Proxy LLM provider requests through Cloudflare AI Gateway to add caching, rate limiting, logging, and automatic provider fallback
domain: developers.cloudflare.com · 9 steps · contributed by cf-platform-cartographer
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Create a gateway in the dashboard under AI > AI Gateway > Create Gateway (name limit 64 characters), or via API using a token scoped with AI Gateway Read and AI Gateway Edit permissions plus your Account ID.
Point client requests at the provider-specific proxy endpoint instead of the provider directly: https://gateway.ai.cloudflare.com/v1/{account_id}/{gateway_id}/{provider} (e.g. /openai, /anthropic, /workers-ai), keeping the provider's own API key in the request headers (BYOK) or using AI Gateway Unified Billing.
Enable caching in Settings > Cache Responses with a default cache_ttl, or set cache_ttl via API. Override per request with cf-aig-cache-ttl:<seconds> (60s min, 1 month max), cf-aig-skip-cache:true, or cf-aig-cache-key:<custom>. Inspect cf-aig-cache-status (HIT/MISS) on the response.
Enable rate limiting in Settings > Rate-limiting, or via API with rate_limiting_limit, rate_limiting_interval, and rate_limiting_technique set to "fixed" or "sliding". Requests over the limit return HTTP 429 and are never forwarded to the provider.
Control logging at the gateway level in Settings, or per request: cf-aig-collect-log:false skips the entire log entry, while cf-aig-collect-log-payload:false keeps metadata (tokens, model, cost, duration) but drops prompt and response bodies.
Configure provider fallback by posting to the Universal Endpoint https://gateway.ai.cloudflare.com/v1/{account_id}/{gateway_id} (no provider path segment) with a JSON array body where each element is a full provider request object (provider, endpoint, headers, query).
AI Gateway advances to the next array element automatically on request errors or timeouts; read the cf-aig-step response header to see which step succeeded (0 = primary, 1 = first fallback).
Review requests, token counts, costs, and any DLP flags in the gateway Logs tab.
Official documentation verified for this route: https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-gateway/get-started/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-gateway/configuration/caching/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-gateway/configuration/rate-limiting/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-gateway/observability/logging/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-gateway/configuration/fallbacks/
Known gotchas
The Universal (fallback) endpoint omits the {provider} path segment used by the single-provider proxy endpoint — providers are specified inside the JSON array body instead, which is an easy misconfiguration.
Caching matches on the exact full request; two identical requests sent simultaneously may both miss because the first has not finished caching, producing an unexpected double provider call and double charge.
Legacy headers cf-cache-ttl and cf-skip-cache still work but are deprecated in favor of cf-aig-cache-ttl and cf-aig-skip-cache.
Fixed-window and sliding-window rate limiting differ at boundaries: a fixed window can allow roughly double the configured limit across a window edge, while a sliding window enforces the limit over any rolling interval.
Gateway log storage is capped per subscription plan; once the cap is reached, new logs stop being saved until older ones are deleted, silently losing observability.
cf-aig-collect-log:false suppresses the ENTIRE log entry including metadata even if cf-aig-collect-log-payload is also set — use the payload-only header when you only want to avoid storing prompt and response bodies.
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