Baseten vs Google: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Baseten and Google — 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.
Gemini 3.8 Flash — plus Veo 3.1 video, Lyria 3.5 music, and Gemini Omni
Google DeepMind's Gemini 3.x family spans Gemini 3.8 Flash (latest, promotional pricing until Dec 31 2026), Gemini 3.7 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash, and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview. The platform has expanded far beyond text: Veo 3.1 for video generation, Lyria 3.5 for music generation, Gemini Omni for video generation, and Gemini Embedding 2 for multimodal embeddings. Gemma 4 open-weight models are free via the API. Check the live table for current per-token rates.
Key metric comparison
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$0.00
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$0.00
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600 tok/s
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80ms
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94/100
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1000K
Live token pricing
Strengths and weaknesses
Baseten
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.
A wide multimodal AI API — text, image, video (Veo 3.1), music (Lyria 3.5), speech, transcription, and robotics under one key, with Gemini 3.8 Flash at promotional pricing until end of 2026.
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.
Google FAQs
What are the latest Google Gemini models?
As of September 2026, the Gemini 3.x family includes Gemini 3.8 Flash (newest, promotional pricing until December 31, 2026), Gemini 3.7 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash, and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview. Check ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing for current rates.
What is Gemini 3.8 Flash pricing?
Gemini 3.8 Flash is on promotional pricing until December 31, 2026, with standard rates applying from January 1, 2027. Batch pricing is 50% off. Check ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing for current rates.
Does Google offer video generation via API?
Yes. Veo 3.1 generates video at 720p, 1080p, and 4K resolutions. Gemini Omni Flash is also available for video generation. Check ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing for current rates.
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)
- Gemini 3.8 Flash: promotional pricing until Dec 31 2026 — check live table for current rates
- Wide multimodal API: text, image, audio, video generation, music, speech, transcription
- Veo 3.1 video generation (720p/1080p/4K)
- Promotional pricing expires Jan 1 2027 — prices double
- Complex tiered pricing based on context length (≤200K vs >200K)
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
- Promotional pricing expires Jan 1 2027 — prices double
- Complex tiered pricing based on context length (≤200K vs >200K)
- API reliability has historically lagged OpenAI
Provider category context
Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. Google is a frontier lab, founded in 1998. Baseten as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers. Google as a frontier lab trains and serves proprietary models with capabilities not available elsewhere.
How to choose between them
Choose Baseten if you need full control over model serving: custom preprocessing, postprocessing, and business logic. Choose Google if you need gemini 3.8 flash: promotional pricing until dec 31 2026 — check live table for current rates. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.