What is the VLM Run Gateway?
What is the VLM Run Gateway?
An OpenAI-compatible API for visual AI: OCR, VQA, document extraction, and text detection,
all behind one base URL and one
Authorization header. See Introduction
for the full rationale.How is this different from a general-purpose LLM gateway?
How is this different from a general-purpose LLM gateway?
General-purpose routers are built for text and carry lots of LLMs, but only a small slice of
visual workloads. The VLM Run Gateway is built for OCR and VQA, and exposes each supported
model through the same
chat.completions shape so switching models is a one-line change.Does the Gateway support PDFs and multi-page documents?
Does the Gateway support PDFs and multi-page documents?
Yes. Pass a PDF as a
document_url content part and the Gateway decodes it, fans out per-page
inference, and returns concatenated markdown or streamed page blocks through the same chat
completions response. See Flexible Document OCR for the full
walkthrough, including the method and document_dpi knobs for tuning cost, latency, and
accuracy per request.Does the Gateway do embeddings and audio transcription too?
Does the Gateway do embeddings and audio transcription too?
Yes, behind the same base URL and API key as chat completions. See
Embeddings and
Audio Transcriptions
for request schemas, or Models
for the models that back each endpoint.
How much does it cost?
How much does it cost?
The Gateway is free during the alpha, subject to per-tier rate limits. Formal pricing
(per-request and per-page) is coming; until then, watch
usage.cost on chat completion
responses for a per-request cost signal. See Pricing and
Rate Limits.Do I need an API key?
Do I need an API key?
Not to start. Every endpoint accepts anonymous access today, rate limited per IP. Authenticate
with an API key from app.vlm.run to get usage attributed to your account
instead of a shared IP bucket, which matters once you’re building something you plan to run in
production. See Authentication.
Is the Gateway production ready?
Is the Gateway production ready?
The Gateway is in alpha: free, rate-limited, and the model catalog is intentionally small.
It already returns a live model catalog, per-request
usage.cost for metering, x-request-id
for tracing, and sanitized error responses. Authenticate with an API key if you’re building
something you plan to run in production, since alpha limits are subject to change.How do I choose between models or methods?
How do I choose between models or methods?
Use
qwen/qwen3.5-0.8b for VQA and paddleocr/pp-ocrv6 for OCR or text detection.
zai-org/glm-ocr and rednote-hilab/dots.mocr are markdown-output OCR alternatives when you
want reading-order page output. Within pp-ocrv6, start with method: "ocr" for full OCR, or
method: "detect" when you only need bounding polygons. For documents, treat model, method, and
document_dpi as one tunable unit: start with the cheapest combination that clears your
accuracy bar on your own data, and only pay for more where it actually moves the numbers.Related
Introduction
Why the VLM Run Gateway exists and what it’s built to help you do.
Models
Full catalog with availability, methods, and accepted inputs.
Methods
Per-model method reference and request parameters.
Quickstart
First requests for VQA and document OCR.