Playground and Managed Gateway Requests

The AISIX Cloud playground lets you try a single-target model from the control plane while you are setting up Cloud resources. It is useful for early feedback, but it does not validate the managed gateway request path.

Use live requests through the managed gateway when you need to validate routing, cache, guardrails, rate limits, budgets, streaming behavior, or observability.

Playground and Managed Traffic

Playground requests run from the control plane to the upstream provider. They are appropriate for early provider credential validation, exploratory prompts from the Cloud UI, and basic provider-call confirmation.

Managed gateway requests run through the runtime that applications use. They validate caller API keys, model aliases, routing rules, cache behavior, guardrails, budgets, rate limits, logs, and metrics.

The playground supports single-target models. Multi-target routing is selected by the managed gateway during live traffic, so use a live request to validate failover or routing behavior.

Verify Managed Traffic

Treat the playground result as an early provider and configuration check, then verify the live gateway path. Confirm the resource belongs to the environment served by the gateway, the saved resource reached the managed gateway, the request uses the managed gateway endpoint, and gateway logs, metrics, usage events, or response headers match the live request.

Next Steps

You have now seen what the Cloud playground can and cannot prove. Use live managed gateway requests when you need to validate production traffic behavior.