Cloudflare Workers AI vs Dolphin

Workers AI serves 50+ open models on Cloudflare's own GPUs. Dolphin serves one open model on a network of idle consumer GPUs.

By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 11, 2026

Cloudflare Workers AI vs Dolphin: key differences

Workers AI includes DeepSeek V4 Pro and Flash, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6 and gpt-oss 120B behind OpenAI-compatible endpoints, with 10,000 free Neurons a day, prefix caching and AI Gateway for fallbacks and spend tracking. Dolphin's API launched in October 2026 with one model, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.01 in and $0.07 out per million, served on idle consumer GPUs. Nodes are checked against a trusted copy of the model and cannot log requests, but Dolphin publishes no speed, context or SLA.

Workers AI suits teams on Cloudflare who want many models, long context and an established vendor. Dolphin suits cost-first background jobs and products that need uncensored models, if wallet and Telegram signup and variable uptime are acceptable.

What Cloudflare Workers AI and Dolphin do

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 K3, K2.6 and K2.7 Code, GLM 5.2, 5.3 and 5.3 Flash, 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, and Kimi K3 now matches it.

Example models: DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3

Full Cloudflare Workers AI profile

Dolphin

Dolphin began in 2023 as Eric Hartford's series of open-source, uncensored fine-tunes, trained to drop the refusals and baked-in guidelines of their base models so that the developer sets the rules through the system prompt. Current releases include Dolphin Llama 3.1 8B and Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition, built with Venice, and the project publishes nearly 100 models on Hugging Face. It also runs a chat app, a Telegram bot and a synthetic data service that generates answers to commonly refused prompts.

Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B

Full Dolphin profile

Should you choose Cloudflare Workers AI or Dolphin?

Cloudflare Workers AI

Choose Cloudflare Workers AI for

Apps already built on Workers
Many open models with long context
Caching and fallbacks via AI Gateway

Dolphin

Choose Dolphin for

Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls
Background jobs with loose latency needs
Models without vendor-imposed refusals

Cloudflare Workers AI vs Dolphin at a glance

Attribute	Cloudflare Workers AI	Dolphin
Model access	Open weights	Open weights, uncensored fine-tunes
Flagship models	DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, Kimi K2.7 Code, gpt-oss 120B	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B
Speed	Unknown	Unknown
Price	$0.011 per 1K Neurons; 10K free daily	$0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash)
Customization	BYO LoRA on small models (beta)	Own uncensored fine-tunes
Deployment	Serverless on Cloudflare network	Decentralized serverless API
Long context	1M on DeepSeek V4 and Kimi K3; 262K on Kimi K2.6 and K2.7 Code	Unknown

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Cloudflare Workers AI and Dolphin?

Workers AI serves 50+ open models on Cloudflare's own GPUs. Dolphin serves one open model on a network of idle consumer GPUs.

When should I choose Cloudflare Workers AI over Dolphin?

Apps already built on Workers; Many open models with long context; Caching and fallbacks via AI Gateway.

When should I choose Dolphin over Cloudflare Workers AI?

Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls; Background jobs with loose latency needs; Models without vendor-imposed refusals.

Is Cloudflare Workers AI or Dolphin cheaper?

Cloudflare Workers AI: $0.011 per 1K Neurons; 10K free daily. Dolphin: $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

Related comparisons

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If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious. Our inference stack treats a long-horizon trace as the primary workload, so speed, cost, and accuracy hold up deep into the trace.

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