Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

SambaCloud vs Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) scores 88.7 (AA) on agent readiness against SambaCloud's 64.9 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 830 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.

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

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

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 85
  • Schema & documentation, 94 against 81
  • Agent ergonomics, 97 against 67
  • Security & auth, 97 against 61
  • Maintenance & community, 91 against 77
  • Transparency & trust, 90 against 73

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No incidents deducted, where SambaCloud loses 5 points for them

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.

Security & auth Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +36

SambaCloud 61

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). The DPA's Annex I, read on 1 November, keeps prompts, inputs and completions no more than 30 days for security, fraud and abuse monitoring. No zero-retention option was found in the pages read, and the product page says SambaCloud never sees or collects prompts, against that retention and terms that grant a right to store content and to use query logs (10 of 15, between deepseek-api's 5 and siliconflow's 6 with no period stated and the 15 groq, mistral-api and xai-api take for 30 days with a zero-retention route). 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).

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) +30

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-M3.1-Flash at a tenth of the input price on the 1 November pricing page, 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).

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).

Transparency & trust Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +17

SambaCloud 73

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 still dated 27 May 2023 and doesn't name SambaCloud or API inputs. A Data Processing Addendum, part of the Terms of Service, is now linked from the legal page (undated). It limits processing of customer personal data to the agreement, its Annex I says prompts, inputs and completions are processed transiently and kept no more than 30 days for security, fraud and abuse monitoring, then deleted, and it deletes customer personal data within 30 days of termination and from backups within 90. The product page's claim, re-read on 1 November, that SambaCloud 'never sees or collects any of your data or user prompts' sits beside that 30-day retention and terms that allow storing content and using query logs (16 of 30, as novita-ai's stated retention periods, below mistral-api's 18 where the DPA and other pages agree). A deprecations page with notice and removal dates back to April 2025, recording MiniMax-M2.7's 1 October removal with a 1 September notice per the 27 October read, though nothing for Mistral Large 3, per the 8 October check (14 of 20). The DPA's Annex III names 24 sub-processors with purpose and location (USA, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia) and promises 30 days' notice of changes, though it doesn't say where inference runs for a given request (18 of 20). 15+16+14+18 = 63.

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).

Reliability Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +14

SambaCloud 85

Hosted reading. Status page at status.sambanova.ai on Statuspage, with components for the API gateway, the Playground and each model, read from the page itself on 1 November (20). Its history.atom feed, read on 1 November (the 8 October reading came from the /api/ path, which robots.txt disallows, and is struck), has nothing newer than an 8-minute Playground login fault on 25 June 2026, so nothing is posted for the window from 3 August (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, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 1 November (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, per the 8 October check. No Retry-After header was found in the docs or the OpenAPI document (10 of 15). No SLA found on the legal page, re-read on 1 November, or in the terms (0). Three production models are generally available, the rest previews, per the 8 October check (10). 20+30+15+10+0+10 = 85.

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.

Maintenance & community Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +14

SambaCloud 77

Model reading. The OpenAPI document and both SDKs (Python 1.14.0, TypeScript 1.11.0) were updated on 27 October 2026, adding MiniMax-M3.1-Flash, which is on the pricing page on 1 November (30). Production models get a notice of at least two to three weeks. The recorded removals to June had 14 days or less, and MiniMax-M2.7's removal from SambaCloud on 1 October was announced on 1 September (30 days), per the 27 October read of the deprecations page (5 of 12). One removal in the window from 3 August (MiniMax-M2.7) after 13 model ids left between 9 March and 9 June 2026 (4 of 8). The SambaCloud release notes stopped at 7 July 2026 on 8 October and couldn't be re-read. The community forum had staff replies, per the 8 October check (10 of 15). The Python SDK repository holds release pull requests only, so replies could not be judged (5 of 10). Python 1.14.0 and TypeScript 1.11.0, both 27 October 2026 (15). CI, release-please, a lock file and gitleaks scanning (8 of 10). 30+5+4+10+5+15+8 = 77.

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.

Schema & documentation Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +13

SambaCloud 81

Public OpenAPI 3.1.1 document, still labelled version 1.2.0 though its content changed on 27 October 2026, with 10 operations and 165 schemas (25). llms.txt at docs.sambanova.ai/docs/llms.txt and a Markdown copy of each page, per the 8 October check (docs.sambanova.ai answered robots.txt with a bot check on 1 November, so it wasn't read) (10). 718 descriptions in the document, with pages for function calling, Responses, Messages and caching. When not to use a route is rarely stated (15 of 20). Typed parameters with 150 enums, and request bodies now declare additionalProperties: false, 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, per the 8 October check (13 of 15). The spec is versioned in its repository, but the version label didn't move with the 27 October changes, the newest SambaCloud release note seen is 7 July 2026, and the models page disagreed with /v1/models on 8 October (8 of 15). 25+10+15+10+13+8 = 81.

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).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSambaCloudVertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)Edge
Reliability16%208599Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +14
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28194Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +13
Agent ergonomics13%16.26797Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +30
Security & auth14%17.56197Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +36
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87791Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +14
Transparency & trust7%8.87390Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) +17
Negative events≤15-50
TotalB 64.9/100AA 88.7/100

Facts side by side

FactSambaCloudVertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)
KindModel APIModel API
VendorSambaNova Systems, Inc.Google Cloud
Hosted endpointhttps://api.sambanova.ai/v1https://aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or 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 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 release2026-10-272026-11-05
Terms last updatedno date given2026-09-02
Privacy policy last updated2023-05-272026-10-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity2 stars, 76 npm/wk, 6.1k PyPI/wk20.9M PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (4)none

What the same task costs

TaskSambaCloudVertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)
Research a product and write a sourced reportgpt-oss-120b on SambaCloud, gemini-3.1-pro-preview on Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)$2.39$22.03
Build a small four-page websitegpt-oss-120b on SambaCloud, gemini-3.1-pro-preview on Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)$0.53$5.09
Find and fix a bug in a large codebasegpt-oss-120b on SambaCloud, gemini-3.1-pro-preview on Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)$0.12$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

SambaCloud

Per-token prices are readable without a login, a free tier needs no card, and no incident has been posted since 25 June 2026. A Data Processing Addendum now names 24 sub-processors. Production models get two to three weeks' notice before removal, 13 model ids left between March and June 2026, and the product page's privacy claim contradicts the terms.

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

SambaCloud

  1. Call GET https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/models at start-up and use only ids it returns. The docs and status page have named models the API no longer serves
  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. Drop do_sample before moving to Python SDK 1.14.0 or TypeScript 1.11.0. Those releases removed it

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, SambaCloud or Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform)?

Vertex AI (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) scores 88.7 (AA) on agent readiness against SambaCloud's 64.9 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

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

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

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

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

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

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