Where Cloudflare AI Gateway fits
Cloudflare AI Gateway is the natural choice when you already live on Cloudflare and want an edge layer over your existing provider calls. Its strengths are caching (serve identical responses from the edge for free), rate limiting, retries and fallback, and unified analytics and cost tracking across providers — all with a one-line base-URL change and a generous free tier. It is a thin proxy that observes and accelerates the calls you already make — and, with Unified Billing, can also pay for them from Cloudflare credits instead of your provider accounts.
Where Kunavo wins
Kunavo removes the provider accounts and lowers the bill. Top up one wallet and call Claude, GPT, plus image, video and audio, below each provider's list price depending on the model — no Anthropic Console, no Google Cloud project, one balance. Generation endpoints are first-class, the native Anthropic Messages API is on the same key, and checkout is Stripe-native with local methods. Cloudflare AI Gateway makes your existing calls faster and more observable at the provider's price; Kunavo makes most of those calls cheaper than list and consolidates provisioning and billing into one place.
How to pick (or use both)
Pick Cloudflare AI Gateway if edge caching, analytics and fitting an existing Cloudflare deployment over your own keys is the priority. Pick Kunavo if you want resold inference on one prepaid wallet below list, first-class multimodal, and one balance to reconcile. They compose: configure Cloudflare AI Gateway to proxy Kunavo (base URL https://api.kunavo.com/v1) and you get edge caching and analytics over inference that already runs cheaper through Kunavo's catalog.
How you pay: Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Kunavo
Cloudflare AI Gateway can sit in front of your provider accounts or bill the inference itself, so it is worth being precise about which one you would use. Kunavo's checkout is Stripe-native, so the list follows the buyer rather than our billing country, and every method tops up the same prepaid API balance. Everywhere Stripe reaches: cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB, UnionPay); everywhere except India, also Link and, on devices where they are set up, Apple Pay or Google Pay. In the United States: Cash App Pay, Klarna, Afterpay, ACH bank debit (3–5 business days to clear) and crypto (stablecoins), plus Affirm on top-ups of $100 and up and Zip on top-ups of $100 to $1,500. Elsewhere the local rail appears with the local currency: Alipay and WeChat Pay in mainland China; KakaoPay, Naver Pay, PAYCO, Samsung Pay and Korean domestic cards in South Korea; UPI in India; Pix in Brazil; iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, EPS in Austria, MB WAY in Portugal, Satispay in Italy; BLIK in Poland; Bacs Direct Debit in the UK (a few business days to clear); and Pay by Bank for buyers in the UK, Ireland and Finland. Stripe converts the dollar amount into local currency on the checkout page, so nobody has to hunt for a card cleared for international purchases; its rate includes a 2–4% conversion fee, which paying in dollars avoids. On your own provider keys, the inference is billed by Anthropic, OpenAI or Google to whatever card each of those accounts holds. Under Unified Billing it is billed by Cloudflare instead: you load credits through your Cloudflare account, each purchase carries a 5% fee, and if the balance runs negative Cloudflare charges the payment method on file at the start of the next month. Kunavo is one prepaid balance and one Stripe checkout, with its payment methods — Pix, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Apple Pay — listed before you sign up.