Baseten vs SiliconFlow: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Baseten and SiliconFlow — 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.

Custom model deploymentFine-tuned modelsML infrastructureProduction servingOpen-weight models

Open-weight hostHosts open weights

SiliconFlow

Chinese LLM inference platform with CNY pricing

SiliconFlow (siliconflow.cn) is an LLM inference platform offering access to models including GLM and DeepSeek families via an OpenAI-compatible API, with pricing denominated in CNY.

ChatLong-context inference

Open-weight host

Key metric comparison

Cheapest input ($/1M)

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Cheapest output ($/1M)

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Peak throughput

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Best latency (TTFT)

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Intelligence score

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Context window

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1049K

Live token pricing

Basetenlive pricing

No live pricing data available.

SiliconFlowlive pricing

← Swipe to see all columns

Model	Input	Output	Latency
GLM-5.3-Flash	$0.80EST Oct 2026	$2.80	—
GLM-5.3	$8.00EST Oct 2026	$28.00	—
DeepSeek-V4-Pro	$12.00EST Oct 2026	$24.00	—

Strengths and weaknesses

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

Autoscaling including scale-to-zero for cost efficiency

Truss open-source packaging format for reproducible model deployments

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

SiliconFlow

Key differentiators

Baseten

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.

SiliconFlow

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.

SiliconFlow FAQs

What is SiliconFlow?

SiliconFlow is an LLM inference platform offering access to models including GLM and DeepSeek families. See siliconflow.cn for details.

What currency does SiliconFlow use for pricing?

SiliconFlow prices are denominated in CNY. See siliconflow.cn/pricing for current rates.

Is the SiliconFlow API OpenAI-compatible?

SiliconFlow provides an OpenAI-compatible API. See siliconflow.cn for endpoint details.

Provider resources

Baseten

Provider page

Website

Pricing Docs

SiliconFlow

Provider page

Website

Pricing Docs

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)

SiliconFlow

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

SiliconFlow

Provider category context

Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. SiliconFlow 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 SiliconFlow 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.