Baseten vs Replicate
Both run AI models on GPUs behind an API, but they lean different ways. Baseten is built to serve and train your own models in production, in the US, the EU or your own cloud, while Replicate starts from a catalog of thousands of ready models you call with one request.
The companies and products
Baseten
Baseten is an inference cloud: it runs AI models on GPUs for production apps, and sells hosted open models and training.
You package a model with Truss, its open-source format, or bring a Docker image, and Baseten runs it as replicas on Kubernetes that scale up with traffic and down to zero. It also sells Model APIs (open models priced per token) and training jobs on the same GPUs. Sandboxes, isolated environments where an agent runs commands and works with files, are in private preview; this page compares boat with both the CPU instances and the sandbox preview.
Replicate
Replicate runs AI models with an API: thousands of community and official models, plus your own models packaged with Cog.
You call a public model with one API request, fine-tune one on your data, or package your own model with Cog, Replicate's open-source tool that builds a Docker image with an HTTP prediction server. Replicate runs it on CPU or NVIDIA GPU hardware as deployments that scale up with traffic and down to zero. It is built for teams that serve models, not for agents that need a machine of their own, so this page compares the places where the two overlap.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “24th cheapest of 98” means 23 of the other 97 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Baseten: price rank | Replicate: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A coding agent needs root, Docker and a disk that is still there tomorrow; neither Baseten nor Replicate documents Docker inside, and neither keeps a disk. | 216th of 367, with limits $2,619 a month | 268th of 367, with limits $4,340 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives for months loses its files on both: Baseten preview sandboxes are deleted after 7 days by default and Replicate keeps no disk. | 242nd of 366, with limits $3,258 a month | 335th of 366, with limits $11,300 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Short bursts suit Replicate's per-second billing at $295 a month, while Baseten bills whole minutes plus cold starts and 15 idle minutes by default, for $1,856. | 319th of 345, with limits $1,856 a month | 258th of 345, with limits $295 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Neither is built to hand your users a machine: Baseten's preview sandboxes cap at 10 at once by default, and Replicate gives an endpoint, not a VM. | 277th of 361, with limits $1,868 a month | 317th of 361, with limits $3,705 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month Replicate's per-second billing makes RL rollouts cheaper there than on Baseten, at $17,900 against $31,140 a month, but each prediction stops at 30 minutes. | 322nd of 360, with limits $31,140 a month | 174th of 360, with limits $17,900 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Replicate fits agent evals at $1,440 a month and Baseten does not, but boat runs them on full VMs for $200. | 297th of 364, with limits $1,609 a month | 67th cheapest of 364 $1,440 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 320th of 377, with limits $1,119 a month | 311th of 377, with limits $864 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 170th of 368, with limits $130 a month | 306th of 368, with limits $226 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Neither Baseten nor Replicate has a desktop or computer-use product; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium from every sandbox. | 294th of 369, with limits $1,799 a month | 263rd of 369, with limits $1,296 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 318th of 367, with limits $1,194 a month | 322nd of 367, with limits $1,296 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 220th of 346, with limits $183 a month | 272nd of 346, with limits $439 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 126th of 338, with limits $3,654 a month | 221st of 338, with limits $8,775 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 254th of 360, with limits $381 a month | 306th of 360, with limits $855 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Both fit GPU eval jobs: Replicate comes to $1,338 a month and Baseten to $1,625, and boat has no GPUs at all. | 24th cheapest of 98 $1,625 a month | 22nd cheapest of 98 $1,338 a month | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Baseten | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Inference cloud for serving and training your models, plus Model APIs; agent sandboxes in private preview | Model inference API: thousands of public models, fine-tunes, and your own Cog models | Sandboxes for AI agents: full VMs with coding agents, a desktop and hosting ready |
| Ready-made models | Model APIs: hosted open models priced per token | Thousands of community and official models for images, video, speech and text, plus fine-tuning | None; your agent calls the model API you choose |
| GPUs | Nvidia T4, L4, A10G, A100, H100, H200, B200 and RTX PRO 6000, up to 8 per instance, plus multi-node | T4, L40S, A100 80GB, H100 and H200, up to 8 per instance; most multi-GPU and all H200 need a committed spend contract | None, CPU only |
| Scale to zero and wake on request | Deployments scale to zero and start on the next request; standby sandboxes resume with files kept | Deployments scale to zero and start again on the next prediction, between min and max instances you set | No; you start a stopped sandbox through the API |
| Run time | No documented maximum for a deployment; it runs until it scales down or you remove it | Instances can stay on, but each prediction times out after 30 minutes unless support raises it | No session cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Shell access | SSH once enabled for your organization | No SSH; you call the model through the HTTP API or client libraries | SSH, root and systemd, like a normal Ubuntu server |
| Root, Docker and /dev/kvm | Model containers run as the non-root app user; Docker inside and /dev/kvm are not documented | The model is the container; Docker inside and /dev/kvm are not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Files after a stop | Replicas start fresh from the image; preview sandboxes are deleted with their files after 7 days by default | No persistent disk; API inputs, outputs and logs are deleted after an hour by default | Disk snapshotted every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps it |
| Fork | No fork or clone; new replicas cold-start from the image | No snapshots or fork; you add replicas of the same image | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Agent sandboxes | Private preview, access on request, 10 per organization at once by default | None | On every plan, self-serve, 100 to 2,000 at once by plan |
| Desktop and computer use | None; sandboxes run commands and file operations | No desktop or browser product | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets are passed into the model as arguments or files under /secrets | Secrets are sent to the model as inputs and redacted from logs afterwards | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Regions | US or EU for GPU deployments; shared CPU instances cannot pick a region | Infrastructure subprocessors listed in the United States; no region choice documented | EU only: Germany, Finland and France |
| Running it yourself | Self-hosted or hybrid in your own AWS, GCP or OCI account on Enterprise | Cog is open source and its images run anywhere Docker runs; the hosted platform is not | No |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Baseten | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | No | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable CPU measurement for either: neither Baseten nor Replicate was part of the public StarSling benchmark run, so we cannot say which is faster at CPU work. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Both are built for GPU inference, which this test does not cover.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Baseten and Replicate have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Baseten, a month | Replicate, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $34 · Basic · with limits | $57 · Usage · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $136 · Basic · with limits | $237 · Usage · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $1,701 · Basic · with limits | $2,851 · Usage · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $1,246 · Basic · with limits | $1,620 · Usage | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $6,228 · Basic · with limits | $3,580 · Usage | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Baseten: Baseten bills per minute, with partial minutes rounded up, from image build and cold start until the replica stops; there is no plan fee on Basic. By default a replica stays billed for 15 idle minutes before it scales down.
Replicate: Replicate bills per second by hardware from prepaid credit that expires after a year. Public models bill only while they run; private models and deployments also bill setup and idle time.
Replicate: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Neither Baseten nor Replicate has a persistent disk, so both miss the workday agent, the always-on agent and the 50-agent fleet: files are gone when an instance stops, and the fleet also needs Docker inside, which neither documents. Replicate fits the user sandboxes and the 1,000-job burst, while Baseten's CPU instances are an app platform rather than a sandbox, and its preview sandboxes run 10 at once by default. Each Replicate prediction stops after 30 minutes unless support raises it. On boat the 1,000-job burst is queued, because it needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Baseten | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Baseten when
you serve or train your own models in production, need B200s or multi-node GPUs, or must run in the US, the EU or your own cloud account.
- Bigger and newer GPUs. For large models, Baseten offers B200 and RTX PRO 6000 next to H100 and H200, up to 8 per instance and across nodes.
- Pick the US or EU, or your own cloud. Teams with data rules can run GPU deployments in the US or EU, or self-host in their own AWS, GCP or OCI account.
- Built for your own models in production. Package a model with Truss or a Docker image and Baseten scales replicas with traffic, with training on the same GPUs.
Use Replicate when
you want to call ready-made models from a large catalog, fine-tune one, or ship a Cog model that scales to zero and bills by the second.
- Thousands of models, one call away. If you want an image, video, speech or text model without hosting it, Replicate's catalog starts with one API request.
- Per-second billing for public models. Public models bill only for the seconds they run, which suits light or uneven traffic.
- Cog runs anywhere. Cog, Replicate's open-source packaging tool, builds standard Docker images you can also run on your own servers.
Where boat fits
Baseten and Replicate are for serving models on GPUs, and for that they are the right choice. If what you are really running is agents that write code, build containers or use a browser, they need a machine of their own, which neither gives you. Keep the models on Baseten or Replicate and let the agents work on boat.
A full VM with root and Docker
Every boat sandbox has its own kernel with root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm. Baseten containers run as a non-root user and Replicate's model is the container, and neither documents Docker inside, so an agent's docker build has nowhere to run.
A disk that stays, and forks
boat snapshots the disk every minute and on stop, and you can fork a running sandbox. Baseten replicas start fresh and preview sandboxes are deleted after 7 days; Replicate keeps no disk, so each run sets up again and pays for that time.
Long sessions with agents and a desktop
boat has no session cap on paid plans, ships Claude Code and Codex inside, and streams a 60fps desktop. A Replicate prediction stops at 30 minutes, and neither has a desktop, so you would build the agent loop and browser yourself.
Use boat when your agents need a machine of their own: a full VM with root, Docker and /dev/kvm, a disk snapshotted every minute, forks, coding agents and a 60fps desktop, alongside whichever model API you call. Compare it one to one: boat vs Baseten and boat vs Replicate.
Questions people ask
Is Baseten cheaper than Replicate?
On the CPU scenarios we priced, Baseten usually comes out lower, such as $136 against $237 a month for one agent that never stops, though neither fits that job. Replicate is lower for 1,000 short jobs at once and for GPU eval jobs, at $1,338 against $1,625 a month.
Which is faster, Baseten or Replicate?
We have no comparable measurement for either: neither ran the public StarSling CPU benchmark. Both are built for GPU inference, so speed depends on the GPU you pick. boat did 26.69 runs per second on that CPU test.
Which has more GPU choices?
Baseten lists T4, L4, A10G, A100, H100, H200, B200 and RTX PRO 6000, up to 8 per instance and across nodes. Replicate offers T4, L40S, A100 80GB, H100 and H200, and most multi-GPU and all H200 need a committed spend contract. boat has no GPUs.
Can Baseten or Replicate run Docker inside?
Neither documents it. Baseten runs your model as a container under a non-root user, and Replicate's Cog builds your model into a Docker image without Docker inside it. Every boat sandbox has root, Docker and /dev/kvm.
Where does my data run?
Baseten lets GPU deployments pick the US or the EU, and Enterprise customers can self-host in their own cloud. Replicate lists its infrastructure in the United States with no region choice documented. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Do Baseten or Replicate have sandboxes for AI agents?
Baseten has agent sandboxes in private preview, 10 per organization at once by default, deleted after 7 days by default. Replicate has none; it runs models behind an API. boat gives every plan full VM sandboxes with coding agents and a desktop.
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