Head to head
Vercel AI SDK vs Mastra
A side-by-side, sourced comparison. Facts come from each vendor’s own materials; scores are our editorial opinion applied by the same rubric to both.
| Dimension | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | The SDK is free and open source (MIT); you pay the underlying model/token costs of whichever provider you route to. Vercel's hosting and AI Gateway are billed separately.source ↗ | Self-hosted is free (Apache-2.0). Cloud Starter $0/mo with usage metering, Cloud Teams $250/mo, Enterprise custom; add-ons include memory at $10/1M tokens.source ↗ |
| Hosting model | A self-deployed library — you install and run it inside your own app or runtime; it is not a managed service.source ↗ | Dual — self-host the open-source TypeScript library on your own infra, or use managed Mastra Cloud.source ↗ |
| Memory & state | Provides message/state and streaming primitives; built-in long-term memory and conversation persistence are left to your own store.Unverified | Message history, working memory (persistent structured user data), semantic recall (embedding-based retrieval), and observational memory; requires a storage provider (PostgreSQL, LibSQL, or Redis).source ↗ |
| MCP support | Nativesource ↗ | Nativesource ↗ |
| Integrations | Tool calling, MCP servers and tools, structured object generation, and multimodal (text, speech, transcription, image, video) generation.source ↗ | Tools and MCP servers, plus framework adapters for Next.js, React, Astro, Express, SvelteKit, and Hono, and data-source connectors.source ↗ |
| Model providers | Multi-provider by design — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI/Grok, Mistral, Meta, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and more (16+ providers, 100+ models).source ↗ | A model router to 90+ providers via a single provider/model API — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, Groq, Mistral, xAI, plus gateways like OpenRouter and any Vercel AI SDK model.source ↗ |
| Open source | Yessource ↗ | Yessource ↗ |
| Developer experience(opinion) | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| Pricing transparency & value(opinion) | 5/5 | 4/5 |
| Scalability(opinion) | 3/5 | 4/5 |
| Memory & state(opinion) | 2/5 | 4/5 |
| Integrations(opinion) | 4/5 | 3/5 |
| MCP nativeness(opinion) | 4/5 | 5/5 |
The balanced view
Editorial opinion, derived from the scorecard above
Where Vercel AI SDK scores higher
In our rubric, Vercel AI SDK rates ahead on pricing transparency & value, integrations.
Where Mastra scores higher
In our rubric, Mastra rates ahead on scalability, memory & state, mcp nativeness.
These two serve different needs — read the full dossiers for Vercel AI SDK and Mastra before deciding. Neither has been hands-on tested by us yet.
Product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the products under discussion.