Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

SambaCloud vs Tencent Cloud TokenHub

SambaCloud scores 66.4 (B) on agent readiness against Tencent Cloud TokenHub's 59.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Tencent Cloud TokenHub leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 529 models comparisons

Which one, for what

SambaCloud B

Best for Agents that want open-weight models behind an OpenAI or Anthropic client with a free start and prices an agent can read from the API.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 46
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 73
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 54

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Production models get a notice of two to three weeks, and 13 model ids were removed between 9 March and 9 June 2026

Tencent Cloud TokenHub C

Best for Teams in or near Tencent Cloud that want one key and bill for Tencent's Hy models and Chinese open-weight models (DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, Qwen, MiMo) with per-key limits and CNY billing.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 67
  • Security & auth, 71 against 58

Watch for

Sign-up needs a Tencent Cloud account with real-name verification. The international site answered with a bot check, so access from outside China was not established

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 SambaCloud +39

SambaCloud 85

Hosted reading. Status page at status.sambanova.ai on Statuspage, with components for the API gateway, the Playground and each model (20). The incident feed lists 25 incidents since launch, the latest an 8-minute Playground login fault on 25 June 2026, so nothing is posted for the last 90 days (30). Limits published per model and tier, 20 requests a minute and 20 a day on the free tier, 60 and 12,000 on the Developer tier (15). x-ratelimit-* headers on every response, the error table says to retry queue_full after a delay, and the SDKs retry 429 and server errors twice with backoff. No Retry-After header was found in the docs or the OpenAPI document (10 of 15). No SLA found on the legal page or in the terms (0). Three production models are generally available, three are previews (10).

Tencent Cloud TokenHub 46

Hosted reading. No public status page was found. status.cloud.tencent.com did not answer and the Tencent Cloud health dashboard documentation answered with a bot check (0). With no page there is no incident record to read (5 of 30). The announcements carry one incident, DeepSeek's directly supplied models unavailable from 9:06 to 13:04 Beijing time on 15 October 2026 after a fault at DeepSeek, compensated with vouchers. Rate limits are per model, shown in the console and returned by DescribeModelQuota. The public docs give numbers only for batch jobs (20 created a minute, 10 active), image models (5 concurrent) and DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro (2,500 and 500 concurrent), with the rules for self-serve increases (8 of 15). Six 429 codes separate RPM, TPM, TPD, concurrency and upstream capacity, 429s may carry Retry-After and the docs advise exponential backoff. No idempotency guidance, though inference calls are not writes (13 of 15). The TokenHub SLA promises 99.5% monthly availability with vouchers of 10, 25 or 50 per cent of the month's fee. It excludes free use and third-party deployed models such as DeepSeek's directly supplied ones (10). Generally available since 7 April 2026, with some models marked preview (10).

Agent ergonomics Tencent Cloud TokenHub +16

SambaCloud 67

Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Function calling with tool_choice to force a function, on six listed models, and a July 2026 fix for tool calls that were buffered when streaming (17 of 20). json_object and json_schema output, best effort only, with a known failure on DeepSeek-V3.2 recorded in July 2026 (8 of 15). Automatic prompt caching on the MiniMax models only, with cached input on MiniMax-M3 at a tenth of the input price, a 4,096-token minimum and no guaranteed persistence (10 of 15). 131,072-token context on four of six models, 1M on the MiniMax-M3 preview, and output capped at 7,168 tokens on DeepSeek and 3,072 on Llama 3.3 70B (8 of 15). No batch API found in the docs index or the OpenAPI document (0 of 10). Official SDKs for Python and TypeScript, and the OpenAI and Anthropic clients work with a changed base URL (10). Errors carry type, param, code and request_id (14 of 15).

Tencent Cloud TokenHub 83

Router, read on the model lines. Function calling is marked on most chat models in the model list, with behaviour depending on the model routed (14 of 20). Structured output is marked per model and missing on the MiniMax and Qwen models, and an unsupported response_format returns code 400006 (12 of 15). Cache-hit prices are published per model, Kimi K3.1 Pro lists five-minute and one-hour cache writes, and a guide covers prompt_cache_key and the X-Session-ID header for instance affinity (14 of 15). Most listed chat models have contexts of one million tokens, a judgement call since a router has no default model (15). Batch at half price covers only Hy3 and Hy4 preview, reads and writes JSONL in the customer's own COS bucket and is documented for the Guangzhou endpoint (5 of 10). No TokenHub inference SDK. The OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs work with a changed base URL, and Tencent Cloud SDK 3.0 and the thcli CLI cover the control plane (8 of 10). Errors return a code, English and Chinese messages, the source, the upstream code and status and a request ID, and stream errors arrive as SSE error frames (15 of 15).

Security & auth Tencent Cloud TokenHub +13

SambaCloud 58

Model reading. Bearer keys from the console, up to 25 per user and shown once. No scopes, project limits or rotation guidance were found, and the key travels in a header, never in the URL (18 of 30). The terms let SambaNova access, store and process Customer Content solely to supply the service and for no other purposes, which rules out training without naming it (18 of 20). No retention period is published. The product page says SambaCloud never sees or collects prompts, while the terms grant a right to store content and to use query logs (7 of 15). The console has a Usage page. No request logs or audit log were found in the docs (5 of 15). The trust centre states SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001. No security.txt, disclosure policy or bug bounty was found, and the SDK's SECURITY.md sends service reports to a general address (10 of 20).

Tencent Cloud TokenHub 71

Router, read on the model lines. Bearer keys can be limited to chosen models and inference services, up to 200 source IP ranges and daily, monthly or total token quotas, can be disabled or deleted, and can be created in code through CreateApiKey with signed Tencent Cloud credentials. Keys are long-lived with no expiry setting or built-in rotation (26 of 30). Clause 2.17 of the terms says inputs are not used to train Tencent Cloud's own models, and the FAQ says data is not used for training. Inputs to third-party deployed models (DeepSeek's directly supplied ones) go to DeepSeek under its terms (14 of 20). Clause 2.14 keeps data only as long as the service needs, with no periods stated. When a customer asks for generated content without AI labels, Tencent Cloud keeps logs of who received it for at least six months. No zero-retention option was found (7 of 15). Per-call audit logs (request ID, key, client IP, status, tokens, latency) and optional full call logs go to the customer's CLS, billed separately, with usage by key and a monitoring dashboard (14 of 15). No security.txt on cloud.tencent.com, www.tencent.com or tokenhub.tencentmaas.com (404). Tencent's bug bounty through TSRC lists Tencent Cloud in scope. No certification for TokenHub was checked (10 of 20).

Transparency & trust SambaCloud +9

SambaCloud 63

Closed service with clear terms that name the entity and the governing law, and Apache-2.0 SDKs and OpenAPI document (15). The privacy policy is dated 27 May 2023 and does not name SambaCloud or API inputs, no DPA or retention period is published, and the product page's claim that prompts are never seen or collected sits beside terms that allow storing content and using query logs (10 of 30). A deprecations page with notice and removal dates back to April 2025, though it has no entry for Mistral Large 3 or MiniMax-M2.7 (14 of 20). The terms name Stripe as payment processor and the privacy policy names regions in general terms. No sub-processor list or data location for inference was found (5 of 20).

Tencent Cloud TokenHub 54

Closed service under the TokenHub Terms of Service (effective 14 September 2026), the SLA (23 April 2026), a special note on third-party deployed models and the Tencent Cloud Service Agreement, naming Tencent Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd. The CLI is Apache-2.0 (18 of 30). The terms and the FAQ agree that inputs are processed on the customer's instructions and not used for training, and clause 2.14 limits retention to what the service needs without periods. The TokenHub privacy policy on privacy.qq.com renders only with JavaScript and was not read (15 of 30). Dated retirement notices, shutdown dates in the model list, a pre-offline status in /v1/models and a DiscontinuedAt field in the control API. Clause 6.3 refunds paid, unused tokens when a third-party model is removed. No minimum notice period is written (13 of 20). Clause 2.13 places processing generally in mainland China for the China site and in Singapore for the international site, and the third-party model list names DeepSeek's Hangzhou company with a link to its terms. No subprocessor list was found (13 of 20).

Schema & documentation SambaCloud +8

SambaCloud 81

Public OpenAPI 3.1.1 document, version 1.2.0, with 10 operations and 169 schemas, last updated 17 September 2026 (25). llms.txt at docs.sambanova.ai/docs/llms.txt and a Markdown copy of each page (10). 717 descriptions in the document, with feature pages for function calling, Responses, Messages and caching. When not to use a route is rarely stated (15 of 20). Typed parameters with 152 enums, but JSON schema output is best effort and strict: true has no effect (10 of 15). Code examples in Python and TypeScript, and an errors page with 13 codes and a recovery suggestion for each (13 of 15). The spec is versioned and release notes are dated, but the newest SambaCloud entry is 7 July 2026 and the models page disagrees with /v1/models (8 of 15).

Tencent Cloud TokenHub 73

Router, scored on the API lines. No OpenAPI file for the inference routes. Field pages document the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses and Anthropic Messages formats as TokenHub implements them, and the control plane is a Tencent Cloud API 3.0 service (version 2026-03-22) with typed parameters, API Explorer and SDKs (12 of 25). An llms.txt at cloud.tencent.com/document/product/1823/llms.txt links a Markdown copy of each docs page (10). The docs say which models support thinking, tools, structured output and caching, how TokenHub departs from each standard protocol, and which DeepSeek model suits which job. The quickstart's examples still use deepseek-v3, which is not in the model list, and Qwen3.5 stays in the list with a past shutdown date (13 of 20). Protocol pages list each field with type, required flag and default, and control-plane parameters carry enums and required flags (10 of 15). Examples in curl, Python, Node.js, Java and Go, and an error page listing 30 codes with HTTP status, cause and fix (14 of 15). Paths carry /v1, release notes are dated monthly from 7 April to 24 October 2026, and the control-plane API has a dated history of 26 releases to 18 September 2026 (14 of 15).

Payments & pricing SambaCloud +5

SambaCloud 40

No machine payment protocol (0). Per-token prices on the pricing page and in /v1/models, both read without a login, such as gpt-oss-120b at $0.22 in and $0.59 out per 1M tokens (20). Free tier with no payment method (20). A person signs up in the console to get a key (0).

Tencent Cloud TokenHub 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-token prices for every model are public in CNY for Guangzhou and Singapore, with DeepSeek's peak and off-peak rates (20). Each account gets 1M free tokens per language model, valid for a year, in a campaign running to 31 December 2026. No card is mentioned, but the account needs real-name verification, so this line takes 15 of 20. A person signs up and completes real-name verification in a browser. Keys can then be created in code or by thcli auth login, but only from that account (0).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSambaCloudTencent Cloud TokenHubEdge
Reliability16%208546SambaCloud +39
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28173SambaCloud +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.26783Tencent Cloud TokenHub +16
Security & auth14%17.55871Tencent Cloud TokenHub +13
Payments & pricing10%12.54035SambaCloud +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87773SambaCloud +4
Transparency & trust7%8.86354SambaCloud +9
Negative events≤15-2-3
TotalB 66.4/100C 59.5/100

Facts side by side

FactSambaCloudTencent Cloud TokenHub
KindModel APIModel router
VendorSambaNova Systems, Inc.Tencent Cloud
Hosted endpointhttps://api.sambanova.ai/v1https://tokenhub.tencentmaas.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the SambaCloud Terms of Service. The SDKs and the OpenAPI document are Apache-2.0Proprietary service under the TokenHub Terms of Service, the TokenHub SLA and the Tencent Cloud Service Agreement, with a special note for third-party deployed models. The tencent-tokenhub-cli package is Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-172026-10-24
Terms last updatedno date givencouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updated2023-05-27couldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingyescouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textcouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textcouldn't be read
Popularity2 stars, 76 npm/wk, 6.1k PyPI/wk204 npm/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

SambaCloud

Per-token prices and the model list are readable without a key at /v1/models, and a free tier needs no card. Production models get two to three weeks' notice before removal, 13 model ids left between March and June 2026, and the docs disagree with the live catalogue on MiniMax-M2.7.

Tencent Cloud TokenHub

Keys can be limited to chosen models, source IPs and token quotas, errors name their source and code, and a 99.5% SLA covers paid use of models Tencent runs. Sign-up needs a Tencent Cloud account with real-name verification, prices are in CNY, no public status page was found, and 18 model retirement notices ran from April to October 2026.

Before you call either

SambaCloud

  1. Call GET https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/models at start-up and use only ids it returns. The docs name models the endpoint no longer lists
  2. Read x-ratelimit-remaining-requests and x-ratelimit-remaining-requests-day on every response. The free tier allows 20 requests a day per model
  3. Treat 429 queue_full and 503 maintenance as retryable after a delay, and 410 model_deprecated as a signal to change model
  4. Validate JSON output yourself. Schema enforcement is best effort and strict: true changes nothing
  5. Check max_completion_tokens per model. DeepSeek-V3.1 caps output at 7,168 tokens and Llama 3.3 70B at 3,072

Tencent Cloud TokenHub

  1. Use https://tokenhub.tencentmaas.com/v1 with keys made for Guangzhou and https://tokenhub-intl.tencentmaas.com/v1 with keys made for Singapore. Keys do not work across the two
  2. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer on the OpenAI paths and as x-api-key on /v1/messages
  3. Parse error.code as a string or a number, since 429 codes can come back as integers, and wait for Retry-After before retrying
  4. Take model ids from GET /v1/models and watch for pre-offline. The quickstart's deepseek-v3 example is not in the current model list
  5. Expect DeepSeek prices to double on weekdays from 9am to noon and 2pm to 6pm Beijing time, when the peak rate applies

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, SambaCloud or Tencent Cloud TokenHub?

SambaCloud scores 66.4 (B) on agent readiness against Tencent Cloud TokenHub's 59.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Tencent Cloud TokenHub leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.

Do SambaCloud and Tencent Cloud TokenHub need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call SambaCloud and Tencent Cloud TokenHub without installing anything?

Yes. SambaCloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sambanova.ai/v1 and Tencent Cloud TokenHub at https://tokenhub.tencentmaas.com/v1.

Other comparisons with SambaCloud or Tencent Cloud TokenHub

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