Baseten vs FastInfra: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Baseten and FastInfra — 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.
FastInfra
Inference platform + GPU pods — 785+ models, Amazon Nova, H200 capacity
FastInfra is a hybrid inference platform combining a model router (785+ models) with its own H200 GPU capacity. It offers Amazon Nova Lite and Nova Micro at very competitive rates, with prepaid credits from $5. Part inference router, part dedicated GPU cloud.
Key metric comparison
—
$0.04
—
$0.15
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
300K
Live token pricing
Strengths and weaknesses
Baseten
FastInfra
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.
Hybrid inference platform with 785+ models via router and own H200 capacity, offering Amazon Nova at very competitive rates.
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.
FastInfra FAQs
What is FastInfra?
FastInfra is a hybrid inference platform combining a 785+ model router with its own H200 GPU capacity. It offers Amazon Nova Lite ($0.06/$0.25 per 1M tokens) and Nova Micro ($0.04/$0.15), with prepaid credits from $5. See fastinfra.ai/pricing for current rates.
Does FastInfra have its own GPU capacity?
Yes. FastInfra operates its own H200 GPU infrastructure alongside a model router, so some models run on dedicated capacity rather than being routed to third-party providers.
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)
FastInfra
- 785+ models via router — broad catalog coverage
- Own H200 GPU capacity for low-latency inference
- Very competitive Amazon Nova Lite ($0.06/$0.25) and Nova Micro ($0.04/$0.15) rates
- Newer provider — limited ecosystem integrations and third-party reviews
- Hybrid router/own-capacity model means latency may vary by model
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
FastInfra
- Newer provider — limited ecosystem integrations and third-party reviews
- Hybrid router/own-capacity model means latency may vary by model
- Limited benchmark transparency
Provider category context
Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. FastInfra is a inference api, founded in 2024. 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 FastInfra 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.