Plans and pricing
Gateway charges for the model traffic it routes. There is no seat fee and no platform minimum: you pay what the tokens cost at the provider, plus Merge’s fee on top. Signing up needs no card, so you can send real requests before anyone approves a purchase.
Plans
Credit amounts, the current free model list, and Enterprise terms are on the pricing page, which is the authority on the numbers. Sign up at gateway.merge.dev.
What one request costs
Every response carries its own cost. usage.cost is the provider’s charge for the tokens that request used, and routing.merge_fee_usd, once it is enabled for your organization, is Merge’s fee on top, so the two together are what the request adds to your bill. Both are documented in API details.
Two things are priced outside usage.cost: server tools such as web search, which carry their own per-call charge, and BYOK requests, covered below. Cost governance and savings shows where each lands in the dashboard, which is the authority on what you are invoiced.
Bringing your own provider key
On a BYOK key, your provider bills you for the tokens directly and never bills Merge. What reaches your Merge invoice is the fee alone, which is why a BYOK request’s cost in the dashboard looks far smaller than the usage.cost in its response.
When credit runs out
An exhausted organization credit balance returns 402 with budget_exceeded, and it does so before any provider is called, so a blocked request costs nothing. Add credit from Billing settings, or cap spend deliberately with Budgets at the organization, project, key, or customer scope.
On the free plan, a model outside the free model list returns 403 with free_tier_model_not_allowed. Adding a payment method opens the full model catalog.