# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.md (~1,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.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: 2026-10-05

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.

- Baseten: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #157 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baseten.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baseten.json
- Northflank: grade C, 61.8/100, rank #224 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/northflank.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/northflank.json

## 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 nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baseten | Northflank | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 65 | Baseten +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 81 | Baseten +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 48 | Baseten +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 82 | 75 | Baseten +7 |
| 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 | 65 | Baseten +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

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

### Northflank

1. Issue the agent a team token under an API role limited to one project, not a personal token
2. Read `x-ratelimit-remaining` and wait `x-ratelimit-reset` seconds on a 429; the default is 1,000 calls an hour
3. Page lists with `per_page` up to 100 and the returned `cursor` instead of numbered pages
4. Use a job, not a service, for anything that finishes; services bill until paused or deleted
5. Fetch any docs page with .md appended to get Markdown

## Other comparisons with Baseten or Northflank

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