# Do coding agents recommend Vercel AI Gateway?

> Vercel AI Gateway was chosen in 16% of 140 judged AI gateways sessions, ranking fourth. Measured with Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.

Source: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-vercel-ai-gateway
Published: 2026-09-03
Publisher: Armature, Inc. (https://armature.tech)

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> Vercel AI Gateway was chosen in 16% of 140 judged AI gateways sessions, ranking fourth. It was also raised as a candidate in 51 further sessions without being chosen.

This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex and Cursor had to solve a problem in AI gateways inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about Vercel AI Gateway. What an agent actually installed.

## The numbers

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Category | AI gateways |
| Sessions in the category | 140 |
| Sessions where Vercel AI Gateway was chosen | 22 |
| Install share | 16% |
| Rank in category | 4 of 8 |
| Codebases it won in | 3 |
| Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 51 |
| Chosen when considered | 30% |
| Site | vercel.com |

## By agent

The three agents land within 10 points of each other on Vercel AI Gateway, which is closer than most products in this experiment manage.

| Agent | Sessions | Chose Vercel AI Gateway | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Claude Code | 45 | 5 | 11% |
| Codex | 48 | 10 | 21% |
| Cursor | 47 | 7 | 15% |

## By who was asking

Vercel AI Gateway does much better with one kind of buyer than another. It won 42% of sessions asked as junior developer and 0% of those asked as enterprise team.

| Who is asking | Sessions | Chose Vercel AI Gateway | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Vibe coder | 16 | 5 | 31% |
| Junior developer | 33 | 14 | 42% |
| Senior engineer | 56 | 3 | 5% |
| Enterprise team | 35 | 0 | 0% |

## What Vercel AI Gateway was up against

The full ranking in AI gateways, from the same sessions:

| # | Product | Runs won | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Portkey | 30 | 21% |
| 2 | Cloudflare AI Gateway | 30 | 21% |
| 3 | LiteLLM | 25 | 18% |
| 4 | Vercel AI Gateway **(this page)** | 22 | 16% |
| 5 | OpenRouter | 15 | 11% |
| 6 | Built in-house (no product adopted) | 12 | 9% |
| 7 | Amazon Bedrock | 3 | 2% |
| 8 | Helicone | 1 | 1% |

## What this means

A solid second or third position in a category means the agent is genuinely choosing rather than reaching automatically. That is a winnable position, because the inputs it uses can be changed.

The fastest gains are usually in the sessions that were nearly won: read them, find the step where the agent moved on, and fix that step.

## Where these numbers come from

The 140 sessions in AI gateways are part of a published set of 5,292, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: [how we measured this](/library/how-we-measured-this).

Every AI gateways run can be replayed on [the board](/leaderboards/ai-gateway).

If you work on Vercel AI Gateway: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts.

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## Common questions

### Do coding agents recommend Vercel AI Gateway?

Yes. Vercel AI Gateway was chosen in 22 of the 140 judged sessions in AI gateways, a 16% install share, ranking fourth in its category.

### Does Claude Code recommend Vercel AI Gateway?

In 5 of the 45 sessions in AI gateways run with Claude Code, which is 11%.

### Do different coding agents treat Vercel AI Gateway differently?

Yes, and by a wide margin. Codex chose it in 21% of its runs and Claude Code in 11%.

### How was this measured?

Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 51 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.

### How often is Vercel AI Gateway considered but not chosen?

It was raised as a candidate in 51 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 22. That is a 30% conversion from considered to chosen.

## Read next

- [How to get picked for AI gateways by coding agents](https://armature.tech/library/ai-gateway-coding-agents-playbook) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/ai-gateway-coding-agents-playbook.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend Portkey?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-portkey) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-portkey.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend Cloudflare AI Gateway?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-cloudflare-ai-gateway) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-cloudflare-ai-gateway.md)
- [Do Claude Code, Codex and Cursor pick the same tools?](https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree.md)

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Armature helps software products get discovered and used by coding agents.
Service: https://armature.tech/discoverability · Results: https://armature.tech/leaderboards/sectors · Contact: contact@armature.tech
