Baseten vs OpenRouter vs DeepInfra
+ Together AI, Fireworks, NVIDIA & HF

DeepSeek V4 Pro

Winner: OpenRouter — by a massive margin. OpenRouter routes to DeepSeek's own API at $0.435/$0.87, 4× cheaper than everyone. NVIDIA NIM comes in 2nd at $1.39/$2.78 (20% cheaper than Baseten/DeepInfra/Fireworks). Together AI is the most expensive at $2.10/$4.40.

DeepSeek V4 Flash

Tie: DeepInfra / NVIDIA / OpenRouter — all three at $0.14/$0.28. NVIDIA NIM also routes here via partner DeepInfra. Baseten and Together/Fireworks don't offer V4 Flash as serverless.

DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus

Winner: DeepInfra — by a huge margin. DeepInfra's $0.21/$0.79 is 2.5× cheaper on input than the next cheapest (Baseten at $0.50), and half the output cost of anyone else. Together AI is the most expensive at $0.60/$1.70.

Kimi K2.6

Winner: DeepInfra / OpenRouter (tie) — DeepInfra direct at $0.75/$3.50 is the lowest consistent pricing. OpenRouter via Moonshot direct has unbeatable input ($0.21) but $4.00 output. NVIDIA NIM routes through Fireworks at $0.95/$4.00. Together is most expensive. Fireworks is mid-range.

Kimi K2.5

Winner: DeepInfra — $0.45/$2.25 beats everyone. Together AI is competitive at $0.50/$2.80 but behind on output. Fireworks and Baseten match at $0.60/$3.00. OpenRouter's routed DeepInfra is slightly cheaper on output ($2.00) minus 5.5% fee.

Llama 3.3 70B

Winner: OpenRouter (free) — Llama 3.3 is free on Venice. Among paid options, DeepInfra and OpenRouter paid are the cheapest ($0.10/$0.32). Notably, Together AI and Fireworks AI are both nearly 9× more expensive on output than DeepInfra at $0.88/$0.90 per token flat rate.

Gemma 4 31B

Winner: OpenRouter (free) — Gemma 4 31B is free on OpenRouter. Among paid options, NVIDIA NIM is the cheapest at $0.14/$0.40, beating Together AI's $0.20/$0.50 by 30%. Baseten, DeepInfra, and Fireworks don't offer it serverless.

Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B

Winner: OpenRouter (free) — Nemotron 3 Super is free on OpenRouter. Among paid providers, DeepInfra is the cheapest at $0.10/$0.50 — 3× cheaper on input than Baseten's $0.30/$0.75. Together AI and Fireworks only offer it via dedicated/on-demand deployments (per GPU-hour), not serverless per-token.

Marketplace + Routing Layer

OpenRouter is an aggregator — it connects to 60+ provider APIs (DeepSeek, Together, Fireworks, DeepInfra, etc.) and routes your request to the cheapest/fastest/most reliable provider. It adds a 5.5% platform fee on top of provider pricing.

Strengths: 400+ models, auto-fallback, free tier, multi-provider competition, prompt caching across providers, no markup on base pricing.

Weaknesses: No dedicated GPU access, limited control over infrastructure, provider-dependent uptime.

GPU Cloud + Inference Stack

Baseten is a GPU deployment platform that also offers optimized Model APIs. You can either use their pre-built endpoints (pay per token) or deploy your own model on dedicated GPUs (pay per minute/hour).

Strengths: Dedicated GPUs (T4→B200), no idle charges, autoscaling, SOC 2 + HIPAA, custom deployments via Truss, fast cold starts.

Weaknesses: Smaller model library (mostly open-source), per-token pricing is often higher than OpenRouter's best providers, no free tier for LLMs.

Serverless + Dedicated Inference

Together AI is a full-stack inference platform with serverless, dedicated GPU deployments, fine-tuning, and GPU clusters. Raised significant funding and has strong enterprise adoption.

Strengths: SOC 2 Type II + HIPAA + BAA, competitive on large MoE models, dedicated H100 from $3.99/hr, fine-tuning platform, batch inference at 50% off.

Weaknesses: Expensive on smaller/commodity models (Llama 3.3 at $0.88/M), no free tier, smaller model selection than OpenRouter.

Fast Inference Stack

Fireworks AI focuses on low-latency inference with optimized engines (Firework Engine). Also SOC 2 Type II + HIPAA + BAA compliant. Raised over $100M.

Strengths: SOC 2 Type II + HIPAA + BAA, optimized inference (often fastest time-to-first-token), on-demand GPU deployments (H100/H200/B200/B300), fine-tuning platform.

Weaknesses: Expensive on small models (flat $0.90/M for Llama 3.3), smaller library than Together or OpenRouter.

GPU-Optimized Inference via Build.nvidia.com

NVIDIA NIM (via build.nvidia.com) provides inference microservices running on NVIDIA's optimized stack. Free tier with 1,000-5,000 credits for trial, then routes to partner providers for production. Includes Nemotron models and NVIDIA-optimized versions of all major open models.

Strengths: Often undercuts other providers on popular models ($1.39/$2.78 V4 Pro vs $1.74/$3.48 on Baseten), free trial credits, NVIDIA hardware optimization (DGX, Blackwell), Nemotron family runs best on its own hardware, strong for self-hosted enterprise deployments via NVIDIA AI Enterprise license.

Weaknesses: Not every model available serverless, limited per-token pricing transparency (many models are "downloadable only"), free tier is just for trial, production requires partner routing or enterprise license, no HIPAA BAA on the trial tier.

Four Inference Models in One Platform

Hugging Face is unique — it operates four distinct inference paths:

1. Inference Providers (routed, per-token): Routes to 20+ provider APIs (DeepInfra, Together, Fireworks, Groq, Cerebras, Novita, etc.) with $0 markup — you pay the same rate as going direct. Includes $0.10/mo free credits for free users, $2/mo for PRO. Covers 200+ models.

2. Inference Endpoints (dedicated GPU): Deploy any model from the Hub on dedicated GPU instances. Pricing is per GPU-hour, not per token. Starts at $0.50/hr (T4) through $4.50/hr (H100) via AWS. Scales to zero. Best for custom/private models or high-volume workloads.

3. HF-Inference (HF's own serverless infra): Runs on HF's own hardware. Billed by compute time (GPU seconds), not per token. 15,000+ models supported but mostly CPU-friendly tasks — embeddings, text classification, sentence similarity, small LLMs (BERT, GPT-2). Only 1 trending chat model. A 10-second FLUX.1-dev image generation costs ~$0.0012.

4. ZeroGPU (free): Free H200 GPU access for PRO users via Spaces. Limited to side projects.

Strengths: Largest model library (1M+ models on Hub), $0 markup on routed providers, flexible deployment options, strong open-source community, fine-tuning platform, Spaces hosting.

Weaknesses: No per-token pricing for HF-native models (hf-inference is compute-time), routed providers add latency vs direct, no auto-fallback or multi-provider optimization like OpenRouter, $0.10/mo free credits is negligible.

Head to Head

Overall winner: DeepInfra for paid per-token pricing. NVIDIA NIM earns an honorable mention — it undercuts most providers on V4 Pro ($1.39/$2.78 vs $1.74/$3.48) and Gemma 4 ($0.14/$0.40 vs $0.20/$0.50). OpenRouter's free tier dominates on Gemma 4, Nemotron, and Llama 3.3. Hugging Face Inference Providers is the best choice if you want zero markup routing to existing provider APIs with consolidated billing.

For HIPAA-required workloads: Together AI is the strongest pick — competitive pricing on large models, full compliance, and the widest model selection among HIPAA-compliant providers.