February 21, 2026
Cumbersome now supports Vercel AI Gateway as a provider. You can add your AI Gateway API key alongside your existing OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI Studio, and OpenRouter keys and use it to access hundreds of models through a single endpoint.
That is the headline. But the real story is zero data retention.
What Vercel AI Gateway Actually Is
Vercel AI Gateway is a unified API that sits between you and AI providers. You get one API key. That key routes your requests to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, Together, and dozens of other providers. You pick the model. The gateway handles the rest.
The practical features:
- One key, hundreds of models. Instead of managing separate API keys for each provider, one gateway key covers everything.
- Automatic retries and fallbacks. If one provider is down, the gateway can retry with another provider that offers the same model.
- Spend monitoring. One dashboard shows your spending across every provider.
- No token markup. Tokens cost the same as they would from the provider directly.
If this sounds like OpenRouter, it is in the same category. Both are unified AI gateways. The differences come down to cost and data retention, which I will get into below.
Zero Data Retention Is the Feature That Matters
Here is why I am writing this post. Vercel negotiated zero data retention agreements with a list of AI providers. When you enable ZDR on a request, the gateway only routes to providers that have agreed to delete your data immediately after processing. No training on your prompts. No storing your outputs. No data retained, period.
The providers with ZDR agreements through Vercel AI Gateway right now:
- Anthropic (zero data retention)
- Amazon Bedrock (zero data retention)
- Google Vertex (zero data retention, excludes Google Web Search)
- Groq (zero data retention)
- Mistral (zero data retention)
- Together (zero data retention)
- Fireworks (zero data retention)
- Cerebras (zero data retention)
- DeepInfra (zero data retention)
- Baseten (zero data retention)
- Parasail (zero data retention)
OpenAI is not on this list. That is a notable absence. If you need ZDR and you are using OpenAI models, the gateway will not route those requests through a ZDR-compliant path. Keep that in mind.
Why Gateways Matter for ZDR
If you are a solo developer, a freelancer, or a small team, you cannot call up Anthropic and negotiate a zero data retention contract. Those deals require enterprise relationships, legal review, and enough volume to justify special treatment. You are stuck with whatever the default data retention policy is for the standard API tier.
Both Vercel and OpenRouter solved this problem. They negotiated ZDR agreements with providers so you do not have to. By routing through either gateway with ZDR enabled, you piggyback on their enterprise relationships. Your prompts get the same data handling guarantees that a Fortune 500 company negotiated. You did not need a legal department or a procurement team. You just set a flag.
Using provider APIs directly does not give you ZDR unless you have your own enterprise agreement. Gateways are the practical path for individuals and small teams who want verified zero data retention from multiple providers through a single key.
When ZDR Matters
You do not need ZDR for everything. Asking Claude to explain a Python error is not sensitive work.
But consider what happened in December 2025. A federal judge ordered OpenAI to hand over 20 million "anonymized" ChatGPT chat logs to the New York Times as evidence in a copyright lawsuit. OpenAI fought to keep them secret and lost. The judge ruled the logs were relevant and that handing them over would not violate user privacy because of "exhaustive de-identification."
Think about that for a moment. Every conversation you have with ChatGPT is stored. It can be subpoenaed. It can be ordered into evidence in a lawsuit you have nothing to do with. OpenAI argued that "99.99%" of the transcripts had nothing to do with the case. The judge ordered them produced anyway.
And "anonymized" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Reliably stripping personal information from 20 million freeform conversations is not a solved problem. People paste emails, describe their jobs, name their companies, discuss medical conditions, and share financial details in AI chats. An automated de-identification pipeline across millions of unstructured conversations is going to miss things. The court accepted OpenAI's assurance that it would be thorough. Whether that holds up across 20 million chats is a different question.
This is not a hypothetical privacy concern. It already happened. And it will happen again, because stored data is discoverable data. The only way to guarantee your prompts cannot be subpoenaed, leaked, or used in legal proceedings is to ensure they are never stored in the first place. That is what zero data retention means.
Now consider the practical scenarios:
- Business strategy and financials. You are using AI to analyze revenue data, competitive positioning, or pricing strategy. You do not want that sitting in a provider's database waiting for a subpoena.
- Legal and compliance work. Drafting contracts, reviewing terms, analyzing regulatory requirements. Retained prompts become discoverable evidence.
- Medical and health queries. Even informal health questions can contain information you would rather not have stored permanently.
- Client work. If you are a consultant, your clients' data is not yours to let providers retain.
- Proprietary code. Feeding proprietary algorithms or business logic into AI for refactoring. With ZDR, the code goes in and the response comes out. Nothing lingers.
With Cumbersome, you can use your direct API keys for routine work and switch to the Vercel AI Gateway key when you need ZDR. Different keys for different contexts. That is the flexibility of managing your own API keys instead of relying on a single subscription.
Cumbersome Settings on iPhone. All six providers with API keys configured. The Zero Data Retention toggle under Vercel AI Gateway ensures requests only route to providers that delete your data immediately after processing.
Web Search Through the Gateway
Vercel AI Gateway adds built-in web search to any model, even models whose providers do not offer native search. This is a meaningful addition.
Perplexity Search works with any model regardless of provider. You can pair Claude Opus 4.6 or GPT-5.2 with Perplexity's search API to get current information from the web. The model calls the search tool when it needs fresh data. This costs $5 per 1,000 search requests on top of your normal token costs.
Parallel Search (from Parallel AI) offers a similar capability with LLM-optimized web search that extracts relevant excerpts from pages. Same deal: works with any model.
Provider-specific search is also available. Anthropic's web search tool, OpenAI's web search, and Google's Grounding with Google Search all work through the gateway.
In the model comparison post, I noted that one tradeoff of using raw APIs is losing built-in web search from the consumer apps. Vercel AI Gateway closes that gap. You get search capabilities without giving up the control of direct API access.
Vercel AI Gateway vs OpenRouter: An Honest Comparison
Both gateways give you one API key for hundreds of models. Both offer ZDR. The differences are in cost structure and ZDR coverage.
Cost
Vercel AI Gateway charges no token markup. You pay the same per-token rate as direct provider access. But when you purchase AI Gateway Credits, payment processing fees apply (roughly 3% depending on your payment method). So $100 in credits costs around $103.
OpenRouter charges a 5.5% platform fee on top of provider token prices. No ambiguity: every request costs 5.5% more than it would directly from the provider.
For someone spending $10/month on AI, the difference is 30 cents (Vercel) vs 55 cents (OpenRouter). Not worth thinking about. For someone spending $500/month, it is $15 (Vercel) vs $27.50 (OpenRouter). Vercel is the cheaper gateway.
ZDR Coverage
This is where OpenRouter has the edge. OpenRouter offers ZDR on a broader set of endpoints, including OpenAI. Vercel AI Gateway's ZDR list does not include OpenAI. If you need zero data retention on GPT-5.2 or other OpenAI models, OpenRouter is your path.
OpenRouter also offers both account-wide ZDR enforcement and per-request ZDR, similar to Vercel. And OpenRouter itself has a ZDR policy: your prompts are not retained unless you opt in to logging.
Which One
If you primarily use Anthropic, Google, and Mistral models and want the lowest gateway cost, Vercel AI Gateway makes sense. If you need ZDR on OpenAI models, OpenRouter is the only option. If cost matters and you do not need ZDR at all, direct API keys are still the cheapest route.
Both gateways are available in Cumbersome. Add both keys. Use whichever one fits the task.
How the Pricing Works
Vercel AI Gateway uses a credit-based system:
- Free tier: Every Vercel account gets $5/month in free AI Gateway credits. This starts when you make your first request. Good for testing.
- Paid tier: Buy credits as needed, no subscription. Once you purchase credits, the monthly free credit stops. No lock-in.
- BYOK (Bring Your Own Key): You can use your existing provider API keys through the gateway. No markup, no fee from the gateway. But BYOK requests use your own agreement with the provider, so ZDR enforcement does not apply (you would need your own ZDR contract with that provider).
- Auto top-up: Set a balance threshold and the gateway automatically adds credits when you run low.
The BYOK option is interesting. You can route your existing API keys through the gateway for the unified interface and observability without paying for gateway credits. You just lose the ZDR enforcement. For people who want one dashboard but already have direct keys, this is a zero-additional-cost option.
How to Set It Up in Cumbersome
- Create a Vercel account at vercel.com if you do not have one.
- Go to the AI Gateway tab in your Vercel dashboard.
- Purchase credits or use the free $5/month tier to start.
- Get your API key from the API Keys section of the AI Gateway dashboard.
- Add the key in Cumbersome under Settings, just like you would add an OpenAI or Anthropic key.
That is it. You now have access to hundreds of models through the gateway, with the option to enable zero data retention on sensitive requests.
The Vercel AI Gateway dashboard. Spend by model, latency, request counts, and token usage across all providers in one view. This is what unified observability looks like.
Where This Fits in the Cumbersome Provider Lineup
Cumbersome now supports six providers:
- OpenAI (direct API key)
- Anthropic (direct API key)
- Google AI Studio (direct API key)
- OpenRouter (unified gateway, hundreds of models, ZDR available including OpenAI)
- Z.ai (GLM models)
- Vercel AI Gateway (unified gateway, hundreds of models, ZDR available excluding OpenAI)
The way I think about it: use direct API keys for your primary providers when you want the lowest cost and most control. Use OpenRouter when you want access to niche models from xAI, Moonshot, Meta, and others, or when you need ZDR on OpenAI models. Use Vercel AI Gateway when you want the cheapest gateway option with ZDR across Anthropic, Google, and other non-OpenAI providers.
They are not mutually exclusive. Add all the keys you want. Switch between them based on the task. That is the whole point of using your own API keys instead of a single subscription.
The Bottom Line
Vercel AI Gateway is not a revolution. It is another option in a category that now has two solid choices for unified AI access with zero data retention.
If you work with sensitive data and you have been uneasy about what happens to your prompts after you hit send, both Vercel AI Gateway and OpenRouter offer practical paths to ZDR without enterprise contracts. Vercel is cheaper (3% vs 5.5%). OpenRouter covers more providers for ZDR (including OpenAI). Pick based on which models you need ZDR for and how much you spend.
Try It
Cumbersome is free for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Add your Vercel AI Gateway key alongside your existing provider keys. Use ZDR when you need it. Use direct keys when you do not. Every model, every provider, one app. You pay the providers directly, not us.
Bless up! 🙏✨