# Beam vs Cerebrium

> Beam and Cerebrium score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.5 (C) and 55.3 (C). Cerebrium leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-cerebrium
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-cerebrium.md (~2,050 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-cerebrium.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-cerebrium.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

Beam and Cerebrium score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.5 (C) and 55.3 (C). Cerebrium leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do compute gpu.

- Beam: grade C, 55.5/100, rank #507 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/beam.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/beam.json
- Cerebrium: grade C, 55.3/100, rank #512 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cerebrium.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cerebrium.json

## Which one, for what

### Beam (C)

Good for: Cost-sensitive Python teams running bursty GPU functions on consumer or PCIe cards, and anyone who wants the option to self-host the same runtime.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 55 against 48
- Agent ergonomics, 58 against 49
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 75
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 63

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: No published request rate limits, 429 handling or SLA

### Cerebrium (C)

Good for: Teams serving their own models as real-time endpoints (voice, LLM, image) who want per-second billing, multi-region placement and a scriptable management API.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 70 against 58
- Security & auth, 60 against 50

Watch for: `disable_auth` defaults to true, so a deployed endpoint answers without a token unless the owner changes it


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Beam | Cerebrium | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 48 | Beam +7 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 70 | Cerebrium +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 49 | Beam +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 60 | Cerebrium +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Beam +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 75 | Beam +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 63 | Beam +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.5 · C** | **55.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Beam | Cerebrium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Beam | Cerebrium Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1` | `https://rest.cerebrium.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary service under Cerebrium's terms of service. The CLI is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-14 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-14 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1.8k stars, 8.5k PyPI/wk | 920 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Beam.** Per-millisecond billing with cold starts and image pulls free, H100 PCIe at $3.50 and RTX 4090 at $0.69 an hour. No published request rate limits, 429 handling or SLA.

**Cerebrium.** Per-second GPU prices are public, a 94-operation OpenAPI spec covers the management API, and service account tokens expire and are limited to named projects. Deployed endpoints are callable without a token unless `disable_auth = false` is set, and no request rate limits, 429 handling or SLA were found in the reviewed documentation.

## Before you call either

### Beam

1. Check the response body for `ok: false` on gateway calls; a failure can arrive as HTTP 200
2. Don't pipe `beam deploy --format json` output into CI logs, since it contains the workspace token
3. Route anything over 180 seconds to a task queue and poll the task instead of holding the endpoint request
4. Set `keep_warm_seconds` deliberately; the 180-second endpoint default bills three minutes of GPU after every call
5. Pass `gpu=["RTX4090", "A10G"]` so a job still schedules when one type is out

### Cerebrium

1. Set `disable_auth = false` in `cerebrium.toml` before deploying. The default leaves the endpoint callable by anyone with the URL
2. Authenticate headless with `CEREBRIUM_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN`. `cerebrium login` opens a browser
3. Raise `response_grace_period` for long work. It defaults to 15 minutes and async runs stop at 12 hours
4. Send `?async=true` to get a `run_id` with HTTP 202, and add `webhookEndpoint` because async calls return no result to the caller
5. Check the plan before choosing hardware. A100, H100, H200, B200 and RTX PRO 6000 need Standard, and `protected` compute bills at twice the listed rate

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Beam or Cerebrium?

Beam and Cerebrium score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.5 (C) and 55.3 (C). Cerebrium leads on schema & documentation and security & auth.

### Are Beam and Cerebrium open source?

Beam is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for Cerebrium.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Beam or Cerebrium

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