# Beam vs Thunder Compute

> Thunder Compute and Beam score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 56.1 (C) and 55.5 (C). Beam leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side…

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

Thunder Compute and Beam score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 56.1 (C) and 55.5 (C). Beam leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do compute gpu.

- Beam: grade C, 55.5/100, rank #588 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/beam.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/beam.json
- Thunder Compute: grade C, 56.1/100, rank #576 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/thunder-compute.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/thunder-compute.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:
- Agent ergonomics, 58 against 48
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 79
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 64

Also in its favour:
- Open source

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

### Thunder Compute (C)

Good for: Agents in coding tools that rent a single persistent GPU machine for development, fine-tuning or a model server, at low hourly prices and over MCP.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 65 against 55
- Schema & documentation, 70 against 58

Watch for: No rate limits, 429 guidance or SLA were found in the reviewed documentation, and the terms disclaim availability


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Beam | Thunder Compute | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 65 | Thunder Compute +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 70 | Thunder Compute +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 48 | Beam +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 51 | Thunder Compute +1 |
| 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 | 79 | Beam +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 64 | Beam +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.5 · C** | **56.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Beam | Thunder Compute |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Beam | Thunder Compute |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1` | `https://api.thundercompute.com:8443/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for compute gpu | not published | $0.219 per GB per month |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary service under Thunder Compute's Terms and Conditions. The `tnr` CLI on GitHub is MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 28 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.Thunder-Compute/thunder-compute` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-28 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-28 |
| 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 | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 1.8k stars, 8.5k PyPI/wk | 34 stars |
| 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.

**Thunder Compute.** The hosted MCP server signs in with OAuth and separate read and write scopes, and the REST API has a public OpenAPI 3.1 document with keyless price and availability endpoints. No rate limits, SLA or API changelog were found, instance creation has no idempotency key, and instances cannot be stopped, only deleted.

## 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

### Thunder Compute

1. Call `GET /v2/status` or the `get_availability` tool before creating an instance. Availability can change before launch, and creation fails when a type is sold out.
2. List instances before retrying a failed create, because the call has no idempotency key.
3. Pass `public_key` on create. If omitted, the response carries a generated private key that is returned once.
4. To pause work, create a snapshot, delete the instance and later create a new instance from the snapshot. Snapshot storage keeps billing until deleted.
5. For headless use set `TNR_API_TOKEN` to a token from the console. The MCP server needs a browser sign-in on first connection.

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Beam or Thunder Compute?

Thunder Compute and Beam score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 56.1 (C) and 55.5 (C). Beam leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Can an agent call Beam and Thunder Compute without installing anything?

Yes. Beam has a hosted endpoint at https://app.beam.cloud/api/v1 and Thunder Compute at https://api.thundercompute.com:8443/v1.

### Are Beam and Thunder Compute open source?

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


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Beam or Thunder Compute

- [Baseten vs Beam](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-beam.md)
- [Baseten vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Beam vs Cerebrium](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-cerebrium.md)
- [Beam vs CoreWeave](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-coreweave.md)
- [Beam vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)
- [Beam vs Hyperbolic](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-hyperbolic.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 Nebius AI Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.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)
- [Beam vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-verda.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [CoreWeave vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Hyperbolic vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hyperbolic-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Koyeb vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koyeb-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Lambda Cloud vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Modal vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Nebius AI Cloud vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nebius-ai-cloud-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Northflank vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/northflank-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Replicate Deployments vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/replicate-deploy-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Runpod vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runpod-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Thunder Compute vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/thunder-compute-vs-vast-ai.md)
- [Thunder Compute vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/thunder-compute-vs-verda.md)