Baseten vs Deep Infra: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Baseten and Deep Infra — 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.
Deep Infra
Ultra-cheap open-weight inference — Llama 4, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Qwen3 at rock-bottom prices
Deep Infra is an inference-focused API provider that consistently offers the lowest per-token prices for open-weight models. The 2026 catalog includes Llama 4 Scout/Maverick, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Qwen3-235B, Kimi K3, and the full Llama 3.x family. Deep Infra is the go-to choice for cost-sensitive production inference where price is the primary constraint.
Key metric comparison
—
$0.02
—
$0.05
—
1.1K tok/s
—
60ms
—
88/100
—
262K
Live token pricing
No live pricing data available.
← Swipe to see all columns
| Model | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct | $0.02EST Jul 2026 | $0.05 |
| meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct | $0.10EST Jul 2026 | $0.28 |
| deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 | $0.55EST Jul 2026 | $2.19 |
| deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3 | $0.14EST Jul 2026 | $0.28 |
| mistralai/Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 | $0.24EST Jul 2026 | $0.24 |
Strengths and weaknesses
Baseten
Deep Infra
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.
The most price-competitive inference API for open-weight models — Llama 4, DeepSeek V4 Pro, and Qwen3 at prices 30–50% below comparable providers, with zero migration friction via OpenAI-compatible API.
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.
Deep Infra FAQs
What models does Deep Infra support in 2026?
Deep Infra hosts Llama 4 Scout and Maverick, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Qwen3-235B, Kimi K3, the full Llama 3.x family, Mistral, Mixtral, and many others. The catalog is updated rapidly as new open-weight models are released.
How cheap is Deep Infra compared to other providers?
Deep Infra is consistently among the more affordable providers for open-weight models. Check deepinfra.com/pricing for current rates on Llama 3.1 8B, Llama 3.3 70B, and other models.
Is Deep Infra OpenAI-compatible?
Yes. Deep Infra provides an OpenAI-compatible API, so you can use the OpenAI SDK by pointing it at the Deep Infra endpoint. This makes migration from OpenAI or other providers straightforward.
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)
Deep Infra
- Consistently lowest prices for open-weight models — often 30–50% below competitors
- 2026 catalog: Llama 4, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Qwen3-235B, Kimi K3
- Wide model catalog updated rapidly as new models release
- No proprietary models — open-weight only
- No enterprise SLAs or dedicated support
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
Deep Infra
- No proprietary models — open-weight only
- No enterprise SLAs or dedicated support
- Smaller ecosystem than Together AI or Fireworks
Provider category context
Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. Deep Infra is a inference api, founded in 2023. 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 Deep Infra 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.