# Baseten vs Cerebrium

> Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Cerebrium's 55.3 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-cerebrium
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-cerebrium.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-cerebrium.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-cerebrium.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Cerebrium's 55.3 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do compute gpu.

- Baseten: grade B, 66.5/100, rank #233 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baseten.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baseten.json
- Cerebrium: grade C, 55.3/100, rank #512 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cerebrium.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cerebrium.json

## Which one, for what

### Baseten (B)

Good for: Teams that want one model behind a production endpoint with real autoscaling knobs, environments and scoped keys.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 48
- Schema & documentation, 84 against 70
- Agent ergonomics, 55 against 49
- Security & auth, 82 against 60
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 75

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: H100 at $6.50 and A100 at $4.00 an hour, and start-up and idle replica time are billed

### Cerebrium (C)

Good for: Teams serving their own models as real-time endpoints (voice, LLM, image) who want per-second billing, multi-region placement and a scriptable management API.

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Baseten loses 5 points for them

Watch for: `disable_auth` defaults to true, so a deployed endpoint answers without a token unless the owner changes it


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baseten | Cerebrium | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 48 | Baseten +32 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 70 | Baseten +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 49 | Baseten +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 82 | 60 | Baseten +22 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Baseten +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 75 | Baseten +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 63 | Baseten +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.5 · B** | **55.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baseten | Cerebrium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Baseten | Cerebrium Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.baseten.co` | `https://rest.cerebrium.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under Cerebrium's terms of service. The CLI is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-16 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 74k PyPI/wk | 920 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Baseten.** Team API keys scoped to inference-only, metrics-only or a single environment or model, plus a Viewer role since 1 September 2026. H100 at $6.50 and A100 at $4.00 an hour, and start-up and idle replica time are billed.

**Cerebrium.** Per-second GPU prices are public, a 94-operation OpenAPI spec covers the management API, and service account tokens expire and are limited to named projects. Deployed endpoints are callable without a token unless `disable_auth = false` is set, and no request rate limits, 429 handling or SLA were found in the reviewed documentation.

## Before you call either

### Baseten

1. Create a team key with inference-only permission for calling models and keep full-access keys out of the agent
2. Sleep for `retry_after` seconds on a 429 from api.baseten.co; the activate and deactivate endpoints allow 20 calls a minute
3. Retry 429, 503 and 529 with backoff, but treat 500 as a bug in your model code
4. Set `scale_down_delay` below the 900-second default or every burst bills 15 idle minutes
5. Send payloads over 256 KiB to `/predict`, not `/async_predict`, unless support has raised the async limit

### Cerebrium

1. Set `disable_auth = false` in `cerebrium.toml` before deploying. The default leaves the endpoint callable by anyone with the URL
2. Authenticate headless with `CEREBRIUM_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN`. `cerebrium login` opens a browser
3. Raise `response_grace_period` for long work. It defaults to 15 minutes and async runs stop at 12 hours
4. Send `?async=true` to get a `run_id` with HTTP 202, and add `webhookEndpoint` because async calls return no result to the caller
5. Check the plan before choosing hardware. A100, H100, H200, B200 and RTX PRO 6000 need Standard, and `protected` compute bills at twice the listed rate

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Baseten or Cerebrium?

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Cerebrium's 55.3 (C), and leads in every scored category.

### Can an agent call Baseten and Cerebrium without installing anything?

Yes. Baseten has a hosted endpoint at https://api.baseten.co and Cerebrium at https://rest.cerebrium.ai.

### Are Baseten and Cerebrium open source?

Baseten is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Cerebrium.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-cerebrium.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-cerebrium.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "baseten", "b": "cerebrium"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare baseten cerebrium`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baseten.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cerebrium.json

## Other comparisons with Baseten or Cerebrium

- [Baseten vs Beam](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-beam.md)
- [Baseten vs CoreWeave](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-coreweave.md)
- [Baseten vs Koyeb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-koyeb.md)
- [Baseten vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-lambda.md)
- [Baseten vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-modal.md)
- [Baseten vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.md)
- [Baseten vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [Baseten vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-runpod.md)
- [Baseten vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-vast-ai.md)
- [Beam vs Cerebrium](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-cerebrium.md)
- [Cerebrium vs CoreWeave](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-coreweave.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Koyeb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-koyeb.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-lambda.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-modal.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-northflank.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-runpod.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-vast-ai.md)