Cloudflare Workers AI vs SambaNova Cloud: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Cloudflare Workers AI and SambaNova Cloud — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Rates sourced from public APIs — verify before use.
Cloudflare Workers AI
Serverless AI inference at the edge — run LLMs in 300+ Cloudflare data centers globally
Cloudflare Workers AI runs AI inference directly on Cloudflare's global edge network across 300+ data centers, delivering ultra-low latency by processing requests close to end users. It supports a curated catalog of open-weight models including Llama 4, Mistral, Qwen3, Phi-4, and Stable Diffusion, all accessible via the Workers runtime with no cold starts. Pricing is usage-based with a generous free tier (10,000 neurons/day), making it ideal for latency-sensitive applications and edge AI use cases.
SambaNova Cloud
High-throughput inference on SambaNova RDU chips — gpt-oss-120b, GLM-5.3, Llama
SambaNova Cloud runs inference on SambaNova's proprietary Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) chips, delivering very high throughput (800+ tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b). The catalog covers gpt-oss-120b, GLM-5.3, MiniMax-M3, DeepSeek-V3.2, Meta-Llama-3.3-70B, and Gemma 4 31B. Pricing is PAYG with prompt caching on select models.
Key metric comparison
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Live token pricing
Strengths and weaknesses
Cloudflare Workers AI
SambaNova Cloud
Key differentiators
An AI inference platform running on a global CDN edge network — 300+ data centers enable low-latency inference for users worldwide without managing any GPU infrastructure.
Proprietary RDU chips deliver industry-leading throughput on open-weight models at competitive per-token rates.
Frequently asked questions
Cloudflare Workers AI FAQs
What is Cloudflare Workers AI?
Cloudflare Workers AI is a serverless AI inference platform that runs open-weight models on Cloudflare's global edge network across 300+ data centers. It delivers ultra-low latency by processing AI requests close to end users.
What models does Cloudflare Workers AI support?
Workers AI supports a curated catalog of open-weight models including Llama 4, Mistral 7B, Qwen3, Phi-4, and image generation models like Stable Diffusion. The catalog is smaller than Together AI but covers the most popular open-weight models.
How does Cloudflare Workers AI pricing work?
Workers AI uses a "neurons" pricing model. The free tier includes 10,000 neurons/day. Paid usage is billed per neuron, with cost varying by model size. Check developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing for current rates.
SambaNova Cloud FAQs
What makes SambaNova Cloud different?
SambaNova runs inference on its own Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) chips rather than NVIDIA GPUs. This delivers very high throughput — over 800 tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b — at competitive per-token rates.
What models does SambaNova Cloud offer?
As of October 2026: gpt-oss-120b ($0.22/$0.59), GLM-5.3 ($1.40/$4.40, cached $0.14), MiniMax-M3 ($0.60/$2.40, cached $0.06), DeepSeek-V3.2 ($3.00/$4.50), Meta-Llama-3.3-70B ($0.60/$1.20), and Gemma 4 31B ($0.38/$1.15). See cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/pricing for current rates.
Does SambaNova offer prompt caching?
Yes, on GLM-5.3 (cached input $0.14/1M vs $1.40/1M standard) and MiniMax-M3 (cached input $0.06/1M vs $0.60/1M standard).
Provider resources
Cloudflare Workers AI — Serverless AI inference at the edge — run LLMs in 300+ Cloudflare data centers globally
Cloudflare Workers AI runs AI inference directly on Cloudflare's global edge network across 300+ data centers, delivering ultra-low latency by processing requests close to end users. It supports a curated catalog of open-weight models including Llama 4, Mistral, Qwen3, Phi-4, and Stable Diffusion, all accessible via the Workers runtime with no cold starts. Pricing is usage-based with a generous free tier (10,000 neurons/day), making it ideal for latency-sensitive applications and edge AI use cases.
An AI inference platform running on a global CDN edge network — 300+ data centers enable low-latency inference for users worldwide without managing any GPU infrastructure.
SambaNova Cloud — High-throughput inference on SambaNova RDU chips — gpt-oss-120b, GLM-5.3, Llama
SambaNova Cloud runs inference on SambaNova's proprietary Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) chips, delivering very high throughput (800+ tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b). The catalog covers gpt-oss-120b, GLM-5.3, MiniMax-M3, DeepSeek-V3.2, Meta-Llama-3.3-70B, and Gemma 4 31B. Pricing is PAYG with prompt caching on select models.
Proprietary RDU chips deliver industry-leading throughput on open-weight models at competitive per-token rates.
Key strengths compared
Cloudflare Workers AI
- Edge inference across 300+ global data centers — lowest latency for geographically distributed users
- No cold starts — inference runs on persistent GPU capacity at the edge
- Free tier: 10,000 neurons/day (roughly 10M tokens/day on small models)
- Limited model catalog vs. Together AI or OpenRouter — curated selection only
- No support for frontier proprietary models (GPT-6, Claude 5)
SambaNova Cloud
- Proprietary RDU chips deliver very high throughput — 800+ tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b
- Competitive pricing on gpt-oss-120b ($0.22/$0.59 per 1M)
- Prompt caching on GLM-5.3 (cached input at $0.14/1M)
- Smaller model catalog vs OpenRouter or Together AI
- No proprietary frontier models — inference-only platform
Key weaknesses compared
Cloudflare Workers AI
- Limited model catalog vs. Together AI or OpenRouter — curated selection only
- No support for frontier proprietary models (GPT-6, Claude 5)
- Neurons-based pricing is opaque — hard to predict costs for large workloads
SambaNova Cloud
- Smaller model catalog vs OpenRouter or Together AI
- No proprietary frontier models — inference-only platform
- RDU architecture may behave differently from GPU inference for some workloads
Provider category context
Cloudflare Workers AI is a inference api, founded in 2023. SambaNova Cloud is a inference api, founded in 2017. 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 Cloudflare Workers AI and SambaNova Cloud 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.