# Baseten vs Wafer

> Wafer uses AI agents to tune inference stacks and reports 2x or more over stock engines. Baseten has independently measured latency, a broader platform and compliance.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/baseten-vs-wafer · By The Subconscious Team · Updated September 30, 2026

## How they compare

Both companies sell speed on open weights, but the evidence differs. Wafer's agents profile a workload, try configurations across batching, decoding, quantization, kernels and hardware, and deploy the winner, then keep re-tuning. Wafer reports its Qwen 3.5 397B running 2.8x faster than stock SGLang and GLM 5.1 and DeepSeek V4 Pro each 2x faster than vLLM. Those are self-reported against untuned baselines, and Wafer's own downside advises comparing against tuned hosts before buying. Baseten is one of those tuned hosts, with a 0.49 second time to first token measured by Artificial Analysis in August 2026.

The business shape is different too. Wafer is a very young company with a small hosted catalog. It sells Wafer Pass, a flat-rate subscription from $10 a week that drops into Claude Code, Cline and OpenHands, and it runs on NVIDIA or AMD. Baseten offers 13 curated models, Truss for custom ones, HIPAA, data residency and a 99.99% SLA. An individual developer on an agent harness can get far on Wafer Pass. A company with an SLO and a compliance checklist has more assurance on Baseten.

## What each one does

### Baseten

Baseten runs two products. Model APIs serve a curated set of 13 open models, including DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.2, Kimi K3 and gpt-oss 120B, over endpoints that speak both the OpenAI Chat Completions shape and the Anthropic Messages shape. That dual compatibility means an existing OpenAI or Claude SDK, or a coding agent, points at Baseten with a base URL change. Dedicated deployments take any model you package with the open-source Truss CLI and bill per GPU minute, with an H100 at about $6.50 an hour.

### Wafer

Wafer builds AI agents that act as GPU performance engineers, then sells inference on the stacks those agents tune. The company came out of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch as a "Cursor for CUDA" that turned slow PyTorch into custom kernels. Founders Emilio Andere and Steven Arellano are based in San Francisco. Its agents profile a workload, generate candidate configs across batching, decoding, quantization, engines, kernels and hardware, measure each one and deploy the winner.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Baseten for

- Production endpoints backed by a 99.99% SLA
- Independently measured low first-token latency
- Custom speech, embedding or fine-tuned models

### Choose Wafer for

- Flat-rate open models inside Claude Code or Cline
- Dedicated deployments re-tuned as traffic changes
- Teams hedging GPU supply across NVIDIA and AMD

## At a glance

| Attribute | Baseten | Wafer |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, 13 curated | Open weights |
| Flagship models | GLM 5.2, DeepSeek V4, Kimi K3, gpt-oss 120B | Qwen 3.5 397B Turbo, GLM 5.1 Turbo |
| Speed | 0.49s TTFT, lowest measured | 2–2.8x vs stock vLLM or SGLang |
| Price | H100 about $6.50/hr dedicated | Wafer Pass from $10 a week |
| Customization | Deploy any model with Truss | Agent-tuned dedicated deployments |
| Deployment | Model APIs, dedicated, self-host | Serverless pass, dedicated |
| Long context | Varies by model | Varies by model |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Baseten and Wafer?

Wafer uses AI agents to tune inference stacks and reports 2x or more over stock engines. Baseten has independently measured latency, a broader platform and compliance.

### When should I choose Baseten over Wafer?

Production endpoints backed by a 99.99% SLA; Independently measured low first-token latency; Custom speech, embedding or fine-tuned models.

### When should I choose Wafer over Baseten?

Flat-rate open models inside Claude Code or Cline; Dedicated deployments re-tuned as traffic changes; Teams hedging GPU supply across NVIDIA and AMD.

### Is Baseten or Wafer cheaper?

Baseten: H100 about $6.50/hr dedicated. Wafer: Wafer Pass from $10 a week. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

### Which has more context, Baseten or Wafer?

Baseten: Varies by model. Wafer: Varies by model.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Baseten](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-baseten.md), [Subconscious vs Wafer](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-wafer.md).

Full profiles: [Baseten](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/baseten.md), [Wafer](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/wafer.md).