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# Questions Regarding AI Gateway Billing, Usage Tracking etc

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The Wise Duck Dev (@wiseduckdev) · 2025-05-24

Hi Vercel team and developer community,

I’m currently evaluating the **Vercel AI Gateway** for a multi-tenant SaaS platform focused on developers. The AI Gateway is incredibly appealing in terms of abstracting the complexity of multi-model LLM integration — and it aligns well with our goal at **Wise Duck Dev GPTs** to support 800+ specialized AI Assistants (e.g., for web, mobile, blockchain, game development, etc.), especially now that we are currently building the version 3 of the platform.

That said, I’m still determining whether to:

* Fully adopt the Gateway as the foundation of our LLM infrastructure
* Or continue building a BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) system to manage user consumption independently

---

### **Core Use Case of the V3 of the Wise Duck Dev GPTs (Hypothetical for Now)**

* Users interact with domain-specific Assistants that use different LLMs
* Models can change mid-conversation (e.g., GPT-4o → Claude 3 → Gemini 1.5)
* Usage-based billing is tied to individual user behavior

---

### **Key Questions**

**1. Billing Scope**
Will the AI Gateway bill usage at the **project level** (i.e., to the app owner’s Vercel account), or is there support or future intent for **user-scoped usage tracking and billing**?
Can we issue unique Gateway tokens per user or session and attribute usage accordingly?

**2. Usage Transparency**
If user-scoped billing is planned:

* Will we be able to retrieve detailed usage logs per user (e.g., token usage per LLM)?
* Or will Vercel generate billing reports that would be available through an endpoint?

**3. Feature Suggestion: Credit-Based Model**
Would Vercel consider introducing a **credit system**, where users:

* Purchase usage credits (e.g., $10 = X tokens)
* Can auto-top-up below a balance threshold
* Set usage limits to avoid unexpected charges

This would be ideal for SaaS platforms that want to offer pay-as-you-go access while maintaining usage clarity and cost control for users in my opinion.

**4. Timeline**
Do you have any timeline in mind about when the billing functionality will be deployed?

**5. Model-Specific Features**
Will the Gateway eventually **manage access to model-specific capabilities** like:

* File uploads (e.g., GPT-4o vision or Claude tools)
* Image generation or interpretation
* Tool use (code interpreter, retrieval, etc.)

If so, will those capabilities be:

* Abstracted automatically (like standard prompts)?
* Or customizable ? and if yes, how?

Understanding how AI Gateway will expose and secure these advanced model features is important as we begin designing chat interfaces and workflows.

---

### Why This Matters To Us

These details will help determine whether:

* We adopt AI Gateway as our default model access layer
* Or we continue to build our own system where advanced users use BYOK and credit tracking

The Vercel AI SDK + Gateway is already an amazing foundation. If future roadmap plans include per-user billing, usage transparency, and feature access controls, it could become an incredible LLM infrastructure for modern SaaS teams.

---

Thanks again to the team for building such a forward-thinking developer stack — and thanks in advance for any clarity you can provide.

Yann
Founder, Wise Duck Dev GPTs (AI Platform for Developer-Centric Assistants)


Kasu (@lodos3) · 2025-05-25

vercel is dead along with v0 chat, theyve destroyed it entirety 

time to move on