Squiid vs Cloudflare AI Gateway
Cloudflare AI Gateway sits in front of accounts you already hold and adds caching, rate limiting, retries, logging and analytics. Squiid is on the other side of that line: it opens the accounts.
Short answer. If you already hold provider accounts and want caching, rate limiting, retries and a log of every call, Cloudflare AI Gateway is excellent and costs very little. Squiid solves the earlier problem: the twelve signups you did before any of that mattered.
The one-line difference. Cloudflare AI Gateway makes the accounts you already have observable and cheaper to call. Squiid means you never opened most of them, because it holds the provider relationship and meters the calls.
Side by side
| Cloudflare AI Gateway | Squiid | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | A proxy in front of providers you already use: caching, rate limiting, retries, fallback, request logging and cost analytics. | The whole catalogue: databases, hosting, email, SMS, storage, auth and payments, models included. Model calls go to a named provider, not a router. |
| Non-AI services | Not through the gateway. Storage, D1, KV and Workers are the developer platform. | Yes. Postgres, object storage, email, phone numbers, error tracking. |
| Provisioning of accounts | No. You sign up with each provider and bring those keys. | Yes. Squiid opens the account and holds the credential. |
| Key custody and rotation | You hold every provider key. The gateway can store provider credentials, as of their public docs, but rotation stays your job at each provider. | Squiid holds and rotates the provider keys. Your project carries one gateway key, worthless outside it. |
| Billing model | You keep paying every provider directly. The gateway is part of your Cloudflare account, with free usage and paid log retention. | Prepaid credits at par: $1 of credit is $1 at the provider. Subscriptions pass through at list price. |
| Fee | No fee on inference, because Cloudflare is not reselling it. | Free $0/mo + 15% at top-up. Solo $19.97/mo from 8%, falling to 3.5% with spend. Team from $29.97/seat, one point lower. Custom 3% or less. |
| One invoice PDF | One Cloudflare bill, plus one per model provider you kept. | Yes. One monthly PDF: credits, plan, subscriptions. |
| Spend caps and pause-on-zero | Rate limits and request caps at the gateway. Spend is still controlled at each provider, mostly in arrears. | Yes. Alerts at 75, 90 and 100%, capped auto top-up, pause at zero. |
| Works with coding agents | Yes. It is a base URL change in front of the provider SDK. | Yes. One variable and one base URL convention for every service. |
| Self-host option | Not applicable. It runs on Cloudflare. | No. Hosted only. Leaving is a transfer where the provider supports one, a documented export otherwise. See handover. |
| Best for | Existing provider accounts that need caching, analytics and rate limiting in front. | Projects where the model bill is one line next to the database. |
When to pick Cloudflare AI Gateway instead
Pick it when the accounts already exist and the problem is visibility. Seeing every prompt, latency spike and dollar, then caching the repeats, is worth a lot and changes no billing relationship.
Pick it when caching is the actual win. Agentic workloads repeat themselves constantly, and a cache in front of an expensive model is the cheapest optimisation available. Squiid does not cache inference for you.
Pick it when you are already deep in Cloudflare, or when you need to keep the provider relationships. Some teams need a direct contract with a model vendor; the gateway leaves that untouched and Squiid deliberately does not.
When Squiid is the better fit
Squiid is the better fit when you have not opened the accounts and would rather not. The gateway starts working once you hold an OpenAI key, a Supabase project and a Resend domain. Getting those is the work Squiid removes.
It is also the better fit for spend control with teeth. A proxy rate limits requests, but the bill still arrives from each provider in arrears. Prepaid credits that pause at zero stop a runaway agent.
And it is the better fit when accounting wants one document rather than six provider receipts on six dates.
Use both
These stack cleanly, because they act at different points. Squiid holds the provider relationships and meters spend; the proxy adds caching and a request log. Cloudflare R2, Workers, KV and D1 are in the Squiid catalogue too, so the edge parts sit on the same invoice.
Questions people ask
Does Cloudflare AI Gateway mark up model calls?
No, because it does not sell them. You keep paying the providers directly while the gateway sits in the request path, which is also why it does nothing about the number of accounts you hold.
Can Squiid cache my model responses?
No. Squiid meters and routes to a named provider; it keeps no semantic cache of your prompts. If caching is the main thing you want, a dedicated proxy is the right tool.
Which one keeps a key out of my repository?
Both reduce exposure, differently. The proxy still needs a working provider credential somewhere. Squiid holds that credential upstream and gives your project a key worthless outside the gateway.
Is Workers AI the same as AI Gateway?
No. Workers AI runs models on Cloudflare and is billed by Cloudflare; AI Gateway is a proxy in front of whichever providers you use. Often used together.
Can I buy Cloudflare through Squiid?
R2, Workers, KV and D1 are provisioned services in the catalogue, so their usage runs on the same prepaid balance and lands on the same invoice. See the catalogue.
A proxy needs an account.
Squiid is the account.
One login, one key, one bill, at provider prices, with a balance that pauses instead of overdrawing.