Cloudflare Workers AI vs Inception

Workers AI runs 50+ open models on Cloudflare's network, next to your Workers code. Inception sells its own fast diffusion LLMs.

By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 11, 2026

Cloudflare Workers AI vs Inception: key differences

Workers AI carries DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6, gpt-oss 120B and more, billed in Neurons with 10,000 free a day, and gpt-oss 120B works out to $0.35 in and $0.75 out. DeepSeek V4 has full 1M context, prefix caching discounts repeat input, and AI Gateway adds fallbacks and logs. Inception's Mercury 2.5 is a closed reasoning model with 260K context, tool use and JSON mode at $0.20 in and $0.75 out per million. Inception reports over 1,100 tokens per second, and Artificial Analysis measured about 640.

Pick Workers AI when the app already runs on Cloudflare and needs a choice of open models, long context or a free tier. Workers AI publishes no speed figures, and large models can queue for capacity. Pick Inception when output speed drives the product, as in code edits or voice, and Haiku-class quality is enough.

What Cloudflare Workers AI and Inception 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

Inception

Inception builds diffusion large language models (dLLMs). Every other LLM on this list generates text one token at a time; Inception's Mercury models start from a rough draft of a whole block and refine it over a few passes, producing many tokens in parallel. That ties speed less to output length and lets the models run fast on ordinary NVIDIA GPUs rather than custom chips. The company was founded by professors from Stanford, UCLA and Cornell behind core work on diffusion, Flash Attention and DPO, and is led by Stanford's Stefano Ermon. It raised a $50M seed in November 2025 led by Menlo Ventures, with Mayfield, M12, NVentures, Snowflake and Databricks, plus Andrew Ng and Andrej Karpathy as angels.

Example models: Mercury 2.5, Mercury 2

Full Inception profile

Should you choose Cloudflare Workers AI or Inception?

Cloudflare Workers AI

Choose Cloudflare Workers AI for

Apps already built on Workers
Long-context agents on DeepSeek V4
Free daily allocation for small workloads

Inception

Choose Inception for

Fast output for code edits and voice
Low-cost reasoning with tool use
Buying through Bedrock or Azure

Cloudflare Workers AI vs Inception at a glance

Attribute	Cloudflare Workers AI	Inception
Model access	Open weights	Closed weights (Mercury dLLMs)
Flagship models	DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, Kimi K2.7 Code, gpt-oss 120B	Mercury 2.5, Mercury 2
Speed	Unknown	1,100+ tok/s (vendor); ~640 measured
Price	$0.011 per 1K Neurons; 10K free daily	$0.20 in, $0.75 out (Mercury 2.5)
Customization	BYO LoRA on small models (beta)	Fine-tuning on request
Deployment	Serverless on Cloudflare network	Serverless API, Bedrock, Azure, private
Long context	1M on DeepSeek V4 and Kimi K3; 262K on Kimi K2.6 and K2.7 Code	260K

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Cloudflare Workers AI and Inception?

Workers AI runs 50+ open models on Cloudflare's network, next to your Workers code. Inception sells its own fast diffusion LLMs.

When should I choose Cloudflare Workers AI over Inception?

Apps already built on Workers; Long-context agents on DeepSeek V4; Free daily allocation for small workloads.

When should I choose Inception over Cloudflare Workers AI?

Fast output for code edits and voice; Low-cost reasoning with tool use; Buying through Bedrock or Azure.

Is Cloudflare Workers AI or Inception cheaper?

Cloudflare Workers AI: $0.011 per 1K Neurons; 10K free daily. Inception: $0.20 in, $0.75 out (Mercury 2.5). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

Which has more context, Cloudflare Workers AI or Inception?

Cloudflare Workers AI: 1M on DeepSeek V4 and Kimi K3; 262K on Kimi K2.6 and K2.7 Code. Inception: 260K.

Related comparisons

Running long-horizon agents?

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.

Subconscious vs Cloudflare Workers AI Subconscious vs Inception