# Northflank vs Together GPU Clusters

> Together GPU Clusters scores 58.1 (C) to Northflank's 54 (C) for gpu compute. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/northflank-vs-together-gpu-clusters
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- 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)
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- 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 Northflank's 54 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Northflank leads on reliability, security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do gpu compute.

- Northflank: grade C, 54/100, rank #925 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/northflank.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/northflank.json
- Together GPU Clusters: grade C, 58.1/100, rank #768 of 1510. 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

### Northflank (C)

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

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 38
- Security & auth, 82 against 68
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20

Watch for: A security incident opened on 30 October 2026, still open on 2 November, told customers to assume all environment variables were decrypted

### 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 81
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 70
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 56

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Northflank loses 15 points for them

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


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Northflank +47

- Northflank (85): Graded on the hosted platform lines. Instatus page at status.northflank.com with per-component uptime and history (20). Five notices from 4 August to 2 November 2026. Workloads failed to start for some users across several regions for 1 hour on 5 August ("partial start up issues", labelled partial outage), addon expose was paused in US - Central for 2 hours 25 minutes on 4 September (maintenance), SSO through WorkOS was degraded for 46 minutes on 25 September, and on 20 October a GCP europe-west2 zone fault reached login and control plane components for part of 6 hours 50 minutes, with workloads unaffected and "the majority of users" unaffected. Each is partial, so minor. The 30 October "Security incident", still open on 2 November, marks the platform components as major outage but describes exposed secrets, not downtime, and the Northflank API component shows 100 per cent uptime for October, so it's scored as a negative event (20). 1,000 API requests an hour by default (15). A 429 past the limit, with `x-ratelimit-remaining` and `x-ratelimit-reset` on every response. No backoff or safe-retry guidance (10 of 15). The pricing page lists a 99.99 per cent uptime SLA and a custom SLA on Enterprise; no SLA document was found (10). Services, jobs and GPU workloads are GA (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 85.
- 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.

### Payments & pricing: Northflank +20

- Northflank (40): No machine payment protocol (0). Per-hour GPU, vCPU and memory prices published without a login (20). The free Sandbox plan says "No card needed", with 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database, up to $20 a month of resources (20). Signup is a browser flow (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.
- Together GPU Clusters (20): No machine payment protocol (0). Per GPU-hour prices for each capacity type and per GiB-month storage published without a login (20). No free trial, and creation needs credit for the full reservation or a minimum on-demand period (0). Sign-up and credit purchase are browser steps (0). 0+20+0+0 = 20.

### Security & auth: Northflank +14

- Northflank (82): Personal tokens and team API tokens issued under API roles with granular permissions and project or cluster restrictions, and the API now documents rotating a key on an API token (30). API roles take per-action permissions and can be restricted to named projects or clusters. No confirmation step for destructive calls found (15). Runs your own containers and returns their output (10). Audit logs with filters since April 2025, enabled for every customer including free users on 31 October 2026 (15). The security page claims SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and ISO 27001, names security@northflank.com and a trust centre, and says penetration tests are planned. No security.txt (404 on 2 November), disclosure policy, bug bounty or advisories found, and the same page says Northflank has never been breached while the 30 October incident is open. That is fireworks-inference's record (SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, a Vanta trust centre, no security.txt, disclosure policy or bounty), so level with it (12). The open incident and the no-breach sentence are counted under negative events, as trigger-dev's breach was, not on this line. 30 + 15 + 10 + 15 + 12 = 82.
- Together GPU Clusters (68): Project-scoped API keys, revocable with optional expiry, read as Together's other listings read the same key model (30). Admin and editor roles with no read-only role. Only admins get the admin kubeconfig, which has cluster-admin rights, and OIDC lets editors use kubectl under RBAC. Deletes run without confirmation when `--non-interactive` is passed (8). The API returns cluster state, not third-party content (10). Invoices itemise reserved, on-demand and storage charges, and no audit log for cluster operations was found (5). security.txt with a HackerOne route, per the 1 November check of the inference listing (15). 30+8+10+5+15 = 68.

### Schema & documentation: Together GPU Clusters +11

- Northflank (81): OpenAPI 3.0 at api.northflank.com/v1/swagger-json with well over 100 paths, plus an HTML view, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 2 November (25). llms.txt and a .md twin for every docs page (10). Operations carry short descriptions and the guides explain jobs against services; few say when not to use an endpoint (12). Enums throughout (token kind, scope, restriction mode) and bounded parameters such as `per_page` 1 to 100 (13). Examples in the guides; the spec documents 200 responses but not error schemas (6). Versioned /v1 and a dated changelog (15).
- 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.

### Transparency & trust: Together GPU Clusters +9

- Northflank (56): Closed service under UK law (15). Terms and privacy policy are both dated 1 March 2021, more than five years old, with no retention periods we could find (10). Both still read Effective Date 1 March 2021 on 2 November. No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0). Regions and bring-your-own-cloud are documented; no subprocessor list found (8).
- 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.

### Maintenance & community: Together GPU Clusters +5

- Northflank (70): The newest changelog digest is dated 24 September 2026, 39 days before the check. The status page's dated updates on 30 and 31 October 2026 announce secret rotation for Postgres, MongoDB and RabbitMQ add-ons and audit logs for all customers, platform changes on the vendor's own page within 30 days (30). Digests come every two months, so one falls in the 90 days from 4 August (24 September, the 23 July digest having left), with the October changes on the status page. Half credit (10). Closed service with a dated changelog and a support address for rate-limit increases (10 of 15). A CLI and JavaScript client on npm and a Python client the docs put at 2.1.0. npm and PyPI couldn't be read on 2 November (15). npm packages not audited (5). 30 + 10 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 70.
- 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.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Northflank | Together GPU Clusters | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 85 | 38 | Northflank +47 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 92 | Together GPU Clusters +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 55 | Together GPU Clusters +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 82 | 68 | Northflank +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Northflank +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 75 | Together GPU Clusters +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 65 | Together GPU Clusters +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -15 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54 · C** | **58.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Northflank | Together GPU Clusters |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Northflank | Together AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.northflank.com/v1` | `https://api.together.ai/v1/compute/clusters` |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | Token | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| 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 | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2026-10-22 |
| Terms last updated | 2021-03-01 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2021-03-01 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 19k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Northflank

- -7.4 on 2 November 2026: pricing, product, new evidence, correction, negative event
- +0.1 on 28 October 2026: new evidence
- -0.5 on 8 October 2026: checklist

### Together GPU Clusters

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Northflank.** Northflank runs services, jobs, databases and GPUs on its cloud or the customer's, with an OpenAPI 3.0 contract, scoped team tokens and a free sandbox that needs no card. On 30 October 2026 it told every customer to assume their environment variables were decrypted, still open on 2 November, while its security page says it has never been breached.

**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

### Northflank

1. Rotate every secret stored in Northflank, including AI provider keys, and check provider billing before trusting existing credentials. The 30 October 2026 incident was still open on 2 November
2. Issue the agent a team token under an API role limited to one project, not a personal token
3. Read `x-ratelimit-remaining` and wait `x-ratelimit-reset` seconds on a 429. The default is 1,000 calls an hour
4. Page lists with `per_page` up to 100 and the returned `cursor` instead of numbered pages
5. Use a job, not a service, for anything that finishes. Services bill until paused or deleted

### 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, Northflank or Together GPU Clusters?

Together GPU Clusters scores 58.1 (C) on agent readiness against Northflank's 54 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Northflank leads on reliability, security & auth and payments & pricing.

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

Yes. Northflank has a hosted endpoint at https://api.northflank.com/v1 and Together GPU Clusters at https://api.together.ai/v1/compute/clusters.


## For agents

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

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