Manage gateways

You have several different options for managing an AI Gateway.

AI Gateway can automatically create a gateway for you. If you omit the gateway ID from your request entirely, AI Gateway defaults to using default as the gateway ID. When no gateway named default exists in your account, AI Gateway creates it on the first authenticated request.

This means you can start sending requests without creating a gateway first — AI Gateway handles gateway creation for you.

The request that triggers auto-creation must be authenticated. When using the REST API, the standard Authorization header is sufficient. When using provider-native endpoints at gateway.ai.cloudflare.com, include a valid cf-aig-authorization header. For Workers AI bindings, the account identity from the binding is used instead of a header.

The auto-created default gateway uses the following settings:

After creation, you can edit the default gateway settings like any other gateway. If you delete the default gateway, sending a new authenticated request to the default gateway ID auto-creates it again.

By default, Workers AI requests use Standard billing, which charges your Cloudflare account at the end of each billing cycle.

To use prepaid AI Gateway credits for Workers AI requests:

1. Load credits into your Cloudflare account.
2. In the Cloudflare dashboard, go to AI > AI Gateway and select your gateway.
3. Go to Settings and find Workers AI Billing.
4. Select Unified billing.
5. Select Save.

Workers AI requests routed through this gateway will deduct from your AI Gateway credit balance in real time.

You can configure your gateway to automatically retry failed requests to upstream providers. This is useful when you do not control the client and cannot implement client-side retries or backoff logic.

To configure retry settings:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account.
2. Go to AI > AI Gateway and select your gateway.
3. Go to Settings and find the Retry Requests section.
4. Turn on the toggle to turn on automatic retries.
5. Configure the following settings:
   • Retry count — the maximum number of retry attempts (up to 5).
   • Delay — the base delay between retries. Available values: 100ms, 500ms, 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, or 5 seconds.
   • Backoff — the backoff strategy for subsequent retries: Constant, Linear, or Exponential.
6. Select Save.

These gateway-level defaults apply to all requests routed through the gateway. Per-request headers can override these defaults — refer to Request handling for details.

For more complex failover scenarios where you need to fail across different providers, refer to Dynamic Routing.

Deleting your gateway is permanent and can not be undone.