# Lambda Cloud vs Together GPU Clusters

> Together GPU Clusters scores 58.1 (C) to Lambda Cloud's 52.9 (D) for gpu compute. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-together-gpu-clusters
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-together-gpu-clusters.md (~4,750 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Together GPU Clusters scores 58.1 (C) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 52.9 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Lambda Cloud leads on reliability and agent ergonomics. Both do gpu compute.

- Lambda Cloud: grade D, 52.9/100, rank #963 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lambda.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lambda.json
- Together GPU Clusters: grade C, 58.1/100, rank #764 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/together-gpu-clusters.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/together-gpu-clusters.json
- Best GPU and serverless compute for AI workloads: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/gpu-compute/index.md
- All 231 gpu compute comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpu-compute/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Lambda Cloud (D)

Good for: Agents or pipelines that need a whole GPU machine with SSH for hours, such as training or batch jobs, and will manage the lifecycle themselves.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 55 against 38
- Agent ergonomics, 63 against 55

Watch for: No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated

### Together GPU Clusters (C)

Good for: Training, fine-tuning and batch jobs that need several 8-GPU nodes with InfiniBand, run by a pipeline that creates and deletes clusters.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 92 against 69
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 5
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 60

Watch for: Provisioning takes 10 minutes to an hour, and a cluster can't be paused or scaled to zero


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Together GPU Clusters +70

- Lambda Cloud (5): No changelog or release notes found, and the docs pages carry no dates, so we couldn't date the last API change. The spec still reads 1.10.0 although it gained identity, group, role and workspace paths since 1 October (0). No dated changes in the last 90 days found (0). Closed service with a status page that posts updates and a support-ticket API, but no changelog (5 of 15). No official SDK (0). No packages to assess (0). 0 + 0 + 5 + 0 + 0 = 5.
- Together GPU Clusters (75): Closed service. The newest cluster change is CLI and SDK 3.0 on 22 October 2026, 15 days before this check (30). Dated cluster entries in the 90 days from 8 August include 12, 18, 19, 24, 27 and 28 August, 10 September and 22 October (20). Dated changelog, a support portal and Discord, with responsiveness not tested (8). Python SDK 3.1 and TypeScript SDK 1.0 are current and cover clusters (15). SDK CI and dependencies weren't audited (2). 30+20+8+15+2 = 75.

### Schema & documentation: Together GPU Clusters +23

- Lambda Cloud (69): OpenAPI 3.1 spec, version 1.10.0, linked from the API reference as a download, now 48 paths including identities, groups, roles and workspaces (25). No llms.txt (docs.lambda.com/llms.txt returns 404) and no Markdown twins (0). Operations are described with preconditions, for example a filesystem must be unmounted before deletion, but few say when not to call them (14). Required fields are marked; instance type names and statuses are plain strings rather than enums (10). Examples on requests and responses, and 400, 401, 403, 404, 409, 429 and 503 documented with a `code`, `message` and `suggestion` (15). The spec is versioned and flags `/file-systems` as deprecated, but there's no public changelog or release notes, and the identity and role paths arrived without a version change (5). 25 + 0 + 14 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 69.
- Together GPU Clusters (92): Public OpenAPI 3.1 for /v1/compute/clusters and shared volumes, MIT, embedded in every reference page (25). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page (10). The docs say when to choose Kubernetes or Slurm and each capacity type, and the management page carries instructions for agents on reporting live availability and prices (18). Enums for cluster type, billing type, GPU type and status, required fields marked (13). CLI, Python, TypeScript and console steps on each task, with 402 and 403 cases documented, though no error catalogue for the clusters API (11). Versioned SDKs and a dated changelog with cluster entries (15). 25+10+18+13+11+15 = 92.

### Reliability: Lambda Cloud +17

- Lambda Cloud (55): incident.io page at status.lambda.ai with components (Cloud API, Network, Virtual Machines, Storage and others) and an RSS feed (20). The feed holds only its ten latest items, back to updates of 17 August 2026, and the page lists only incidents linked to components, so 6 to 17 August is partly unread. What is readable since 6 August touches one region or one function each, so partial and minor by this run's reading: us-south-2 instances unreachable 15 to 17 August, us-midwest-2 networking and performance (opened 3 August, resolved 25 August), API key viewing and creation 10 September, us-south-3 resources 23 September, us-west-1 launches 12 October and us-east-3 launches for 1 hour 10 minutes on 28 October; the 31 October DNS fault hit the lambda.ai website, not the API. The 27 July and 29 to 30 July majors have left the window, but a partly unread window gives no credit, so the line keeps its recorded 0. Rate limits published, one request a second and one launch every 12 seconds (15). The spec's `global/rate-limited` error says to wait for the Retry-After interval and retry, with no idempotency key or safe-retry guidance for launch (10). No SLA found (0). The Cloud API is GA (10). 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 55.
- Together GPU Clusters (38): Read with the hosted lines. status.together.ai lists the website, the playground and serverless models with no component for GPU clusters, and a vendor page with no component for the product takes 15 in this run, as for Together's Code Sandbox and fine-tuning listings (15). No incident history for clusters can be read (5). No rate limits for the clusters API found (0). Together's docs give 429 and 503 backoff guidance for its APIs, per the inference listing's 1 November check, and the CLI has `--non-interactive` and `--json` for scripted retries, but creation has no idempotency key (8). No SLA for clusters found; the published 99% commitment covers provisioned inference throughput only (0). Generally available since 9 September 2025 and out of the CLI's beta paths since 22 October 2026, with preemptible nodes in preview (10). 15+5+0+8+0+10 = 38.

### Agent ergonomics: Lambda Cloud +8

- Lambda Cloud (63): Responses wrap a `data` payload and lists use `page_token`; no field selection (15). Cursor pagination, and audit events filter by start, end and resource type (18). Errors carry a stable `code`, a `suggestion` and a `request_id`, and the docs tell clients to branch on `code` (20). No idempotency keys and nothing on safe retries for launch; 409 signals conflicts (5). Launch needs region, instance type and SSH key names, and there's no official SDK (5). 15 + 18 + 20 + 5 + 5 = 63.
- Together GPU Clusters (55): Cluster objects are compact, and `--json` gives machine-readable output, but list calls take no field selection (15). No pagination or filters on the clusters list (8). 402 and 403 with readable messages such as "Insufficient credits for cluster creation", and troubleshooting for common failures (12). Status polling until Ready is documented and deletes run non-interactively, but there is no idempotency key on creation and a duplicate create bills a second cluster (8). Official Python and TypeScript SDKs and a CLI, though a create takes GPU type, region, driver and CUDA versions, cluster type and billing type (12). 15+8+12+8+12 = 55.

### Transparency & trust: Together GPU Clusters +5

- Lambda Cloud (60): Closed service under California terms dated August 2025 (15). A privacy policy dated 1 January 2026 exists, but we found no retention period for instance disks or filesystems after termination, and the trust portal says none either (10). One dated deprecation in the spec (`/file-systems` in favour of `/filesystems`, not scheduled for removal) and no deprecation policy (8). The trust portal names its subprocessors (Cloudflare, Oracle) and the docs name each region (15). 15 + 10 + 8 + 15 = 48.
- Together GPU Clusters (65): Closed service under Together's terms, with Apache-2.0 SDKs, which don't raise the line for a closed API (15). The privacy policy's data table covers GPU clusters, per the 4 November Code Sandbox check, and the billing page states when volumes are deleted after credit runs out, with no retention period for data on deleted clusters (15). The 3.0 breaking change came with a migration guide on the day, and reservations carry dated end-of-term emails, with no notice period for API changes found (8). Regions are listed through the API and US regions appear in examples; subprocessors and data locations for clusters were not established (8). 15+15+8+8 = 46.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Lambda Cloud | Together GPU Clusters | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 38 | Lambda Cloud +17 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 92 | Together GPU Clusters +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 55 | Lambda Cloud +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 68 | Lambda Cloud +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 5 | 75 | Together GPU Clusters +70 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 65 | Together GPU Clusters +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **52.9 · D** | **58.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Lambda Cloud | Together GPU Clusters |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Lambda | Together AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1` | `https://api.together.ai/v1/compute/clusters` |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for gpu compute | $9.86 per GPU-hour | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Proprietary service under Together's terms of service. The Python SDK and CLI are Apache-2.0 and the OpenAPI document is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-22 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-08-01 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-01-01 | no date given |
| 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 | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Lambda Cloud

- +2.8 on 4 November 2026: product, new evidence
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -0.1 on 8 October 2026: checklist

### Together GPU Clusters

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Lambda Cloud.** H100 SXM at $3.99 and B200 at $6.69 an hour with per-minute billing. No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated.

**Together GPU Clusters.** Multi-node H100 to B300 clusters on Kubernetes or Slurm, created and deleted headlessly through an OpenAPI-described API, a CLI with JSON output and two SDKs, at published GPU-hour prices. Clusters take 10 minutes to an hour to provision, can't be paused, and have no status component, SLA or idempotent create.

## Before you call either

### Lambda Cloud

1. Call `GET /instance-types` first and read `regions_with_capacity_available` before trying to launch
2. Space launch calls 12 seconds apart; a sixth in a minute returns 429 with `global/rate-limited`, so wait for the Retry-After interval
3. Branch on the error `code`, not the `message` or `suggestion`, which Lambda says may change
4. List instances before retrying a failed launch, since there's no idempotency key and a retry can start a second machine
5. Terminate the instance in a `finally` block; billing runs by the minute until you do
6. Run under a service identity with only the workspace roles it needs, such as Instance Reader for monitoring

### Together GPU Clusters

1. Use `tg clusters`, not `tg beta clusters`, which stopped working with CLI 3.0 on 22 October 2026
2. Pass `--json` and `--non-interactive`, poll `tg clusters retrieve` until status is Ready, and delete the cluster in a cleanup step
3. Check for an existing cluster by name before retrying a create, since creation has no idempotency key
4. Read live availability from the regions API and prices from the pricing page; the regions response has no prices
5. Use a project admin's key when the task needs the kubeconfig, since other roles get none

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Lambda Cloud or Together GPU Clusters?

Together GPU Clusters scores 58.1 (C) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 52.9 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Lambda Cloud leads on reliability and agent ergonomics.

### Do Lambda Cloud and Together GPU Clusters need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Lambda Cloud and Together GPU Clusters without installing anything?

Yes. Lambda Cloud has a hosted endpoint at https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1 and Together GPU Clusters at https://api.together.ai/v1/compute/clusters.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Lambda Cloud or Together GPU Clusters

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

---

Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp