---

name: cloudflare-workers-ai description: | Run LLMs and AI models on Cloudflare's global GPU network with Workers AI. Includes Llama, Flux image generation, BGE embeddings, and streaming support with AI Gateway for caching and logging.

Use when: implementing LLM inference, generating images with Flux/Stable Diffusion, building RAG with embeddings, streaming AI responses, using AI Gateway for cost tracking, or troubleshooting AI_ERROR, rate limits, model not found, token limits, or neurons exceeded.

Keywords: workers ai, cloudflare ai, ai bindings, llm workers, @cf/meta/llama, workers ai models, ai inference, cloudflare llm, ai streaming, text generation ai, ai embeddings, image generation ai, workers ai rag, ai gateway, llama workers, flux image generation, stable diffusion workers, vision models ai, ai chat completion, AI_ERROR, rate limit ai, model not found, token limit exceeded, neurons exceeded, ai quota exceeded, streaming failed, model unavailable, workers ai hono, ai gateway workers, vercel ai sdk workers, openai compatible workers, workers ai vectorize license: MIT

Cloudflare Workers AI - Complete Reference

Production-ready knowledge domain for building AI-powered applications with Cloudflare Workers AI.

Status: Production Ready ✅ Last Updated: 2025-10-21 Dependencies: cloudflare-worker-base (for Worker setup) Latest Versions: wrangler@4.43.0, @cloudflare/workers-types@4.20251014.0

---

Table of Contents

1. Quick Start (5 minutes)
2. Workers AI API Reference
3. Model Selection Guide
4. Common Patterns
5. AI Gateway Integration
6. Rate Limits & Pricing
7. Production Checklist

---

Quick Start (5 minutes)

1. Add AI Binding

wrangler.jsonc:

{
  "ai": {
    "binding": "AI"
  }
}

2. Run Your First Model

export interface Env {
  AI: Ai;
}

export default {
  async fetch(request: Request, env: Env): Promise<Response> {
    const response = await env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct', {
      prompt: 'What is Cloudflare?',
    });

    return Response.json(response);
  },
};

3. Add Streaming (Recommended)

const stream = await env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct', {
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Tell me a story' }],
  stream: true, // Always use streaming for text generation!
});

return new Response(stream, {
  headers: { 'content-type': 'text/event-stream' },
});

Why streaming?

• Prevents buffering large responses in memory
• Faster time-to-first-token
• Better user experience for long-form content
• Avoids Worker timeout issues

---

Workers AI API Reference

env.AI.run()

Run an AI model inference.

Signature:

async env.AI.run(
  model: string,
  inputs: ModelInputs,
  options?: { gateway?: { id: string; skipCache?: boolean } }
): Promise<ModelOutput | ReadableStream>

Parameters:

• model (string, required) - Model ID (e.g., @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct)
• inputs (object, required) - Model-specific inputs
• options (object, optional) - Additional options
  • gateway (object) - AI Gateway configuration
    • id (string) - Gateway ID
    • skipCache (boolean) - Skip AI Gateway cache

Returns:

• Non-streaming: Promise<ModelOutput> - JSON response
• Streaming: ReadableStream - Server-sent events stream

---

Text Generation Models

Input Format:

{
  messages?: Array<{ role: 'system' | 'user' | 'assistant'; content: string }>;
  prompt?: string; // Deprecated, use messages
  stream?: boolean; // Default: false
  max_tokens?: number; // Max tokens to generate
  temperature?: number; // 0.0-1.0, default varies by model
  top_p?: number; // 0.0-1.0
  top_k?: number;
}

Output Format (Non-Streaming):

{
  response: string; // Generated text
}

Example:

const response = await env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct', {
  messages: [
    { role: 'system', content: 'You are a helpful assistant.' },
    { role: 'user', content: 'What is TypeScript?' },
  ],
  stream: false,
});

console.log(response.response);

---

Text Embeddings Models

Input Format:

{
  text: string | string[]; // Single text or array of texts
}

Output Format:

{
  shape: number[]; // [batch_size, embedding_dimensions]
  data: number[][]; // Array of embedding vectors
}

Example:

const embeddings = await env.AI.run('@cf/baai/bge-base-en-v1.5', {
  text: ['Hello world', 'Cloudflare Workers'],
});

console.log(embeddings.shape); // [2, 768]
console.log(embeddings.data[0]); // [0.123, -0.456, ...]

---

Image Generation Models

Input Format:

{
  prompt: string; // Text description
  num_steps?: number; // Default: 20
  guidance?: number; // CFG scale, default: 7.5
  strength?: number; // For img2img, default: 1.0
  image?: number[][]; // For img2img (base64 or array)
}

Output Format:

• Binary image data (PNG/JPEG)

Example:

const imageStream = await env.AI.run('@cf/black-forest-labs/flux-1-schnell', {
  prompt: 'A beautiful sunset over mountains',
});

return new Response(imageStream, {
  headers: { 'content-type': 'image/png' },
});

---

Vision Models

Input Format:

{
  messages: Array<{
    role: 'user' | 'assistant';
    content: Array<{ type: 'text' | 'image_url'; text?: string; image_url?: { url: string } }>;
  }>;
}

Example:

const response = await env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.2-11b-vision-instruct', {
  messages: [
    {
      role: 'user',
      content: [
        { type: 'text', text: 'What is in this image?' },
        { type: 'image_url', image_url: { url: 'data:image/png;base64,iVBOR...' } },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

---

Model Selection Guide

Text Generation (LLMs)

Model	Best For	Rate Limit	Size
@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct	General purpose, fast	300/min	8B
@cf/meta/llama-3.2-1b-instruct	Ultra-fast, simple tasks	300/min	1B
@cf/qwen/qwen1.5-14b-chat-awq	High quality, complex reasoning	150/min	14B
@cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-r1-distill-qwen-32b	Coding, technical content	300/min	32B
@hf/thebloke/mistral-7b-instruct-v0.1-awq	Fast, efficient	400/min	7B

Text Embeddings

Model	Dimensions	Best For	Rate Limit
@cf/baai/bge-base-en-v1.5	768	General purpose RAG	3000/min
@cf/baai/bge-large-en-v1.5	1024	High accuracy search	1500/min
@cf/baai/bge-small-en-v1.5	384	Fast, low storage	3000/min

Image Generation

Model	Best For	Rate Limit	Speed
@cf/black-forest-labs/flux-1-schnell	High quality, photorealistic	720/min	Fast
@cf/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0	General purpose	720/min	Medium
@cf/lykon/dreamshaper-8-lcm	Artistic, stylized	720/min	Fast

Vision Models

Model	Best For	Rate Limit
@cf/meta/llama-3.2-11b-vision-instruct	Image understanding	720/min
@cf/unum/uform-gen2-qwen-500m	Fast image captioning	720/min

---

Common Patterns

Pattern 1: Chat Completion with History

app.post('/chat', async (c) => {
  const { messages } = await c.req.json<{
    messages: Array<{ role: string; content: string }>;
  }>();

  const response = await c.env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct', {
    messages,
    stream: true,
  });

  return new Response(response, {
    headers: { 'content-type': 'text/event-stream' },
  });
});

---

Pattern 2: RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)

// Step 1: Generate embeddings
const embeddings = await env.AI.run('@cf/baai/bge-base-en-v1.5', {
  text: [userQuery],
});

const vector = embeddings.data[0];

// Step 2: Search Vectorize
const matches = await env.VECTORIZE.query(vector, { topK: 3 });

// Step 3: Build context from matches
const context = matches.matches.map((m) => m.metadata.text).join('\n\n');

// Step 4: Generate response with context
const response = await env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct', {
  messages: [
    {
      role: 'system',
      content: `Answer using this context:\n${context}`,
    },
    { role: 'user', content: userQuery },
  ],
  stream: true,
});

return new Response(response, {
  headers: { 'content-type': 'text/event-stream' },
});

---

Pattern 3: Structured Output with Zod

import { z } from 'zod';

const RecipeSchema = z.object({
  name: z.string(),
  ingredients: z.array(z.string()),
  instructions: z.array(z.string()),
  prepTime: z.number(),
});

app.post('/recipe', async (c) => {
  const { dish } = await c.req.json<{ dish: string }>();

  const response = await c.env.AI.run('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct', {
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: `Generate a recipe for ${dish}. Return ONLY valid JSON matching this schema: ${JSON.stringify(RecipeSchema.shape)}`,
      },
    ],
  });

  // Parse and validate
  const recipe = RecipeSchema.parse(JSON.parse(response.response));

  return c.json(recipe);
});

---

Pattern 4: Image Generation + R2 Storage

app.post('/generate-image', async (c) => {
  const { prompt } = await c.req.json<{ prompt: string }>();

  // Generate image
  const imageStream = await c.env.AI.run('@cf/black-forest-labs/flux-1-schnell', {
    prompt,
  });

  const imageBytes = await new Response(imageStream).bytes();

  // Store in R2
  const key = `images/${Date.now()}.png`;
  await c.env.BUCKET.put(key, imageBytes, {
    httpMetadata: { contentType: 'image/png' },
  });

  return c.json({
    success: true,
    url: `https://your-domain.com/${key}`,
  });
});

---

AI Gateway Integration

AI Gateway provides caching, logging, and analytics for AI requests.

Setup:

const response = await env.AI.run(
  '@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct',
  { prompt: 'Hello' },
  {
    gateway: {
      id: 'my-gateway', // Your gateway ID
      skipCache: false, // Use cache
    },
  }
);

Benefits:

• ✅ Cost Tracking - Monitor neurons usage per request
• ✅ Caching - Reduce duplicate inference costs
• ✅ Logging - Debug and analyze AI requests
• ✅ Rate Limiting - Additional layer of protection
• ✅ Analytics - Request patterns and performance

Access Gateway Logs:

const gateway = env.AI.gateway('my-gateway');
const logId = env.AI.aiGatewayLogId;

// Send feedback
await gateway.patchLog(logId, {
  feedback: { rating: 1, comment: 'Great response' },
});

---

Rate Limits & Pricing

Rate Limits (per minute)

Task Type	Default Limit	Notes
Text Generation	300/min	Some fast models: 400-1500/min
Text Embeddings	3000/min	BGE-large: 1500/min
Image Generation	720/min	All image models
Vision Models	720/min	Image understanding
Translation	720/min	M2M100, Opus MT
Classification	2000/min	Text classification
Speech Recognition	720/min	Whisper models

Pricing (Neurons-Based)

Free Tier:

• 10,000 neurons per day
• Resets daily at 00:00 UTC

Paid Tier:

• $0.011 per 1,000 neurons
• 10,000 neurons/day included
• Unlimited usage above free allocation

Example Costs:

Model	Input (1M tokens)	Output (1M tokens)
Llama 3.2 1B	$0.027	$0.201
Llama 3.1 8B	$0.088	$0.606
BGE-base embeddings	$0.005	N/A
Flux image generation	~$0.011/image	N/A

---

Production Checklist

Before Deploying

• Enable AI Gateway for cost tracking and logging
• Implement streaming for all text generation endpoints
• Add rate limit retry with exponential backoff
• Validate input length to prevent token limit errors
• Set appropriate timeouts (Workers: 30s CPU default, 5m max)
• Monitor neurons usage in Cloudflare dashboard
• Test error handling for model unavailable, rate limits
• Add input sanitization to prevent prompt injection
• Configure CORS if using from browser
• Plan for scale - upgrade to Paid plan if needed

Error Handling

async function runAIWithRetry(
  env: Env,
  model: string,
  inputs: any,
  maxRetries = 3
): Promise<any> {
  let lastError: Error;

  for (let i = 0; i < maxRetries; i++) {
    try {
      return await env.AI.run(model, inputs);
    } catch (error) {
      lastError = error as Error;
      const message = lastError.message.toLowerCase();

      // Rate limit - retry with backoff
      if (message.includes('429') || message.includes('rate limit')) {
        const delay = Math.pow(2, i) * 1000; // Exponential backoff
        await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, delay));
        continue;
      }

      // Other errors - throw immediately
      throw error;
    }
  }

  throw lastError!;
}

Monitoring

app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  const start = Date.now();

  await next();

  // Log AI usage
  console.log({
    path: c.req.path,
    duration: Date.now() - start,
    logId: c.env.AI.aiGatewayLogId,
  });
});

---

OpenAI Compatibility

Workers AI supports OpenAI-compatible endpoints.

Using OpenAI SDK:

import OpenAI from 'openai';

const openai = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: env.CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY,
  baseURL: `https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/${env.CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID}/ai/v1`,
});

// Chat completions
const completion = await openai.chat.completions.create({
  model: '@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Hello!' }],
});

// Embeddings
const embeddings = await openai.embeddings.create({
  model: '@cf/baai/bge-base-en-v1.5',
  input: 'Hello world',
});

Endpoints:

• /v1/chat/completions - Text generation
• /v1/embeddings - Text embeddings

---

Vercel AI SDK Integration

npm install workers-ai-provider ai

import { createWorkersAI } from 'workers-ai-provider';
import { generateText, streamText } from 'ai';

const workersai = createWorkersAI({ binding: env.AI });

// Generate text
const result = await generateText({
  model: workersai('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct'),
  prompt: 'Write a poem',
});

// Stream text
const stream = streamText({
  model: workersai('@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct'),
  prompt: 'Tell me a story',
});

---

Limits Summary

Feature	Limit
Concurrent requests	No hard limit (rate limits apply)
Max input tokens	Varies by model (typically 2K-128K)
Max output tokens	Varies by model (typically 512-2048)
Streaming chunk size	~1 KB
Image size (output)	~5 MB
Request timeout	Workers timeout applies (30s default, 5m max CPU)
Daily free neurons	10,000
Rate limits	See "Rate Limits & Pricing" section

---

References

• Workers AI Docs
• Models Catalog
• AI Gateway
• Pricing
• Limits
• REST API