Cloudflare Workers AI alternatives
Best when your agent already runs on Workers and you want colocated small/open models. Not a frontier brain.
Overall 7.69 (curated_estimate, high) · score asOf 2026-09-14 · last reviewed 2026-09-14. This is not an Elo and not a live price board. Provider · JSON
Jobs: cheap-volume-llm, embeddings, edge-deploy, speech-to-text, edge-llm-inference, llm-ai-gateway, wasm-edge-small-models
| Provider | Why listed | Overall | Δ vs subject | asOf |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fireworks AI Top pick for production open-model serving with real DX. Prefer over random GPU DIY when you want tokens not… | same_jtbd_pick, same_jtbd_runner · cheap-volume-llm, edge-llm-inference, wasm-edge-small-models | 8.35high | +0.66 | 2026-09-14 |
| Cloudflare Workers Best edge runtime for lightweight agent gateways and tools. Heavy LLM loops still belong on Modal/Fly/GPU… | same_jtbd_pick · edge-deploy | 8.53high | +0.84 | 2026-09-14 |
| Deepgram Default STT and strong voice-agent platform. Standard Flux TTS / Voice Agent rates live since 2026-09-15… | same_jtbd_pick · speech-to-text | 8.5high | +0.81 | 2026-10-19 |
| Portkey Depot pick for production AI gateway (fallbacks, virtual keys, budgets). OpenRouter when you want a model… | same_jtbd_pick · llm-ai-gateway | 8.31high | +0.62 | 2026-09-14 |
| Cohere Use for retrieval stacks (embed+rerank), not as your primary agent brain. Quietly excellent at enterprise RAG. | same_jtbd_pick · embeddings | 7.95high | +0.26 | 2026-10-19 |
| Groq Use when latency is the product. Do not build your whole company on one Groq model SKU — they rotate. | same_jtbd_runner · cheap-volume-llm, speech-to-text, edge-llm-inference | 7.95high | +0.26 | 2026-09-14 |
| OpenRouter Best multi-model router for agents that need failover and experimentation. Pin providers in production; don’t… | same_jtbd_runner · edge-llm-inference, llm-ai-gateway, wasm-edge-small-models | 8high | +0.31 | 2026-09-14 |
| Google AI (Gemini) Best value frontier stack and multimodal king. Use Flash for high-volume agent loops; Pro when quality… | same_jtbd_runner · cheap-volume-llm, embeddings | 8.43high | +0.74 | 2026-10-19 |
| Deno Deploy Nice for TS edge tools. Don't confuse isolate deploy with E2B-class untrusted code sandboxes. | same_jtbd_runner · edge-deploy, wasm-edge-small-models | 8.13high | +0.44 | 2026-09-14 |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway Free edge gateway peer to Portkey/OpenRouter. Depot llm-ai-gateway pick stays Portkey for virtual… | same_jtbd_runner · llm-ai-gateway | 8.41high | +0.72 | 2026-09-14 |
| Voyage AI Depot pick for RAG rerank. Keep Cohere as general embeddings default (enterprise + multilingual maturity)… | same_jtbd_runner · embeddings | 8.4high | +0.71 | 2026-09-14 |
| Fly.io Excellent for globally distributed agent sidecars and Machines-based sandboxes. Prefer Railway/Render if you… | same_jtbd_runner · edge-deploy | 8.28high | +0.59 | 2026-09-14 |
Prices are not ranked on this page. For a job, use the sourced quote (separate input and output rows, Depot Pick unchanged): cheap-volume-llm, embeddings, edge-deploy, speech-to-text.
Alternatives are other catalog providers that share a JTBD as pick or runner-up. If fewer than three exist, same-category active providers fill the list and are labeled same_category. Overall deltas are catalog scores. kind=curated_estimate is not a lab measurement. Pricing rows are sourced or explicitly null. Do not parse pricingNotes. A single normalized USD figure is set only for a provider with exactly one token row.