# Beam vs Runpod

> Beam has a score of 55.5 (C) against Runpod's 53.7 (D). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 23 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Beam has a score of 55.5 (C) against Runpod's 53.7 (D). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 23 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
- Runpod: grade D, 53.7/100, rank #329 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/runpod.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/runpod.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Beam for reliability (+20), agent ergonomics (+11), payments & pricing (+20), transparency & trust (+9).

Pick Runpod for schema & documentation (+23), security & auth (+10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Beam | Runpod | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 35 | Beam +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 81 | Runpod +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 47 | Beam +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 60 | Runpod +10 |
| 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 | 82 | Beam +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 65 | Beam +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.5 · C** | **53.7 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Beam | Runpod |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Beam | Runpod |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1` | `https://api.runpod.ai/v2` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| 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 | 2026-09-15 |
| Popularity | 1.8k stars, 8.5k PyPI/wk | 314 stars, 22k npm/wk, 147k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (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.

**Runpod.** Per-second billing across more than a dozen serverless GPU classes, H100 at $4.79 and A100 80 GB at $2.72 an hour. Data-centre outages of 6 to 24 hours in each of July, August and September 2026.

## 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

### Runpod

1. Create a Restricted or Read Only key per endpoint for the agent, not an All key
2. Use REST v2 at api.runpod.io/v2 with a Bearer header; avoid GraphQL, which puts the key in the URL
3. Fetch `/run` results within 30 minutes and `/runsync` results within 1 minute, or they're gone
4. Call `/retry` on a failed job ID rather than submitting a duplicate job
5. Check `/health` before relying on an endpoint idle for a week, since max workers drop to 0

## Other comparisons with Beam or Runpod

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