# Beam vs Northflank

> Northflank has a score of 61.8 (C) against Beam's 55.5 (C). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is security & auth, 25 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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

Northflank has a score of 61.8 (C) against Beam's 55.5 (C). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is security & auth, 25 points.

- Beam: grade C, 55.5/100, rank #313 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/beam.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/beam.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 Beam for agent ergonomics (+10), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+20), transparency & trust (+14).

Pick Northflank for reliability (+10), schema & documentation (+23), security & auth (+25).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Beam | Northflank | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 65 | Northflank +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 81 | Northflank +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 48 | Beam +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 75 | Northflank +25 |
| 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 | 65 | Beam +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 60 | Beam +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.5 · C** | **61.8 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Beam | Northflank |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Beam | Northflank |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1` | `https://api.northflank.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | Token |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | 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 | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-24 |
| Popularity | 1.8k stars, 8.5k PyPI/wk | 19k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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 Beam or Northflank

- [Baseten vs Beam](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-beam.md)
- [Baseten vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.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 Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [Beam vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-runpod.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)