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Set up Vercel AI Gateway

Last validated:

Aperture by Tailscale is currently in alpha.

Configure a Vercel AI Gateway provider in Aperture so your team can access models from multiple LLM providers through a single gateway endpoint. Vercel AI Gateway aggregates providers like OpenAI and Anthropic behind one API, supporting both the chat completions and responses APIs.

Aperture routes requests based on the model name, not the LLM client. Any LLM client configured to use Aperture can access any provider your admin has set up. Refer to the provider compatibility reference for the full list of supported providers and API formats.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need:

Configure the provider

Add Vercel AI Gateway as a provider in your Aperture configuration:

{
  "providers": {
    "vercel": {
      "baseurl": "https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh",
      "apikey": "<your-vercel-token>",
      "models": [
        "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
        "openai/gpt-5.4-nano"
      ],
      "cost_basis": "vercel",
      "compatibility": {
        "openai_chat": true,
        "openai_responses": true
      }
    }
  }
}

Do not include /v1 in the Vercel AI Gateway baseurl. Set it to https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh (without /v1). Including /v1 causes every request to fail with HTTP 405 because the upstream URL becomes https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1/v1/chat/completions. Refer to how Aperture builds upstream URLs for details.

You must set cost_basis to "vercel" because Aperture cannot auto-infer pricing for gateway providers. Without an explicit cost_basis, Aperture does not produce cost estimates for requests to this provider.

Model names use a provider/model prefix format. The openai_chat flag enables the chat completions API and openai_responses enables the Responses API, which tools like OpenAI Codex use. Refer to the provider compatibility reference for the full list of flags.

After configuring the provider:

  1. Grant model access to the users or groups that need these models.
  2. Set up LLM clients to connect coding tools through Aperture.

Verify the provider

The best way to verify a connection to a specific model is to send a test request through the Models tab of the Aperture dashboard.

  1. Open the Aperture dashboard and select the Models tab.
  2. Find the model you want to test in the list of configured models. If the model is not listed, check your provider configuration and ensure the model name is correct.
  3. Select the Play icon to the left of the model name to send a test request. If the request succeeds, the icon changes to a green check mark. If it fails, the icon changes to a red "X".

This sends a request from your web browser to the tailnet to verify that Aperture can successfully route requests to the model through the configured provider and that your user account has the necessary permissions to access the model.