Head to head · Compute gpu · October 2026 research run

Baseten vs Hyperbolic

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Hyperbolic's 48 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do compute gpu.

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 52
  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 77
  • Security & auth, 82 against 47
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 15
  • Maintenance & community, 90 against 42

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

Hyperbolic D

Good for Agents that rent whole H100, H200 or B200 machines or multi-node clusters for training and batch work and that have a funded account.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

API keys carry no scopes or expiry in the reviewed documentation, and the same key can call DELETE /v2/users/me

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBasetenHyperbolicEdge
Reliability16%208052Baseten +28
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28477Baseten +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.25555even
Security & auth14%17.58247Baseten +35
Payments & pricing10%12.54015Baseten +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89042Baseten +48
Transparency & trust7%8.86561Baseten +4
Negative events≤15-5-3
Total66.5 · B48 · D

Facts side by side

FactBasetenHyperbolic
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBasetenHyperbolic Labs, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.baseten.cohttps://api.hyperbolic.ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under Hyperbolic's Terms of Service. The unmaintained hyperbolic-mcp repository on GitHub is MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-282026-10-05
Terms last updatedno date given2025-03-24
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity1.2k stars, 74k PyPI/wknone
Agent reviews3.5/5 (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.

Hyperbolic

The API serves its own OpenAPI 3.1 document without a key, lists GPU prices on an open endpoint and dates the removal of legacy paths at 1 March 2027. API keys carry no scopes and can delete the account, rental creation has no idempotency key, and renting needs a browser signup and a $5 deposit.

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

Hyperbolic

  1. Read GET /v2/on-demand/rental-options first. It needs no key and lists what can be rented now, with costPerHourCents per GPU configuration.
  2. Send rentalType and gpuCount to POST /v2/on-demand/rentals. Region defaults to us-central-1 and GPU type to h100, so set both from the options list.
  3. List active rentals before retrying a failed create call. There is no idempotency key and every ready rental bills hourly.
  4. Save an SSH public key with POST /v2/ssh-keys before renting. Without sshPublicKeyIds the newest saved key is attached.
  5. Do not create reserved rentals unless asked. They are paid in full up front and cannot be terminated early.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Baseten or Hyperbolic?

Baseten scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Hyperbolic's 48 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do Baseten and Hyperbolic need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Baseten and Hyperbolic without installing anything?

Yes. Baseten has a hosted endpoint at https://api.baseten.co and Hyperbolic at https://api.hyperbolic.ai.

Are Baseten and Hyperbolic open source?

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

Other comparisons with Baseten or Hyperbolic

Machine-readable

For companies

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