# Nebius AI Cloud vs Vast.ai

> Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Vast.ai's 62.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Vast.ai leads on reliability. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Vast.ai's 62.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Vast.ai leads on reliability. Both do compute gpu.

- Nebius AI Cloud: grade B, 67.2/100, rank #240 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nebius-ai-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nebius-ai-cloud.json
- Vast.ai: grade B, 62.6/100, rank #384 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vast-ai.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vast-ai.json

## Which one, for what

### 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 57
- Security & auth, 81 against 72
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 62

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

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

### Vast.ai (B)

Good for: Cost-sensitive training, batch work and self-managed inference where the agent can search listings, set a price cap and tolerate host variance or interruption.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 65 against 57

Watch for: No SLA. The terms say availability is not guaranteed and the service can change without notice


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Nebius AI Cloud | Vast.ai | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 57 | 65 | Vast.ai +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 78 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 57 | Nebius AI Cloud +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 81 | 72 | Nebius AI Cloud +9 |
| 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) | 82 | 81 | Nebius AI Cloud +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 62 | Nebius AI Cloud +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **67.2 · B** | **62.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Nebius AI Cloud | Vast.ai |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nebius | Vast.ai Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.nebius.cloud` | `https://console.vast.ai/api/v0` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for compute gpu | $1.35 per GPU-hour | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Nebius Services Agreement. The API definitions, the Go, Python and JavaScript SDKs and the MCP server on GitHub are MIT | Proprietary service under Vast.ai's Terms of Use Agreement. The `vastai` CLI and Python SDK on GitHub are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-23 | 2025-06-18 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 4.1k npm/wk, 469k PyPI/wk | 223 stars, 33k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Vast.ai.** API keys can be limited by permission category and by resource ID, the REST API has a public OpenAPI 3.1 file, and the CLI ships weekly with a skill file for coding agents. Machines belong to independent hosts, prices move with the market, rate-limit thresholds are unpublished, and there is no SLA or free tier.

## Before you call either

### 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`

### Vast.ai

1. Create a scoped key with `vastai create api-key --permissions` for the agent. A default key has full account access, billing and key management included
2. Pass `--raw` on every CLI command for JSON output, and `-y` on `vastai destroy instance`, which otherwise waits for a confirmation prompt
3. Register an SSH key with `vastai create ssh-key` before creating an instance, or the host is unreachable
4. Destroy instances when finished. A stopped instance still bills storage, and a zero balance without a saved card leads to deletion
5. Back off on HTTP 429 yourself when calling REST directly. The CLI retries 429 three times from 0.15 seconds
6. Filter searches with `verified=true` or the Secure Cloud option for sensitive data, and set a `dph_total` price cap

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Nebius AI Cloud or Vast.ai?

Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Vast.ai's 62.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Vast.ai leads on reliability.

### Do Nebius AI Cloud and Vast.ai need an API key?

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

### Can an agent call Nebius AI Cloud and Vast.ai without installing anything?

Yes. Nebius AI Cloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.nebius.cloud and Vast.ai at https://console.vast.ai/api/v0.


## For agents

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

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