bug.

Data & compliance

Vercel's gateway runs on Vercel infrastructure. They have EU compute regions and a standard DPA (check their current Trust Center for scope). Control plane and billing are US-origin, as is most of Vercel's corporate footprint. For EU-based teams this is usually fine; for heavily regulated industries (health, finance, legal) the "US-origin with EU regions" story sometimes doesn't clear the compliance review.

HiWay is operated by Mytm-Group, a French company, from OVH servers in the EU. Zero prompt logging by default — prompts transit in-memory, nothing is persisted. We sign a DPA on request, including on the free plan, and we publish our sub-processor list. The entire corporate and technical footprint is EU-native.

For most SaaS and consumer apps, either works. For regulated verticals or procurement teams allergic to Cloud Act exposure, the EU-native path is shorter.

FAQ

Bottom line

Vercel AI Gateway is the right answer when your app lives on Vercel and you want the LLM layer bolted onto the same platform — the ergonomics are real, the integration is frictionless, and the dashboard consolidation is a win. HiWay is the right answer when you want provider-neutral routing, EU hosting, BYOK, and a pricing model that doesn't scale with your inference bill.

If you're already on Vercel and the integration is saving you time, don't fix what isn't broken. If you want smart routing, EU residency, or you just don't want your LLM layer tied to any hosting platform, try HiWay's free tier — 2,500 requests/month, no card, and it works on Vercel too.