# Baseten vs Crusoe Cloud

> Baseten scores 66.5 (B) to Crusoe Cloud's 63.4 (B) for gpu compute. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-crusoe-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-crusoe-cloud.md (~2,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-crusoe-cloud.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-crusoe-cloud.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: 2026-10-09

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Crusoe Cloud's 63.4 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Crusoe Cloud leads on transparency & trust. Both do gpu compute.

- Baseten: grade B, 66.5/100, rank #285 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baseten.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baseten.json
- Crusoe Cloud: grade B, 63.4/100, rank #396 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crusoe-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crusoe-cloud.json
- Best GPU and serverless compute for AI workloads: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/gpu-compute/index.md
- All 167 gpu compute comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpu-compute/index.md

## 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 66
- Schema & documentation, 84 against 79
- Agent ergonomics, 55 against 45
- Security & auth, 82 against 74
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 76

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

### Crusoe Cloud (B)

Good for: Teams that want whole GPU machines or clusters with managed Kubernetes or Slurm in the US, Iceland or Norway, under an SLA, and are content to manage lifecycles themselves.

Ahead on:
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 65

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Baseten loses 5 points for them

Watch for: No idempotency key or safe-retry guidance was found for create and delete calls, which return asynchronous operations to poll.


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baseten | Crusoe Cloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 66 | Baseten +14 |
| 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 | 45 | Baseten +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 82 | 74 | Baseten +8 |
| 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 | 76 | Baseten +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 77 | Crusoe Cloud +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.5 · B** | **63.4 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baseten | Crusoe Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Baseten | Crusoe |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.baseten.co` | `https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under the Crusoe Cloud Platform Terms of Service. The Go client and the MCP server package are MIT. The CLI ships as binaries, and no licence file was found in the Terraform provider repository |
| Tools exposed | none | 41 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 74k PyPI/wk | 7 npm/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.

**Crusoe Cloud.** The v1 REST API has a published OpenAPI description, Markdown docs, HMAC-signed keys, reader roles and a 90-day audit log, with on-demand GPU prices public. No idempotency keys or control-plane rate limits were found, spot and B200 prices go through sales, and a storage outage in eu-norway1 lasted about four hours on 29 September 2026.

## 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

### Crusoe Cloud

1. Sign every request. Build the payload from path, sorted query string, verb and `X-Crusoe-Timestamp`, HMAC-SHA256 it with the base64url-decoded secret, and send `Authorization: Bearer 1.0:<access_key_id>:<signature>`.
2. Use `https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1`. Some docs pages and the MCP server still name `api.crusoecloud.com` and `/v1alpha5`.
3. Creates, updates and deletes return an operation. Poll the matching operations endpoint for `state`, and list existing resources by name before retrying a create, because no idempotency key was found.
4. Managed AI uses separate Intelligence API keys and hosts, `api.inference.crusoecloud.com` for OpenAI-compatible calls and `api.intelligence.crusoecloud.com` for files and fine-tuning jobs.
5. Delete a VM and its disks to stop charges. A stopped on-demand VM is not billed for compute, but its 128 GB OS disk still bills at $0.08 a GiB-month.

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Baseten or Crusoe Cloud?

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Crusoe Cloud's 63.4 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Crusoe Cloud leads on transparency & trust.

### Do Baseten and Crusoe Cloud need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Baseten and Crusoe Cloud without installing anything?

Yes. Baseten has a hosted endpoint at https://api.baseten.co and Crusoe Cloud at https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1.

### Are Baseten and Crusoe Cloud open source?

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


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Baseten or Crusoe Cloud

- [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 CoreWeave](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-coreweave.md)
- [Baseten vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)
- [Baseten vs Hyperbolic](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-hyperbolic.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 Massed Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-massed-compute.md)
- [Baseten vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-modal.md)
- [Baseten vs Nebius AI Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.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 Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Baseten vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-vast-ai.md)
- [Baseten vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-verda.md)
- [Beam vs Crusoe Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-crusoe-cloud.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Crusoe Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-crusoe-cloud.md)
- [CoreWeave vs Crusoe Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-crusoe-cloud.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Hyperbolic](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-hyperbolic.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Koyeb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-koyeb.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-lambda.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Massed Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-massed-compute.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-modal.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Nebius AI Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-northflank.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-runpod.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-vast-ai.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-verda.md)