The Future of AI is Serverless (and Maybe, Just Maybe, Free)

How Serverless Computing is Shaping the Future of AI and Reducing Costs

3 min readMar 30, 2025

Alright, folks, let’s cut through the noise. AI is eating the world, but for the longest time, it has felt like an exclusive party where the bouncer checks if you have an unlimited credit card and a PhD in distributed computing.

Expensive GPUs? Check. Complicated infrastructure? Double check. One misconfiguration away from a billing disaster? Absolutely.

But what if that’s changing? What if you could tap into AI’s power without breaking the bank or pulling all-nighters debugging Kubernetes? Enter Cloudflare Workers AI — a fresh take on serverless machine learning that might just redefine how we build AI-powered applications.

Cloudflare Workers: Not Just for Caching Anymore

If you’re a backend dev, you probably know Cloudflare for their CDN magic — speeding up websites by caching content closer to users. But Cloudflare’s “Workers” take it a step further: JavaScript (and now AI models) running at the edge, globally.

Think of it like AWS Lambda, but with potentially lower latency and fewer headaches. Now, with Cloudflare Workers AI, you can run machine learning models without provisioning infrastructure. That’s right — serverless AI is a reality.

Why Serverless AI is a Big Deal

Forget Infrastructure — No more managing instances, scaling GPUs, or waking up at 3 AM to fix a crashed server. Just write code and deploy.
Global Reach, Low Latency — Your AI application runs close to users, thanks to Cloudflare’s massive network.
Pay-as-you-go Pricing — You only pay for what you use. No idle servers burning money.

This is game-changing for indie hackers, startups, and devs who want to experiment with AI without committing to a cloud bill that rivals their rent.

Cloudflare Workers AI: First Impressions

Let’s be real — this tech is fresh. Think of it like that new pizza joint in your neighborhood. The potential is huge, but it’s still working out the kinks.

Here’s what Cloudflare Workers AI offers right now:

✅ Text Generation (LLMs) — Think chatbots, content generation, etc.
✅ Text Embeddings — Essential for semantic search and recommendation systems.
✅ Image Generation — Yes, even AI-generated images.
✅ Speech-to-Text — Transcribe audio, convert voice to text.

And here’s the kicker: there’s a free tier. Not just some “trial version” — a legit, usable free tier. You can experiment, build, and break things without waking up to a surprise invoice.

Trying It Out: Quick Experiment

The simplest way to start is Cloudflare’s LLM Playground — just type a prompt and let the AI do its thing. I decided to test it by summarizing a poem called How Bright It Is — and the results? Surprisingly solid.

But hey, we’re backend devs. We don’t just play with UIs — we want code.

A Quick Backend Setup

Setting up Cloudflare Workers AI is absurdly easy. Here’s a basic JavaScript setup:

addEventListener("fetch", event => {
  event.respondWith(handleRequest(event.request));
});

async function handleRequest(request) {
  const url = "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID/ai/infer";
  const model = "llama-2-7b-chat";  const response = await fetch(url, {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "Authorization": `Bearer YOUR_API_KEY`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({ model, prompt: "Summarize this text" })
  });  return new Response(await response.text(), { status: 200 });
}

That’s it. No spinning up servers, no cluster orchestration — just write, deploy, and run AI at the edge.

The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters

AI isn’t just for Big Tech anymore. Cloudflare Workers AI is part of a larger movement — democratizing AI, making it cheaper, faster, and accessible to all developers.

This isn’t some far-off future. Serverless AI is happening now.

Actionable Takeaways:

✅ Start experimenting — The free tiers let you test things out risk-free.
✅ Understand embeddings — They’re the backbone of AI-powered search and recommendations.
✅ Don’t fear the code — Serverless AI removes infrastructure worries, but understanding AI fundamentals is key.

I’m genuinely excited about this shift. If you’re curious, dive in and break things. Who knows? Your next side project might just be the next big AI-powered app.

And if you do build something cool — hit me up! Always happy to geek out about this stuff.