Beam vs Replicate Deployments

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.

Replicate Deployments

OpenAPI file, llms.txt and an MCP server with a two-tool code mode. Private instances bill set-up and idle time, H100 at $5.49 an hour.

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

Replicate Deployments

1. List GET /v1/hardware first and use the returned sku in the deployment body
2. Set min_instances to 0 for bursty work; a warm H100 bills $5.49 an hour whether called or not
3. Send Prefer: wait on deployment predictions to block instead of polling
4. Copy outputs within an hour; API prediction data is deleted after that
5. Wait for the reset time in the 429 body before retrying; prediction creates cap at 600 a minute