# Crusoe Cloud vs Nebius AI Cloud

> Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) to Crusoe Cloud's 63.4 (B) for gpu compute. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-nebius-ai-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.md (~3,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
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- 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: 2026-10-09

Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Crusoe Cloud's 63.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Crusoe Cloud leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do gpu compute.

- Crusoe Cloud: grade B, 63.4/100, rank #396 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crusoe-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crusoe-cloud.json
- Nebius AI Cloud: grade B, 67.2/100, rank #259 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nebius-ai-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nebius-ai-cloud.json
- Best GPU and serverless compute for AI workloads: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/gpu-compute/index.md
- All 167 gpu compute comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpu-compute/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Crusoe Cloud (B)

Good for: Teams that want whole GPU machines or clusters with managed Kubernetes or Slurm in the US, Iceland or Norway, under an SLA, and are content to manage lifecycles themselves.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 66 against 57
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

Watch for: No idempotency key or safe-retry guidance was found for create and delete calls, which return asynchronous operations to poll.

### Nebius AI Cloud (B)

Good for: Teams that want whole GPU VMs or InfiniBand clusters in Europe, the UK, Israel or the US with IAM, Terraform and an SLA, and are content to manage endpoint lifecycles themselves.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 77 against 45
- Security & auth, 81 against 74
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 76

Watch for: Status page lists 14 incidents marked major between 14 July and 8 October 2026, including about 21 hours of partial degradation in us-central1 on 19 August


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crusoe Cloud | Nebius AI Cloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 66 | 57 | Crusoe Cloud +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 78 | Crusoe Cloud +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 45 | 77 | Nebius AI Cloud +32 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 74 | 81 | Nebius AI Cloud +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Crusoe Cloud +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 82 | Nebius AI Cloud +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 77 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.4 · B** | **67.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crusoe Cloud | Nebius AI Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Crusoe | Nebius |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1` | `https://api.nebius.cloud` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for gpu compute | not published | $1.35 per GPU-hour |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Crusoe Cloud Platform Terms of Service. The Go client and the MCP server package are MIT. The CLI ships as binaries, and no licence file was found in the Terraform provider repository | Proprietary service under the Nebius Services Agreement. The API definitions, the Go, Python and JavaScript SDKs and the MCP server on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 41 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-09-28 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-09-23 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | 7 npm/wk | 4.1k npm/wk, 469k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Crusoe Cloud.** The v1 REST API has a published OpenAPI description, Markdown docs, HMAC-signed keys, reader roles and a 90-day audit log, with on-demand GPU prices public. No idempotency keys or control-plane rate limits were found, spot and B200 prices go through sales, and a storage outage in eu-norway1 lasted about four hours on 29 September 2026.

**Nebius AI Cloud.** One API definition generates the REST and gRPC interfaces, the CLI, Terraform provider and three SDKs, with a 602-operation OpenAPI document, `X-Idempotency-Key` and role-scoped service accounts. The status page lists 14 major incidents between 14 July and 8 October 2026, no request rate limits were found, and signup needs a browser and a card.

## Before you call either

### Crusoe Cloud

1. Sign every request. Build the payload from path, sorted query string, verb and `X-Crusoe-Timestamp`, HMAC-SHA256 it with the base64url-decoded secret, and send `Authorization: Bearer 1.0:<access_key_id>:<signature>`.
2. Use `https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1`. Some docs pages and the MCP server still name `api.crusoecloud.com` and `/v1alpha5`.
3. Creates, updates and deletes return an operation. Poll the matching operations endpoint for `state`, and list existing resources by name before retrying a create, because no idempotency key was found.
4. Managed AI uses separate Intelligence API keys and hosts, `api.inference.crusoecloud.com` for OpenAI-compatible calls and `api.intelligence.crusoecloud.com` for files and fine-tuning jobs.
5. Delete a VM and its disks to stop charges. A stopped on-demand VM is not billed for compute, but its 128 GB OS disk still bills at $0.08 a GiB-month.

### Nebius AI Cloud

1. Use a service account with an authorised key, then exchange a five-minute RS256 JWT at `https://auth.eu.nebius.com/oauth2/token/exchange` for a 12-hour Bearer token
2. Send `X-Idempotency-Key` with a random UUID on every create, update and delete, since a 504 can follow a call that succeeded
3. Poll the returned operation (`/ai/v1/endpoints/operations/{id}`) until `status` is set; concurrent operations on one resource are not supported
4. Stop or delete endpoints when idle. A stopped endpoint bills nothing, a stopped Devlab or VM still bills for its disk
5. Check region support first. Serverless AI is absent from `eu-south1` and `us-north1`, and each GPU platform exists in one to four regions
6. Run the beta `nebius/mcp-server` with safe mode on (the default); `nebius_cli_execute` can run any CLI command when `SAFE_MODE=false`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Crusoe Cloud or Nebius AI Cloud?

Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Crusoe Cloud's 63.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Crusoe Cloud leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

### Do Crusoe Cloud and Nebius AI Cloud need an API key?

Crusoe Cloud needs an API key. Nebius AI Cloud takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Crusoe Cloud and Nebius AI Cloud without installing anything?

Yes. Crusoe Cloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1 and Nebius AI Cloud at https://api.nebius.cloud.


## For agents

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

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