# Crusoe vs OpenScale

> Crusoe builds its own data centers and serves open models with fine-tuning and SLAs. OpenScale sells one open model cheaply for coding agents.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/crusoe-vs-openscale · By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 11, 2026

## How they compare

Crusoe owns the stack from power to GPUs. Its Intelligence Foundry offers serverless inference from $0.05 in and $0.20 out per million tokens, a cluster-wide KV cache for prefix reuse, serverless LoRA fine-tuning and tailored deployments with SLAs. OpenScale serves DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.06 in, $0.003 cached and $0.24 out per million tokens under a 50% promotion, at 200+ tokens per second, with a fast tier at about twice the speed. It ships tested setups for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents, and its terms note that some models may be served by third-party providers.

Crusoe suits production workloads that need fine-tuning, dedicated capacity or large GPU clusters. OpenScale suits teams that want DeepSeek V4.1 Flash behind a coding agent at a low cached-input price, with no commitments and no infrastructure decisions.

## What each one does

### 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.

### OpenScale

OpenScale is a Y Combinator-backed inference API built by LatentSpace and run out of Singapore. It sells open models behind one endpoint that speaks Chat Completions, the OpenAI Responses API and Anthropic Messages, so Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cline, GitHub Copilot, Zed and other coding agents can point at it with a base URL and key. Its public catalog today is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash in two versions, standard and fast, both with a 1M token context window and up to 384K output tokens.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Crusoe for

- Production inference with SLAs
- Fine-tuning and serving in one account
- Large GPU clusters on owned hardware

### Choose OpenScale for

- The lowest per-token price on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Coding agents over Anthropic or OpenAI formats
- Prepaid credits with no minimums

## At a glance

| Attribute | Crusoe | OpenScale |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights | Open weights |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6, Nemotron 3 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
| Speed | Up to 9.9x faster TTFT vs vLLM (vendor claim) | 200+ tok/s; fast tier ~2x |
| Price | $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M | $0.06 in, $0.24 out (promo, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) |
| Customization | Serverless LoRA fine-tuning | N/A |
| Deployment | Serverless, self-serve and tailored dedicated, raw GPUs | Serverless API |
| Long context | Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache | 1M context |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Crusoe and OpenScale?

Crusoe builds its own data centers and serves open models with fine-tuning and SLAs. OpenScale sells one open model cheaply for coding agents.

### When should I choose Crusoe over OpenScale?

Production inference with SLAs; Fine-tuning and serving in one account; Large GPU clusters on owned hardware.

### When should I choose OpenScale over Crusoe?

The lowest per-token price on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash; Coding agents over Anthropic or OpenAI formats; Prepaid credits with no minimums.

### Is Crusoe or OpenScale cheaper?

Crusoe: $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M. OpenScale: $0.06 in, $0.24 out (promo, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

### Which has more context, Crusoe or OpenScale?

Crusoe: Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache. OpenScale: 1M context.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Crusoe](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-crusoe.md), [Subconscious vs OpenScale](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-openscale.md).

Full profiles: [Crusoe](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/crusoe.md), [OpenScale](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/openscale.md).