Baseten vs Nebius AI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Baseten and Nebius AI — 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.
Nebius AI
HGX B300, B200, H200, H100 — European AI cloud with GDPR-native data sovereignty
Nebius AI is a European cloud provider offering GPU compute and LLM inference with GDPR-native data sovereignty. GPU catalog includes HGX B300, B200, H200, H100, RTX PRO 6000, and L40S — with preemptible rates significantly lower than on-demand. The Token Factory product enables high-throughput batch inference. Nebius also offers managed Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, MLflow, and object storage. Check nebius.com for current rates.
Key metric comparison
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$0.13
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$0.40
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200 tok/s
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350ms
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60/100
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131K
Live token pricing
Strengths and weaknesses
Baseten
Nebius AI
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.
European-native GPU cloud with competitive next-gen pricing (B300, B200, H200) and preemptible rates — plus Token Factory for batch inference and GDPR-native data sovereignty.
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.
Nebius AI FAQs
What GPU hardware does Nebius AI offer?
Nebius AI offers HGX B300, B200, H200, H100, RTX PRO 6000, and L40S — with preemptible rates significantly lower than on-demand. Check nebius.com for current rates.
What is Nebius Token Factory?
Token Factory is Nebius AI's high-throughput batch inference product. It processes large volumes of inference requests at reduced per-token cost compared to real-time inference, making it ideal for batch processing workloads.
Is Nebius AI GDPR-compliant?
Yes. Nebius AI operates data centres in Europe (Amsterdam and other EU locations), making it a strong choice for European businesses with GDPR data residency requirements.
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)
Nebius AI
- HGX B300, B200, H200, H100 — competitive EU GPU pricing
- Preemptible rates significantly lower than on-demand
- RTX PRO 6000 and L40S for budget GPU workloads
- Smaller ecosystem than US-based providers
- Limited model selection vs. Together AI
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
Nebius AI
- Smaller ecosystem than US-based providers
- Limited model selection vs. Together AI
- Less established brand recognition outside Europe
Provider category context
Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. Nebius AI 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 Nebius AI 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.