Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Novita AI vs Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) scores 88.7 (AA) on agent readiness against Novita AI's 53.9 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 830 models comparisons

Which one, for what

Novita AI D

Best for Agents that want many open-weight models at per-token prices behind one OpenAI-style key, with keys that can be limited by model, IP and expiry.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No status page or SLA was found on the home page, the docs index or the docs site map. The home page states 99.5% uptime with no supporting document

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) AA

Best for Google Cloud customers who need Gemini with residency, VPC-SC, provisioned throughput and an SLA, or Claude under a Google bill.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 99 against 28
  • Schema & documentation, 94 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 97 against 72
  • Security & auth, 97 against 65
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 91 against 66
  • Transparency & trust, 90 against 57

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The SLA drops from 99.5 to 95 per cent for short-term availability models, Gemini 3.7 and 3.6 Flash among them

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reliability Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +71

Novita AI 28

Hosted reading. No status page was found. None is linked from the home page, the pricing page, the docs introduction, either llms.txt or the docs site map (0), so there is no incident record to read (0). The rate limit page documents five account tiers set by monthly top-ups, from under $50 to $10,000 and over, and limits counted in RPM and TPM per model. The figures per model are drawn by script and were not readable, so this line takes part marks (8 of 15). 429 with RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED or TOKEN_LIMIT_EXCEEDED, advice to throttle and use exponential backoff, and a billing page that says 429, 500, 503 and 504 are not charged. No Retry-After header was found (10 of 15). No SLA was found. The home page states 99.5% uptime, and the terms say availability is not guaranteed (0). Generally available (10). Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November, as the terms bar automated access to the site and docs.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) 99

Google Cloud status dashboard with per-product history (20). Its incident feed, read on 6 November, has no incident naming Vertex Gemini API, Gemini or the Agent Platform in the 90 days. The regional incidents of 20 August, 1 September and 20 October (europe-west2) and the Cloud Storage incident of 8 and 9 October didn't list it among affected products (30). Standard PayGo publishes usage tiers by 30-day spend with baseline throughput, 2,000,000 to 50,000,000 tokens a minute for Flash models and 500,000 to 10,000,000 for Pro, plus quota tables for other methods (15). A 429 page says to use the global endpoint and truncated exponential backoff, and a retry-strategy page (15). SLA of 99.5 per cent a month on generateContent and streamGenerateContent, 95 per cent for short-term availability models, and a latency SLO on Provisioned Throughput. The 429 page says pay-as-you-go 429s don't count toward the SLA error rate (10). Gemini 4 Argon reached GA on 13 October and Gemini 3.8 Flash moved to the 12-month tier, and the v1 API, 3.5 Flash-Lite and Claude Opus 5.5 are GA, but express mode was Preview at the 6 October check (9 of 10, up from 8). Up from 98 on 6 October.

Transparency & trust Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +33

Novita AI 57

Closed service. The terms set Delaware law and arbitration but name the party only as Novita AI, with no corporate form or address. The skill and the MCP server are MIT (10 of 30). The terms state zero data retention and no training by default, and the privacy policy lists retention periods (account data for the life of the account plus 7 years, technical data 2 years). The privacy policy says it does not cover content processed for customers and points to customer agreements. No DPA was found (16 of 30). Retirement notices in the changelog carry a UTC time and a replacement. The terms reserve the right to discontinue any service without notice (12 of 20). The privacy policy names categories of recipients only and transfers that include the United States. No sub-processor list was found (4 of 20). Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November, as the terms bar automated access to the site and docs.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) 90

Closed service under the Google Cloud terms, with the Gen AI SDKs under Apache-2.0 and a public discovery document (18, as for Bedrock's open service models). The zero data retention and abuse monitoring pages agree with the Cloud terms and give periods for each case, 24 hours in memory, up to 90 days for flagged prompts, 30 days for Advanced AI models, 3 days for Search grounding logs and 30 days for Maps grounding, and say which can't be switched off (27 of 30). A dated model versions table with release and retirement dates and a stated 12-month or 45-day policy, but on 6 November it still listed Gemini 2.5 Pro, Flash and Flash-Lite as available with a 20 October 2026 retirement date and left them out of the retired table (18 of 20, down from 20). The Cloud subprocessor list with locations, per the 1 October vertex-ai-tuning check, regional and multi-region endpoints, and per-model ML processing locations on the partner model cards (20).

Schema & documentation Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +32

Novita AI 62

Model reading. The OpenAPI 3.1.0 document at /.well-known/openapi.json is a 964-byte discovery file with four paths and no schemas, and the API reference is written by hand (6 of 25). llms.txt on both hosts, a Markdown copy of every docs page and an llms-full.txt (10). Guides for function calling, structured output, prompt caching, batch and reasoning say what each is for, and the chat reference describes 136 request and response fields (14 of 20). Fields are typed with required flags and defaults. Enums and ranges are stated in prose only (10 of 15). Curl and Python examples on each guide, error tables by product, a common errors guide and a table of which statuses are billed. The FAQ says json_schema and top_logprobs are unsupported while the reference and a guide document both (10 of 15). A dated changelog with 84 entries since February 2024. The API has no version scheme beyond /v1 (12 of 15). Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November, as the terms bar automated access to the site and docs.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) 94

Model reading. Keyless discovery document for the Agent Platform API v1, revision 20260930, with 1,128 methods and 1,493 schemas (25). No llms.txt, but every docs page answers as Markdown at .md.txt, counted as for vertex-ai-tuning (10). Model cards give limits, capabilities and retirement dates, and the 3.8 Flash card says when to use 3.7 Flash instead, but the docs mix the Vertex AI and Agent Platform names, and the OpenAI page tells new users to call the Gemini Developer API instead (16 of 20). Structured output with response_schema and response_mime_type: application/json always follows the schema per the docs, and complex schemas fail with a 400 (15). Examples on every page and a 429 guide, but we found no full error code list for generateContent (13 of 15). Versioned v1 and v1beta1 APIs and release notes with entries on most working days, newest 5 November 2026 (15).

Security & auth Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +32

Novita AI 65

Model reading. Bearer keys with the sk_ prefix, shown once, up to 10 an account, with an expiry of 24 hours, 30 days, 90 days or none fixed at creation, deletable in the console, and a per-key model access policy and source IP allowlist that can be set by API. OAuth with PKCE and the scopes api and balance:read is described in auth.md, with no token revocation endpoint. No documented way to send a key in a URL was found (26 of 30). The terms, re-read on 4 November and still updated 5 August 2026, say content is not used to train Novita's models or improve the services by default (17 of 20). The terms state zero data retention, with exceptions for law and for what is necessary to run or support the service, and allow automated safety screening. Batch input files are kept for 15 days (11 of 15). Billing can be queried per key, and budget, monitoring and metrics pages are listed in the docs index and were not read (7 of 15). The trust centre at trust.novita.ai is drawn by script and was not read. /.well-known/security.txt returns 404, and no disclosure policy or bug bounty was found (4 of 20). The key, retention and trust-centre readings are per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) 97

Model reading. OAuth 2.0 with IAM roles and service accounts, which the docs recommend for production, with API keys for testing. No key in a query string found in the docs we read (30). The training restriction in the Service Specific Terms says Google won't use customer data to train or fine-tune any model without permission, GA and pre-GA alike (20). Default in-memory caching for 24 hours that can be disabled, flagged prompts logged up to 90 days unless an abuse-monitoring exception is granted or the customer has a Cloud Master Agreement, the Interactions API storing by default, and Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 requiring 30-day retention shared with Anthropic (12 of 15, a judgement call matching the Fable exception on the Anthropic and Bedrock listings). Cloud Audit Logs, with Data Access logs off until enabled, and optional request-response logging to BigQuery (15). google.com security.txt valid to 2030-04-01, the Google VRP, and Generative AI on the platform in ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018 and SOC 1, 2 and 3 scope per the 1 October services-in-scope check for vertex-ai-tuning, not re-read on 6 October (20).

Agent ergonomics Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +25

Novita AI 72

Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). tools with a strict flag and a worked example. The list of models that support it is drawn by script, and tool_choice is absent from the chat reference (13 of 20). response_format takes json_object and json_schema with strict in the reference, while the FAQ says only json_object works (9 of 15). Prompt caching is automatic on supported models, cache-read prices are on the pricing page and cached_tokens is returned in usage (12 of 15). Context of 1M tokens on DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3 and Kimi K3 per the pricing page. Output caps were not read (12 of 15). OpenAI-style files and batches with a 24-hour window, one model per file and an introductory 50 per cent discount (10). The OpenAI client works with a changed base URL. Both vendor SDK repositories are archived (5 of 10). Named error codes, a 429 that separates request and token limits, and a trace_id for support (11 of 15). Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November, as the terms bar automated access to the site and docs.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) 97

Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Function calling with FunctionCallingConfig mode ANY and allowedFunctionNames to force a named tool (20). Schema-guaranteed JSON output (15). Implicit and explicit context caching, cached input at 0.1x, $0.075 per million on 3.8 Flash through 31 December (15). 1,048,576-token context on 3.8 Flash, a unified 1,048,576-token input and output limit on Gemini 4 Argon, and 1,000,000 on Claude Opus 5.5 (15). Flex/Batch at half price on Gemini (10). Gen AI SDKs for Python and JavaScript among others, and the OpenAI libraries work with Google Cloud auth (10). 429 handling documented per quota framework, with standard Google status codes elsewhere (12 of 15).

Maintenance & community Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +25

Novita AI 66

Model reading. Changelog entries per the 27 October reading of each entry page, not re-read on 4 November because Novita's terms bar automated access to the site and its linked channels. The newest entry is dated 22 October 2026 (30). Retirement notices carry a UTC time and a replacement, with notice of 1 day (22 October for xiaomimimo/mimo-v2.5 at 00:00 UTC on 23 October) to 29 days (1 September for multimodal models on 30 September). No written notice period was found (6 of 12). Nine dated entries in the 90 days from 6 August (1, 8, 18, 20, 23 and 28 September, 15, 19 and 22 October), each read on its own page (8 of 8). A dated changelog, a Discord server and a support address per the 9 October check (12 of 15). novitalabs/python-sdk and novitalabs/javascript-sdk are archived, unchanged since 8 November 2024 and 4 March 2025, and issue replies were not examined (2 of 10). The docs rely on the OpenAI client, the SDK page still named the two archived packages on 9 October, and the skill repository is unchanged since 24 September 2026 (5 of 15). The JavaScript SDK repository has a publish workflow only and the Python one has none (3 of 10). 30 + 6 + 8 + 12 + 2 + 5 + 3 = 66.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) 91

Model reading. Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash GA on 5 November, Grok 4.7 GA on 27 October, Gemini 4 Argon GA on 13 October and Claude Haiku 5.5 on 7 October 2026 (30). Stable models stay at least 12 months, and since 6 October Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini 3.8 Flash are in that tier, while 3.7 and 3.6 Flash remain short-term with at least 45 days' notice once a date is set (10 of 12, up from 8). Gemini 2.5 Pro, Flash and Flash-Lite were due to retire on 20 October, three models on one date after more than 12 months, with replacements named. We didn't check partner model retirements (6 of 8, down from 8). Dated release notes on most working days, newest 5 November, and Cloud Customer Care (15). python-genai replies not sampled this run (5 of 10). Current SDKs, google-genai 3.0.0 on 6 November and @google/genai 3.0.0, and google-cloud-aiplatform 2.7.0 on 28 October 2026 (15). Supported runtimes stated, Python 3.10 or later and Node 20 or later, per the 6 October check (10). Unchanged at 91.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNovita AIVertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)Edge
Reliability16%202899Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +71
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26294Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.27297Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +25
Security & auth14%17.56597Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +32
Payments & pricing10%12.53540Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86691Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +25
Transparency & trust7%8.85790Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +33
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 53.9/100AA 88.7/100

Facts side by side

FactNovita AIVertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)
KindModel APIModel API
VendorNovita AIGoogle Cloud
Hosted endpointhttps://api.novita.ai/openaihttps://aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the Novita AI Terms of Service. The agent skill and the MCP server are MITProprietary service under the Google Cloud Platform terms. Partner models carry their providers' terms. The Google Gen AI SDKs are Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-222026-11-05
Terms last updated2026-08-052026-09-02
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-132026-10-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity6 stars, 1.4k npm/wk20.9M PyPI/wk

What the same task costs

TaskNovita AIVertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)
Research a product and write a sourced reportdeepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash on Novita AI, gemini-3.1-pro-preview on Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)$0.18$22.03
Build a small four-page websitedeepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash on Novita AI, gemini-3.1-pro-preview on Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)$0.09$5.09
Find and fix a bug in a large codebasedeepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash on Novita AI, gemini-3.1-pro-preview on Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)$0.02$1.09

Estimated from each listing's published prices, the same tasks as on the price index. Plans, minimums and free allowances aren't counted.

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Novita AI

Per-token prices for about 140 language models are public, and each key can carry an expiry, a model allowlist and a source IP allowlist. No status page, SLA or security.txt was found, the per-model rate limit figures are drawn by script, and both vendor SDK repositories are archived while the docs still point to them.

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)

Gemini, Claude and open models through one Google Cloud API with IAM, regional endpoints, schema-guaranteed JSON and a 99.5 per cent SLA, and no Vertex incident on the Cloud status page in the 90 days to 6 November 2026. Gemini 4 Argon and 3.8 Flash have 12-month availability, but short-term Flash models get a 95 per cent SLA.

Before you call either

Novita AI

  1. Set the OpenAI client base URL to https://api.novita.ai/openai and send the key as Authorization: Bearer. Keys start with sk_
  2. Do not close a connection to stop generation. A request that reached the model is billed in full under status 499, so cap output with max_tokens
  3. On 429, check whether the code is RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED or TOKEN_LIMIT_EXCEEDED and back off exponentially. No Retry-After header is documented
  4. Read the changelog for retirement notices before pinning a model id. One retirement in October 2026 came with 11 days' notice
  5. Ask the account owner for a key with an expiry, a model access policy and an IP allowlist. Keys are created and deleted only in the console

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)

  1. Call the global location on aiplatform.googleapis.com unless data residency requires a Region. The 429 guide says it spreads load and reduces errors
  2. Back off exponentially on 429 Resource exhausted. On Standard PayGo it means shared capacity is busy, not a fixed quota
  3. Send response_schema with response_mime_type: application/json. JSON mode alone doesn't guarantee valid output
  4. Set store to false on Interactions API calls. It defaults to true and keeps prompts and responses
  5. Pin gemini-4-argon or gemini-3.8-flash, both in the 12-month tier, rather than 3.7 or 3.6 Flash, which retire on 28 January 2027 and 19 November 2026

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Novita AI or Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)?

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) scores 88.7 (AA) on agent readiness against Novita AI's 53.9 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Do Novita AI and Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) need an API key?

Novita AI needs an API key. Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Novita AI and Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) without installing anything?

Yes. Novita AI has a hosted endpoint at https://api.novita.ai/openai and Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) at https://aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1.

Other comparisons with Novita AI or Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)

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