Head to head · Compute gpu · October 2026 research run
Baseten vs Northflank
Baseten has a score of 66.7 (B) against Northflank's 61.8 (C). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 25 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Baseten for
- reliability (+15)
- agent ergonomics (+7)
- security & auth (+7)
- payments & pricing (+10)
- maintenance & community (+25)
- transparency & trust (+7)
Pick Northflank for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Baseten | Northflank | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 65 | Baseten +15 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 84 | 81 | Baseten +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 55 | 48 | Baseten +7 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 82 | 75 | Baseten +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 30 | Baseten +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 90 | 65 | Baseten +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 67 | 60 | Baseten +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| Total | 66.7 · B | 61.8 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Baseten | Northflank |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Baseten | Northflank |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.baseten.co | https://api.northflank.com/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | Token |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-24 |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 74k PyPI/wk | 19k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |
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.
Northflank
OpenAPI 3.0 with over 100 paths, enums and per_page, page and cursor on every list. No scale to zero for services; minimum instances must be at least 1.
Before you call either
Baseten
- Create a team key with inference-only permission for calling models and keep full-access keys out of the agent
- Sleep for
retry_afterseconds on a 429 from api.baseten.co; the activate and deactivate endpoints allow 20 calls a minute - Retry 429, 503 and 529 with backoff, but treat 500 as a bug in your model code
- Set
scale_down_delaybelow the 900-second default or every burst bills 15 idle minutes - Send payloads over 256 KiB to
/predict, not/async_predict, unless support has raised the async limit
Northflank
- Issue the agent a team token under an API role limited to one project, not a personal token
- Read
x-ratelimit-remainingand waitx-ratelimit-resetseconds on a 429; the default is 1,000 calls an hour - Page lists with
per_pageup to 100 and the returnedcursorinstead of numbered pages - Use a job, not a service, for anything that finishes; services bill until paused or deleted
- Fetch any docs page with .md appended to get Markdown
Other comparisons with Baseten or Northflank
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/baseten.json·/api/v1/tools/northflank.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.md