The free promotion for MiniMax M3 and M2.7 on Vercel's AI Gateway ran through September 6, 2026. Its lasting implementation detail is the difference between two routing choices. The dedicated model identifiers ending in -free were designed to fail after the promotion, according to the announcement.
Using the ordinary model identifier with GMI Cloud as the preferred provider allowed fallback to another provider when GMI Cloud could not serve a request. One configuration made expiration explicit through an error; the other kept requests working through fallback.
