# Beam vs CoreWeave

> CoreWeave scores 61.5 (C) on agent readiness against Beam's 55.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Beam leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-coreweave
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-coreweave.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-coreweave.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-coreweave.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

CoreWeave scores 61.5 (C) on agent readiness against Beam's 55.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Beam leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. 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
- CoreWeave: grade C, 61.5/100, rank #363 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/coreweave.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/coreweave.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 50
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 80

Also in its favour:
- Open source

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

### CoreWeave (C)

Good for: Teams that already run Kubernetes and need whole multi-GPU nodes or clusters for training and dedicated inference, with a contract and IAM.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 79 against 58
- Security & auth, 74 against 50

Watch for: No self-serve route. CoreWeave's sales team approves an organisation and emails the activation link before a token can be created


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Beam | CoreWeave | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 50 | Beam +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 79 | CoreWeave +21 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 58 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 74 | CoreWeave +24 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Beam +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 80 | Beam +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 77 | CoreWeave +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.5 · C** | **61.5 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Beam | CoreWeave |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Beam | CoreWeave, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1` | `https://api.coreweave.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | Token |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary service under CoreWeave's Terms of Service. The Terraform provider on GitHub is MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 38 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-14 | 2022-06-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-14 | 2026-02-24 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| 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 | none |
| 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.

**CoreWeave.** Per-hour prices for 8-GPU H100, H200 and B200 nodes are public, the docs ship as Markdown with llms.txt and embedded OpenAPI specs, and IAM has read-only roles per service. An organisation must be approved by CoreWeave's sales team before any token exists, and no request rate limits 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

### CoreWeave

1. Create an API access token at console.coreweave.com/tokens with an expiry and send it as `Authorization: Bearer` to https://api.coreweave.com
2. Add GPUs by applying a NodePool resource (`compute.coreweave.com/v1alpha1`) to a CKS cluster with `instanceType` and `targetNodes`. `instanceType` can't be changed afterwards
3. Set `targetNodes` to 0 or delete the Node Pool when a job ends. Nodes are whole 8-GPU machines billed by the hour
4. Never pass `dry_run` to the MCP tool `coreweave_kubectl_apply` expecting a preview. The reference says the parameter is ignored and the manifest is applied
5. Use a separate Forge API key and https://api.inference.wandb.ai/v1 for Serverless Inference. A CoreWeave API access token doesn't work there

## Questions

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

CoreWeave scores 61.5 (C) on agent readiness against Beam's 55.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Beam leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Can an agent call Beam and CoreWeave without installing anything?

Yes. Beam has a hosted endpoint at https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1 and CoreWeave at https://api.coreweave.com.

### Are Beam and CoreWeave open source?

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


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Beam or CoreWeave

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