Baseten vs CloudGPU: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Baseten and CloudGPU — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Rates sourced from public APIs — verify before use.
Baseten
Production ML infrastructure — deploy any model with custom serving, autoscaling, and GPU selection
Baseten is a production ML infrastructure platform for deploying custom and open-weight models with full control over serving configuration, GPU selection, autoscaling, and cold-start behavior. Unlike managed inference APIs, Baseten lets you bring your own model weights, custom preprocessing, and serving logic. It supports Truss (Baseten's open-source model packaging format), vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, and custom Python serving code. Ideal for teams that need more control than a managed API but less overhead than raw Kubernetes.
CloudGPU
API gateway / reseller — 33 text models at CloudGPU customer rates
CloudGPU is an API gateway and reseller offering access to frontier and mid-tier text models including Claude, GPT, Kimi, GLM, Qwen, DeepSeek, and MiniMax. Prices shown are CloudGPU customer rates — not official lab prices. CloudGPU does not disclose all routing; upstreams are not the seller.
Key metric comparison
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Live token pricing
Strengths and weaknesses
Baseten
CloudGPU
Key differentiators
The production ML platform that gives you managed-API convenience with custom-serving flexibility — deploy any model with your own preprocessing logic, GPU selection, and autoscaling without managing Kubernetes.
An API gateway offering CloudGPU customer rates on 33 text models — prices differ from official lab rates; routing is not fully disclosed.
Frequently asked questions
Baseten FAQs
What is Baseten?
Baseten is a production ML infrastructure platform for deploying AI models with custom serving logic, GPU selection, and autoscaling. It supports any open-weight model or custom fine-tune via the Truss packaging format.
How does Baseten differ from Together AI or Replicate?
Baseten gives you full control over the serving stack — custom preprocessing, postprocessing, GPU selection, and autoscaling behavior. Together AI and Replicate are managed APIs with fixed serving; Baseten is for teams that need custom model serving logic.
What GPUs does Baseten support?
Baseten supports H100 SXM, H100 PCIe, A100 80GB, A10G, and T4 GPUs with per-second billing. You select the GPU type per deployment based on your model's memory and throughput requirements.
CloudGPU FAQs
Are CloudGPU prices the same as official provider prices?
No. CloudGPU is an API gateway/reseller. The prices shown are CloudGPU customer rates, which may differ from official lab prices. CloudGPU does not disclose all routing details.
What models does CloudGPU offer?
CloudGPU offers 33 text models including Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5-5, Kimi K3, GLM-5.3, Qwen 3.8 Max, DeepSeek V4 Pro, GPT-6 Astra, and MiniMax M3. See the model table for current rates.
What is the CloudGPU API base URL?
The CloudGPU API base is https://cloudgpu.app/v1 with OpenAI-compatible endpoints. See https://cloudgpu.app/api/docs for full documentation.
Provider resources
Key strengths compared
Baseten
- Full control over model serving: custom preprocessing, postprocessing, and business logic
- Bring your own weights — deploy any HuggingFace model or custom fine-tune
- GPU selection: H100, A100, A10G, T4 with per-second billing
- More setup required than managed APIs — not a drop-in OpenAI replacement
- Cold starts on scale-to-zero deployments (configurable warm pool available)
CloudGPU
- Access to frontier models including Claude Fable 5.1, Kimi K3, and GPT-6 Astra
- Competitive customer rates on Chinese frontier models (GLM, Kimi, Qwen, MiniMax)
- OpenAI-compatible API base at cloudgpu.app/v1
- API gateway/reseller — routing not fully disclosed
- Prices are CloudGPU customer rates, not official lab prices
Key weaknesses compared
Baseten
- More setup required than managed APIs — not a drop-in OpenAI replacement
- Cold starts on scale-to-zero deployments (configurable warm pool available)
- Pricing is higher than shared inference APIs for low-volume workloads
CloudGPU
- API gateway/reseller — routing not fully disclosed
- Prices are CloudGPU customer rates, not official lab prices
- Per-model context window and capability facts are not publicly documented
Provider category context
Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. CloudGPU is a inference api. Both are inference api providers — the comparison is primarily about pricing, model selection, and feature differentiation within the same tier.
How to choose between them
Both Baseten and CloudGPU host open-weight models. The key differentiators are latency, throughput, and which specific model versions each provider offers. Check the speed metrics above — inference API providers often differ significantly on tokens-per-second for the same model. Pricing is typically competitive between them; availability of specific model versions (e.g., Llama 3.1 405B, DeepSeek V3) may be the deciding factor.