Head to head · GPU compute · October 2026 research run

Beam vs Cloud Run GPUs

Cloud Run GPUs scores 68.4 (B) on agent readiness against Beam's 56.2 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Beam leads on maintenance & community. Both do gpu compute.

Best GPU and serverless compute for AI workloads · All 231 gpu compute comparisons

Which one, for what

Beam C

Best for Python teams and agents running bursty GPU functions, sandboxes or persistent dev VMs on consumer or PCIe cards, with the option to self-host the same runtime.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 80

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No free plan; the Developer plan costs $20 a month, with $20 of credits

Cloud Run GPUs B

Best for Serving small and mid-size open models, or batch jobs, from a container that should scale to zero.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 55
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 66 against 58
  • Security & auth, 78 against 65

Watch for

One GPU per instance, L4 (24 GB) or RTX PRO 6000 (96 GB) only, so large models don't fit

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Schema & documentation Cloud Run GPUs +23

Beam 58

Two Swagger files generated from protobuf (gateway and pods) still sit under the API reference and in llms.txt, with typed bodies and a shared error schema but almost no operation summaries; the workspace REST API at app.beam.cloud/api/v1 is a route table with no spec (15 of 25). llms.txt with .md pages (10). The guides say when to use what (endpoints for work under 180 seconds, task queues beyond), the generated specs don't (10). Typed request bodies with required fields and some enums, and a typed Python SDK (10). Plenty of examples; errors are an rpcStatus object, and the gateway can return HTTP 200 with ok: false, which the REST page now states (8). Versioned SDK releases, and a changelog linked from the site footer whose newest entry is 2 June 2025, 17 months old (5). 15 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 8 + 5 = 58.

Cloud Run GPUs 81

API reading. A public Discovery document for the Cloud Run Admin API v2 (25). No llms.txt; Google's docs answer Markdown only at an unlinked .md.txt address, read as half, as for the Document AI listing (5). The GPU page says when to turn zonal redundancy on or off and the best-practices page when to bake models into images or load them from Cloud Storage (16). The GPU type is a free string in a node selector, with CPU and memory minimums stated in prose (9). gcloud, YAML, Terraform and console steps on each page, and errors follow Google's status model with no Cloud Run GPU error list (11). Versioned API (v1 and v2) and dated release notes (15). 25+5+16+9+11+15 = 81.

Reliability Cloud Run GPUs +15

Beam 55

Atlassian Statuspage at status.beam.cloud with API, Dashboard and Platform components plus Stripe and AWS dependencies, and history (20). Its feed, read on 4 November 2026, has no incident since 17 June 2025, but four GitHub issues opened between 25 August and 1 September 2026 reported account creation and login failing, and none reached the status page, so the record is scored as minor incidents rather than clean (20, per the 1 October reading of the issues, not re-read). No request rate limits found; the plans publish concurrency caps of 30 vCPUs and 5 GPUs on Developer and 1,000 vCPUs and 50 GPUs on Team, with unlimited API requests (5 of 15). No 429 or backoff guidance found; the retries guide asks for task code safe to run more than once, which is about Beam's own task retries, not client retries (0). No SLA; the terms say any uptime commitment applies only if set out in an Order Form (0). Endpoints, task queues, sandboxes and VMs are GA (10). 20 + 20 + 5 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 55.

Cloud Run GPUs 70

Hosted reading. Google Cloud's status page with a JSON incident feed (20). In the 90 days from 8 August 2026 the feed names Cloud Run in three multi-product incidents, a service outage on 20 August (15:40 to 19:20 UTC, 27 products, global and us-west1), a network degradation in us-central1-b on 1 September and a europe-west2 disruption on 20 October. One major (10). Resource limits and GPU quota are published with numbers (3 GPUs a region by default), but no request rate for the Admin API was found on the quotas page (10). Google's client libraries retry with backoff and the Admin API takes etags, while no GPU-specific retry guidance was found (10). An SLA for GPU services, 99.95% with zonal redundancy and 99.5% without (10). GPU services generally available since 7 April 2025 (10). 20+10+10+10+10+10 = 70.

Security & auth Cloud Run GPUs +13

Beam 65

Credential model 25 of 30. Workspace API tokens can be created, rotated and revoked but carry no scopes (20), while the remote MCP server now signs in by OAuth with named scopes (beam:read, beam:credentials), refreshes tokens and lists connected clients for disconnection (30); between the two. Least privilege 10 of 20. The MCP server takes ?readonly=true and says deletions and other destructive operations require confirmation, but REST tokens and the SDK have no read-only mode, and all workspace members have the same permissions. Runs your own code and returns its output, no third-party content (10). Task, log and event history per deployment in the dashboard and API; Beam's own staff access logs are internal (10 of 15). Programme 10. A disclosure policy on the security overview and in beta9's SECURITY.md (acknowledgement within 3 business days, safe harbour) and SOC 2 Type II by Advantage Partners with the report under NDA; no bug bounty and no security.txt (404). OSV lists one advisory for beta9, CVE-2025-69820 (Moderate 6.0, path traversal in joinCleanPath, a researcher's record published 22 January 2026). beta9 replaced joinCleanPath on 16 October 2026 in d76ba79 (gateway-0.1.820), a commit that names the CVE, so it is a fixed third-party Moderate and costs nothing. The token-in-logs report of 4 August 2026 is per the 1 October check, not re-read (GitHub pages answer 403). 25 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 65.

Cloud Run GPUs 78

OAuth 2.0 tokens from service accounts under IAM. Google's APIs accept access_token as a query parameter, the 10-point deduction other Google API listings take (20). IAM roles separate viewing, deploying and invoking, and services can require IAM authentication for every call (16). The platform runs your own container and returns its output (10). Cloud Audit Logs record Admin API calls, and request logs go to Cloud Logging (15). Google's vulnerability reward programme, security.txt and certifications (17). 20+16+10+15+17 = 78.

Agent ergonomics Cloud Run GPUs +8

Beam 58

List endpoints for deployments and tasks take filters and a limit; objects are small (15). Filtering and limits documented, cursor behaviour isn't ('List responses may be paginated') (15). HTTP statuses on the workspace API, but the gateway's 200-with-ok: false means an agent has to read the body to spot a failure (8). No idempotency keys; functions and task queues retry 3 times by default, up to 5, with retry_for on task queues (5). Defaults are sensible (keep_warm_seconds 180 for endpoints, 10 for queues) and there are Python and TypeScript SDKs plus an official MCP server (15). 15 + 15 + 8 + 5 + 15 = 58.

Cloud Run GPUs 66

Platform reading. One gcloud run deploy with --gpu and --gpu-type adds a GPU to a container, and responses carry the service object with fieldMask on updates (15). List calls page with pageSize and pageToken (15). Google's status codes and messages, with quota errors that name the limit (12). Revisions are immutable, traffic can be moved back, and etags guard updates, but no idempotency key on create (12). Client libraries in many languages and gcloud, though a GPU deploy needs instance-based billing, minimum CPU and memory and, past 3 GPUs, a quota request (12). 15+15+12+12+12 = 66.

Maintenance & community Beam +5

Beam 85

Newest dated release is the TypeScript SDK tag js/v1.1.6 on 16 October 2026, with beam-client's Python version bumped to 0.2.233 the same day in beam-cloud/beam-client (30). Tags in the 90 days from 6 August are js/v1.0.20 (15 September), cli-0.2.212 (29 September), js/v1.1.5 and js/v1.1.6 (16 October), four (20). Python versions aren't tagged and PyPI couldn't be read, so they aren't counted on their own. Responsiveness per the 1 October check, not re-read, where the sign-up reports got a staff reply but the token-in-logs issue had sat open for two months (15). Python and TypeScript SDKs are current (15). Both repositories run CI with tests on every push, results unread, and the client still declares Python 3.8, which is past end of life (5). 30 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 5 = 85.

Cloud Run GPUs 80

Closed service with official SDKs. The newest GPU change is 30 October 2026, jobs with GPUs running up to 12 hours (30). Cloud Run release notes dated 4 November, 2 November, 30 October, 24 October and more in the 90 days (20). Release notes, Google Cloud support and public trackers for the client libraries, which were not read (10). Official client libraries in eight languages and gcloud (15). CI results not checked (5). 30+20+10+15+5 = 80.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBeamCloud Run GPUsEdge
Reliability16%205570Cloud Run GPUs +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25881Cloud Run GPUs +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.25866Cloud Run GPUs +8
Security & auth14%17.56578Cloud Run GPUs +13
Payments & pricing10%12.52020even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88580Beam +5
Transparency & trust7%8.88084Cloud Run GPUs +4
Negative events≤15-20
TotalC 56.2/100B 68.4/100

Facts side by side

FactBeamCloud Run GPUs
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorBeamGoogle Cloud
Hosted endpointhttps://app.beam.cloud/api/v1https://run.googleapis.com
TransportsHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth
PricingPaidPay per use
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0Proprietary service under the Google Cloud Platform terms. Client libraries are Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-162026-10-30
Terms last updated2026-09-142026-09-02
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-142026-09-28
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity1.8k stars, 8.5k PyPI/wknone
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Beam

Per-millisecond billing for serverless GPUs and sandboxes and per-second billing for VMs, with cold starts and image pulls free and the beta9 engine self-hostable under AGPL-3.0. The remote MCP server signs in by OAuth with scopes and a read-only mode. There is no free plan, request rate limit, 429 guidance or SLA.

Cloud Run GPUs

Serverless GPUs on Cloud Run, an L4 or RTX PRO 6000 per instance, billed per second, scaling to zero and starting in about 5 seconds before the model loads, with a published SLA and IAM. One GPU per instance, 3 GPUs of default quota a region and instance-based billing limit it to small and mid-size models.

Before you call either

Beam

  1. Check the response body for ok: false on gateway calls; a failure can arrive as HTTP 200
  2. Connect MCP clients with OAuth and add ?readonly=true for agents that only need to read
  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. Keep beam deploy JSON output out of CI logs until the token-in-logs report is closed

Cloud Run GPUs

  1. Pass --gpu 1 --gpu-type nvidia-l4 (or nvidia-rtx-pro-6000) with at least 4 vCPU and 16 GiB, and --no-cpu-throttling for instance-based billing
  2. Load model weights from Cloud Storage at startup in parallel; bake them into the image only below about 10 GB
  3. Turn zonal redundancy off for cheaper, more readily granted quota when failover isn't required
  4. Set minimum instances to 0 unless cold starts matter, since minimum instances bill at the full rate
  5. Send OAuth tokens in the Authorization header, never as access_token in the URL

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Beam or Cloud Run GPUs?

Cloud Run GPUs scores 68.4 (B) on agent readiness against Beam's 56.2 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Beam leads on maintenance & community.

Are Beam and Cloud Run GPUs open source?

Beam is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for Cloud Run GPUs.

Other comparisons with Beam or Cloud Run GPUs

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