# Baseten vs CoreWeave

> Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against CoreWeave's 61.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CoreWeave leads on transparency & trust. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-coreweave
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-coreweave.md (~2,200 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-coreweave.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-coreweave.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 CoreWeave's 61.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CoreWeave leads on transparency & trust. Both do compute gpu.

- Baseten: grade B, 66.5/100, rank #215 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baseten.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baseten.json
- CoreWeave: grade C, 61.5/100, rank #323 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/coreweave.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/coreweave.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 50
- Schema & documentation, 84 against 79
- Security & auth, 82 against 74
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 80

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

### CoreWeave (C)

Good for: Teams that already run Kubernetes and need whole multi-GPU nodes or clusters for training and dedicated inference, with a contract and IAM.

Ahead on:
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 65

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

Watch for: No self-serve route. CoreWeave's sales team approves an organisation and emails the activation link before a token can be created


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baseten | CoreWeave | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 50 | Baseten +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 79 | Baseten +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 58 | CoreWeave +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 82 | 74 | Baseten +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Baseten +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 80 | Baseten +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 77 | CoreWeave +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.5 · B** | **61.5 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baseten | CoreWeave |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Baseten | CoreWeave, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.baseten.co` | `https://api.coreweave.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | Token |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under CoreWeave's Terms of Service. The Terraform provider on GitHub is MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 38 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2022-06-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-02-24 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| 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 | none |
| 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.

**CoreWeave.** Per-hour prices for 8-GPU H100, H200 and B200 nodes are public, the docs ship as Markdown with llms.txt and embedded OpenAPI specs, and IAM has read-only roles per service. An organisation must be approved by CoreWeave's sales team before any token exists, and no request rate limits 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

### CoreWeave

1. Create an API access token at console.coreweave.com/tokens with an expiry and send it as `Authorization: Bearer` to https://api.coreweave.com
2. Add GPUs by applying a NodePool resource (`compute.coreweave.com/v1alpha1`) to a CKS cluster with `instanceType` and `targetNodes`. `instanceType` can't be changed afterwards
3. Set `targetNodes` to 0 or delete the Node Pool when a job ends. Nodes are whole 8-GPU machines billed by the hour
4. Never pass `dry_run` to the MCP tool `coreweave_kubectl_apply` expecting a preview. The reference says the parameter is ignored and the manifest is applied
5. Use a separate Forge API key and https://api.inference.wandb.ai/v1 for Serverless Inference. A CoreWeave API access token doesn't work there

## Questions

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

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against CoreWeave's 61.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CoreWeave leads on transparency & trust.

### Do Baseten and CoreWeave need an API key?

Baseten needs an API key. CoreWeave needs an access token.

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

Yes. Baseten has a hosted endpoint at https://api.baseten.co and CoreWeave at https://api.coreweave.com.

### Are Baseten and CoreWeave open source?

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


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Baseten or CoreWeave

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