# Cloudflare Workers AI vs Crusoe

> Both carry DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3 and Kimi K2.6. Cloudflare wins on developer platform and free tier, Crusoe on fine-tuning, dedicated capacity and cache reuse.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/cloudflare-workers-ai-vs-crusoe · By The Subconscious Team · Updated September 30, 2026

## How they compare

The catalogs overlap more than most pairs. Workers AI and Crusoe's serverless tier both serve DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6 and gpt-oss, and GLM 5.3 lands at $1.40 in and $4.40 out on Cloudflare, the same $4.40 top output price Crusoe lists. Crusoe's range starts much lower, at $0.05 in and $0.20 out. Both reuse prefixes: Cloudflare discounts cached input and offers an x-session-affinity header to pin a conversation, while Crusoe's MemoryAlloy shares KV cache across the whole cluster. Crusoe claims up to 9.9x faster time to first token versus vLLM on prefix-heavy work, a vendor figure on favorable workloads.

Beyond tokens the two diverge. Crusoe sells self-serve deployments per GPU-hour, tailored deployments with SLAs, LoRA fine-tuning since July 2026 and raw GB200 and B200 clusters. Workers AI has none of that for large LLMs, and big models need the Workers Paid plan and can queue for capacity. Cloudflare's advantage is everything around the model: Workers, storage, the Agents SDK and AI Gateway on one platform, plus 10,000 free Neurons a day. Its serverless catalog is also wider than Crusoe's small list.

## What each one does

### Cloudflare Workers AI

Workers AI is the serverless GPU inference service of Cloudflare, which was founded in 2009. It launched in September 2023 and reached general availability in April 2024. Models run on GPUs inside Cloudflare's own network and are called from a Worker through an AI binding or over REST, including OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions and Embeddings endpoints plus a Responses endpoint for gpt-oss. The catalog lists 50+ open models. Since Kimi K2.5 arrived in March 2026 it has carried frontier-scale LLMs: Kimi K2.6 and K2.7 Code, GLM 5.2 and 5.3, DeepSeek V4 Pro and Flash, gpt-oss 120B and 20B, Qwen 3.8 27B and Llama 4 Scout. DeepSeek V4, added August 14, 2026, was the first to offer the full 1,048,576 token context.

### Crusoe

Crusoe started in 2018 turning wasted natural gas into power for computing and has since become a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company: it sources energy, builds data centers and rents GPUs through Crusoe Cloud. It designed and built the Abilene, Texas campus behind the OpenAI and Oracle Stargate project, planned at 1.2 GW, and in March 2026 announced an adjacent 900 MW campus for Microsoft. On September 17, 2026 it closed the first part of a $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B post-money valuation, and it reports over 6 GW of contracted capacity. Crusoe Cloud lists GB200 NVL72, B200 and AMD MI355X by quote, with H100 at $3.90 and H200 at $4.29 per GPU-hour on demand.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Cloudflare Workers AI for

- Agents running on Cloudflare's edge platform
- A wider serverless catalog with a free tier
- Routing and spend tracking through AI Gateway

### Choose Crusoe for

- Fine-tuning and deploying an open model in one place
- Multi-turn agents that resend long shared prefixes
- Dedicated or raw GPU capacity at scale

## At a glance

| Attribute | Cloudflare Workers AI | Crusoe |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights | Open weights |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.7 Code, gpt-oss 120B | DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6, Nemotron 3 |
| Speed | - | Up to 9.9x faster TTFT vs vLLM (vendor claim) |
| Price | $0.011 per 1K Neurons; 10K free daily | $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M |
| Customization | BYO LoRA on small models (beta) | Serverless LoRA fine-tuning |
| Deployment | Serverless on Cloudflare network | Serverless, self-serve and tailored dedicated, raw GPUs |
| Long context | 1M on DeepSeek V4; 262K on Kimi | Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Cloudflare Workers AI and Crusoe?

Both carry DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3 and Kimi K2.6. Cloudflare wins on developer platform and free tier, Crusoe on fine-tuning, dedicated capacity and cache reuse.

### When should I choose Cloudflare Workers AI over Crusoe?

Agents running on Cloudflare's edge platform; A wider serverless catalog with a free tier; Routing and spend tracking through AI Gateway.

### When should I choose Crusoe over Cloudflare Workers AI?

Fine-tuning and deploying an open model in one place; Multi-turn agents that resend long shared prefixes; Dedicated or raw GPU capacity at scale.

### Is Cloudflare Workers AI or Crusoe cheaper?

Cloudflare Workers AI: $0.011 per 1K Neurons; 10K free daily. Crusoe: $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

### Which has more context, Cloudflare Workers AI or Crusoe?

Cloudflare Workers AI: 1M on DeepSeek V4; 262K on Kimi. Crusoe: Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Cloudflare Workers AI](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-cloudflare-workers-ai.md), [Subconscious vs Crusoe](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-crusoe.md).

Full profiles: [Cloudflare Workers AI](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/cloudflare-workers-ai.md), [Crusoe](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/crusoe.md).