# Crusoe Cloud vs Northflank

> Crusoe Cloud scores 63.4 (B) to Northflank's 61.3 (C) for gpu compute. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-northflank
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-northflank.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-northflank.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-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: 2026-10-09

Crusoe Cloud scores 63.4 (B) on agent readiness against Northflank's 61.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. 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
- Northflank: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #470 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/northflank.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/northflank.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:
- Maintenance & community, 76 against 65
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 55

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

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

### Northflank (C)

Good for: Teams that want GPUs next to their services and databases on one platform, or inside their own cloud account.

Watch for: No scale to zero for services; minimum instances must be at least 1


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crusoe Cloud | Northflank | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 66 | 65 | Crusoe Cloud +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 81 | Northflank +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 45 | 48 | Northflank +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 74 | 75 | Northflank +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 30 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 65 | Crusoe Cloud +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 55 | Crusoe Cloud +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.4 · B** | **61.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crusoe Cloud | Northflank |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Crusoe | Northflank |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1` | `https://api.northflank.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | Token |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| 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 | none |
| Tools exposed | 41 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-09-24 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2021-03-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2021-03-01 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | 7 npm/wk | 19k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## 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.

**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

### 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.

### 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

## Questions

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

Crusoe Cloud scores 63.4 (B) on agent readiness against Northflank's 61.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories.

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

Yes. Crusoe Cloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloud.crusoe.ai/v1 and Northflank at https://api.northflank.com/v1.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Crusoe Cloud or Northflank

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