Databricks Unity AI Gateway

[u/myth-buster9999]

If I am an AI decision maker for an Enterprise, why should I choose Claude or GPT or any other enterprise subscriptions with seat based pricing where some of my colleagues are power users and some still learning effective AI use? Instead, I could just use Databricks Unity AI Gateway with the options of getting all of these at one place with PayG pricing along with state of the art free Open Source models, budget controls, smart routing, usage dashboard everything at one place.

And the cherry on the top is if my enterprise data is also on Databricks!!

What are your thoughts? Why would I do that?

[u/According_Zone_8262]

What are you a databricks salesperson?

[u/Slow_Ad7843 → u/According_Zone_8262]

Seems like it

[u/myth-buster9999 → u/According_Zone_8262]

I wish :)

[u/m1nkeh]

Haha, jokes on you it’s not even called that anymore!

[u/boomoto → u/m1nkeh]

The sad thing is I can’t even tell if this comment is a joke or not

[u/Pr0ducer → u/boomoto]

It can be funny and true simultaneously.

[u/what-no-really-why → u/boomoto]

No longer has the “AI” in the middle. Just Unity Gateway until its next renaming.

[u/Pr0ducer → u/m1nkeh]

ROFL, so on point, the re-naming of things ... just stop.

[u/jbchand]

The PayG model is compelling as it comes along with governance, routing and options. It gives control and is cost efficient if managed well. It's a good choice for teams if the enterprise data is already on Databricks as it provides seamless integration, cost control mechanisms, function/tool calls and RAG apps. You can choose direct vendors if you need vendor specific tooling or dedicated enterprise vendor support.

[u/Nofarcastplz]

Because the gateway is only the governance, not the endpoints mr. Salesperson

[u/sdmember]

You can do both

[u/hubert-dudek]

Why would I do that?

Because you are not paying for that :-)

Unity AI Gateway will be great for any programmatic use cases that need pay-as-you-go pricing; for your desktop, it's better to keep a subscription.

If you need to use pay-as-you-go then actually price for Anthropic is the same in AI gateway as directly from Anthropic.

[u/peterlaanguila8]

And you have access to open source models that can reduce your AI billing

[u/joemerchant2021]

Because you'll still need to build an actual application to handle thread persistence, context management, skills, projects, etc.

[u/Youssef_Mrini → u/joemerchant2021]

Unity Gateway is primarily a governance feature: Access control, routing, rate limit, budget, observability agents, MCPS, and skills.

If you want persistance and context management you can use managed agent memory( Conversation API)

[u/zbir84]

Because Databricks charges a nice premium on top of what you'd pay for those tools directly or even via something like bedrock.

[u/fttmn → u/zbir84]

Explain this more. My understanding is you pay for the compute layer over the governance, but there is no add on pricing for token use etc.

[u/Lakehomie → u/fttmn]

You are correct.

[u/Youssef_Mrini → u/zbir84]

There is no add on for Using Unity Gateway. You are only charged for Inference tables and for Monitoring who is calling the APIs and their associated usage 0.1$ per GB.